Stoopid Hoomans

It’s always amusing when your cats remind you that they are, in fact, smarter than you. We’d noticed on several occasions that Zed gets all excited when he hears the sound of the little safety strip being removed from the neck of a new gallon of milk. (It’s a plastic strip attached to the base of the cap with a number of small tabs. It makes a distintive zipping sort of noise when you pull it off.) He’ll actually get up from a nap and run to the kitchen when he hears it. We had always figured that this interest was because Zed had been fed milk in his previous residence and associated the sound with milk. Zed doesn’t get milk in this residence, however. Tracie would explain this to him every time we opened a new gallon of milk and eventually he’d wander off with a faint air of disappointment.

It turns out that we were entirely wrong about his interest. The other morning Tracie pulled the strip off a new bottle of milk and Zed appeared as usual. This time, though, he stood up on his hind legs and very deliberately gestured at the strip itself, not the milk. Tracie dropped it on the floor for him and he was ecstatic. He batted it around with more enthusiasm than he’s shown for any other toy, except possibly the laser pointer.

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It was pretty clever of someone to realize that these plastic strips make good cat toys. They’re light, springy, and slippery so they travel well on either hard floors or carpet when a cat bats them. They also have a perpendicular handle that means they won’t lie completely flat regardless of which side they land on. The only drawback seems to be that Edwin wants to eat the whole thing.

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By adam

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