my cat is SO weird. Your pets?

[sturob]

The dog I grew up with loved beer. If you opened any kind of canned beverage (known as Coke generically where I'm from, but equivalent to soda water -- soda -- pop) he'd run up to see if it was beer. If my dad opened a beer, Guffey would beg until he poured some in a dish for him. The bubbles tickled his nose, so he'd whimper, but drink it up and lick the bowl. Guffey also knew the sound of broccoli in a plastic bag, and would demand my mother feed him broccoli. Not cooked; only fresh. He would also eat romaine lettuce but refused iceberg lettuce.

Oh, about asparagus and pee. Asparagus makes everyone's pee smell that weird way; there's actually a gene (that's been mapped) that codes for the ability to detect that smell. Some people can't detect it, but their pee still has the smell. Yes, I imagine NIH or some such PAID for the research that looked into the matter. I can't remember if it's related, but there's a compound in asparagus called inulin that's been used in a lot of kidney research (to determine glomerular filtration rate). Maybe the researchers noted the smell, or some did, and then they looked for the gene on the side.

Stuart

[spittin_in_the_wind]

The starling I had (see aforementioned "Thief" thread) loved fancy cheese like gouda or gruyere, but would turn up his beak at lowly colby or american cheese. He also would get in a frenzy if there was water running anywhere in the house and loved to stand under the faucet with the water pouring down on top of his head. Strange bird.


Robin

[ErikT]

Spitting, I'm not even going to mention the oddity of having a free flying startling in the house...

But my cat likes yogurt. He wakes me up wanting yogurt, likes to lick the top and then will wait not-so-patiently to lick the inside rim of the container. He likes blueberry and cherry the best, peach is ok, and will put his nose up at vanilla bean, sometimes strawberry and most other flavors. He also only likes the good stuff. The new yogurt in a tube that is made for kids gets snubbed as does no-name-brand.

[Redwolf]

The starling I had (see aforementioned "Thief" thread) loved fancy cheese like gouda or gruyere, but would turn up his beak at lowly colby or american cheese. He also would get in a frenzy if there was water running anywhere in the house and loved to stand under the faucet with the water pouring down on top of his head. Strange bird.


Robin

Our dog used to be like that with rice. For a while after he had parvo he could only eat rice and broth, but not just any rice would do for our pampered pooch...oh no! He had to have basmati! Put plain ol' California long-grain in his dish and he'd turn up his aristocratic nose and complain that we were trying to poison him!

Redwolf

[herbivore12]

Nano, my lovely cat Sasha was nuts for bok choy -- would leap into the middle of the take-out Chinese containers to get at it, right in the middle of dinner, and always scooped it up with a paw and brought it to her mouth, rather than just digging in face-first -- and for flour tortillas. Had a thing for ethnic foods, I guess.

All of our current housemates are avian, and are full of odd quirks and behaviors. Miles (a Senegal parrot) says "Have to potty!" when he needs to, well, potty, and then will either walk over to his playstand or wait for us to carry him there before he goes. My caique (Elphie) is also potty-trained, but she just hops over to the right place when it's time, or goes on command. Problem is, sometimes Miles gives that command: he walks up to her and says, "Go potty! Good bird, go potty!" and we have to hurry to get to her before she does as asked.

When we're drinking something he wants, Miles swaggers over and says, "Have a drink?" and makes a slurping noise. Elphie loves games; if you point at her and make gun-bang noises, she'll flop over onto her back; if you hold her around the body and bounce her feet up and down on the ground a few times and then let go, she'll continue hopping up and down while laughing like a maniac; she loves to play hide-and-seek in a blanket -- burrows under the blanket and stays quiet until you pretend to discover her, and then she bursts into laughter and hops around and begs for tickles. When she's tired and it's late, Elphie says "Night-night" and goes into her little hanging bed and keeps insisting "Night-night!" until we cover her up (Miles just gets cranky, like an exhausted child who's reluctant to sleep). And there's lots more; incredible little beings, birds are. Living with these guys is like having a very smart toddler -- for decades.

Elphie, by the way, loves IrTrad and whistles along with tunes, usually in the same key/mode(!), though she doesn't do the melody -- she's sort of a bouzouki-bird chugging along in the background (but with better tuning). Miles doesn't seem to care much what kind of music's playing.

[Brigitte]

My cat Jacques loves garlic in any form or shape, be it mixed in fresh cheese or flavored crisps he wants some. Maybe this is part of the reason what keeps him fit, he is nearly 16 and a half years now and hopefully he has some more ahead of him.
Brigitte

[rebl_rn]

My cat doesn't seem to have any weird food issues. But my childhood cat had a thing for dry (uncooked) spaghetti. I thought that was weird.

My cat now is only strange in that she likes to lick my shower curtain. Not after I've taken a shower, mind you, and you could understand maybe licking up the water on it, oh no, she licks the shower curtain when it's dry. That's the first thing she does in the morning when I get up - she follows me into the bathroom where she jumps up on the edge of the tub and spends a few estatic minutes licking away, and purring like mad the whole time. She only seems to do that in the morning though. Well, I guess I can't say if she does it during the day when I'm gone, but I've never seen her do that at night. Very odd.

Oh, the cat who liked uncooked spaghetti also for a short time had a plastic (ziploc-type) bag fetish - you could not leave a ziploc bag (empty or full of something) out anywhere in the house, she would pick it up in her mouth and carry it proudly around the house, like she had just hunted it down and killed it or something. But that only lasted a few months, when she was maybe about 10 years old or so (she lived to be 17).

Beth

[chas]

Our junior cat used to love lettuce. Now she doesn't beg for lettuce, but tears strings out of the carpet and eats those. (100% synthetic, none of this fancy wool stuff)

I used to have a cat who loved spicy food -- chili, curry, Szechuan, it didn't matter. One time I made some Chinese curry that was just too hot. My roommate and I decided to see if we were wimps, so we gave some to the cat. One sniff and he ran the other way, confirming our suspicions that it really WAS hot.

[Montana]

My mom's cat has a thing for coffee. When she gets up in the morning and gets out the coffee can, he'll wind around her legs or stand against the cupboard on his hind feet, demanding a sample. She'll moisten her finger and put it in the fresh grounds then let him lick it off. Guess he needs his morning caffine fix.

Our friends have a dog with a interesting behavior. They have a refrigerator that dispenses icecubes. Sometimes the ice cubes bounce out and land on the floor. The dog jumps on them immediately and chews them up, thinking he scored a treat. Sometimes they put some ice cubes in his bowl when they want to reward him. A lot less expensive than Milkbones...

[PhilO]

I've had a total of 9 cats (no more than 3 at a time) over the last 35 years or so, and to list their strange activities (especially those of the most highly revered Hendrix, now gone many years) would take too long. However, one of my cats (hereinafter referred to as "the black one") recently did something I've never seen a cat do before. My cats often sleep in our bed sometimes until kicked off and sometimes through the night. Often I've awakened in the morning in a sort of "cat straightjacket" with one cat ("the white one") at one hip and the other snugged in at the other hip. Well one morning last week, I awoke with black cat UNDER the covers at the foot of the bed! I'd never seen a cat sleep under the covers before! Thankfully, that hasn't happened again.

PhilO

[DCrom]

snugged in at the other hip. Well one morning last week, I awoke with black cat UNDER the covers at the foot of the bed! I'd never seen a cat sleep under the covers before! Thankfully, that hasn't happened again.

PhilO

Phil, I used to have a cat (another Siamese, the mother of the cat-that-loved-melon) that slept under the covers every cold night. (We lived in a large, mostly-well-built farmhouse, but my grandfather had *seriously* skimped on the insulation).

She would climb onto the bed, dive under the covers, and make her way down to my feet, then curl up between them. Woe betide me if I moved them - she'd nip my toes as a reminder to hold still.

In the morning, she would walk up my body and stand on my chest when she thought it was time for me to get up. And stand there, meowing loudly until I opened my eyes and started to move. Attempts to ignore her and sleep on earned nips on the nose.

This was not a cat to trifle with. Our dog (otherwise a very self-confident animal) regarded her as the pack alpha, as did the other cats. And (this was a farm, after all) she was an accomplished huntress. The occasional mouse or rat didn't surprise me too much, but we were all amazed the day she brought home a cock pheasant almost as big as she was.

Our current cat, by contrast, is death on strings, plastic bottle caps, and balls of yarn.

[Karina]

My mom's cat has a thing for coffee

That's kinda interesting, one of my cats does, too. She goes nuts for the beans. In the morning she will sometimes play with them, but if you give them to her at any other time in the day, she will gobble them down and beg for more. I can't imagine caffeine being too good for cats, so I usually feed her decaf...weird (never more than one or two beans, though).

This same cat also loves to have her toes rubbed. If you stick your finger in between her toes, she spreads them apart as far as she can so you can rub around them all the better. She seems to really like it.

As for interesting foods that our dog eats...well, he's a Welsh corgi. In other words, he is obsessed with food. I have yet to find something edible that he will not eat. This includes raw onions, pickles, lettuce...you name it. He is overweight, so his treats are raw carrots, which he absolutely loves. Give him half a carrot and he parades to the back door happier than anything.

[Redwolf]

My uncle used to have a cat who had a thing for shredding bread. No, she didn't eat it (and if you put any in her dish, she'd look at you as if you were trying to poison her!), but if bread was EVER left out on the counter, you'd come back to find that Maggie had carefully torn it into shreds.

Redwolf

[FJohnSharp]

I love my pets. They do not complain when I play the whistle.

[vomitbunny]

Okay, I counted only five OT posts, and decided to help remedy the dearth of them. Here's my cat's latest weirdness (and there are many):

I was opening a can of asparagus, and of course the can-and-opener ritual had her quick as a flash to my side, making "I'm curious" noises and demanding the right of first refusal. Per usual, I let her sniff the removed lid (NO, it DIDN"T have sharp edges. I use one of those openers that lift the lid off, not cut it. I happen to somewhat savvy, thank you. Now leave me alone, Cranberry. ), and she inspected it just to make sure. Then she started licking the juice from the lid! So I got a little dish, put a couple of spoonfuls of asparagus water -or whatever you call it- in the dish, gave it to her, and she finished it all up without delay, and then went to take another nap. She'll probably want more next time.

*sigh* My cat. An asparagus eater, go figure.

Any other pet anomalies out there?

Wow. We had a cat that ate asperigus back years ago too. We had finished dinner and were about to throw out leftovers when my Mom decided to offer it to the cat first. Now we have a dog that eats grapes, apples, oranges, watermellon, greenbeans, you name it. She doens't like bananas too good but will take a little bite anyway.