hello hello hello cat mojo tears let's have a cat mojorific time today it's jackson galaxy singing
my name well that was like the weirdest beginning to a video that i've done in quite a long time
which is appropriate because today we're going to be talking about some of the weirdest strangest
cat behaviors and explain them to you when you guys recognize me in the street or wherever less
often it's like hey let's take a selfie together and more it's like jackson will you explain this
to me can you explain why my cat does this so i you know i figure with this video i'll just be
getting it out of the way so the next time you come up to me i'll be like listen i'll take a
selfie with you but if you get if you're gonna ask me about a weird behavior i got a video for that
no no seriously what we're gonna start with today is i'm gonna let's which one shall i pick you know
what let's i'm just gonna go by the first one that comes off the top of my head the first one is why
do cats knock stuff off the the table the shelf the mantle the anything fill in the blank why
does your cat do it because they're bored one of the great things is once they do it once and they
knock something off and there's that what was what and it made a noise when it hit the ground too
you know then they're going to just keep doing it so play with your cat make sure that you're doing
it in a in a scheduled way because one thing you probably will notice that when your cat is doing
that it's probably at similar times during the day and that lets you know at that time of day
cat energy is up you should be playing with your cat if you've got anything up on the
shelves or the mantels or whatever that you don't want knocked over then museum putty is
a great uh cure for that museum putty living in california the land of the earthquake i can
tell you the museum putty is everywhere and it's basically something you put underneath it doesn't
destroy the shelving itself but that stuff's not going anywhere so your cat can just be like this
and it just won't move so the next one is what i call the cat hug i call it the cat hug but i've
also called it the sea otter position before allow me to demonstrate your cat is laying on the floor
belly up just looking at you just looking at you or looking at whatever or they're sleeping that
way or or whatever this you should take this as a compliment because the cat hug and i call
it the cat hug because it's it's your cat's way of showing you that they love you that they feel safe
and for an animal that is both prey and predator the idea of feeling vulnerable is a real big
compliment so when i say vulnerable and you take an animal who out there they are prey and predator
which means that not only are they looking to hunt all the time but they're also head on a
swivel because they're being hunted as well and so for a cat to expose their midline their belly
to anything coming up to them is an invitation to murder for the most part
so if they're doing that to you in your home that lets you know that i'm going against my nature
right now in order to show you that i feel safe around you well i'm having all together too much
fun with this because with every one of these i'm envisioning it happening in a very cartoony
way because if you don't know me that's how my brain works here want to take a look at my brain
see it's a fun world in there and as part of that fun world
is our next weird behavior which is if it fits i sits and that should sort of generate some
kind of cartoon in your mind about a cat sitting in like a tissue box a shoebox or name the box
and your cat's in it and usually you look at it and you go that you know that just doesn't
it just doesn't look comfortable you know what is the explanation for if it fits i sits mainly it's
there's a part in the sort of the reptilian part of your cat's brain that just needs to feel safe
and one of the things about a box is that your cat can feel somewhat covered so they know that that
in terms of their raw cat their their ancestral cat that's always sort of speaking to them
as the as they exist in your world right now is they have to listen to that okay i have to say
camouflaged i have to stay small so there's that there's also the fact that it helps them conserve
body heat and there then there's the fact that it can be a lot of fun just hopping from box to
box and and okay i'm in one box now i'm gonna go someplace else and then you're looking there
and you go there's no way that you could have gotten in there and your cat then goes if it fits
i sits you know with a lot of these i i think to myself you know this would be really weird for
someone who's never hung out with a cat before who has no idea what cat is about so a lot of these
things on this list are for those sort of the cat curious like i just saw a cat do this and i don't
know i've never had a cat before i don't know what that's what are you doing right now and i think
one of the big ones on this list that apply to the cat neophyte would be what we call well there's
a lot of words for it uh one word is the smurgle or there is the kneading the making biscuits the
making bread oh my god there's so many words for this thing but it's this you know and
they could be doing it on a blanket or on a bed or on you or even making air biscuits that is
very purely a left over uh behavior from kittenhood from early kittenhood how early
like right away early like when they're born and they're blind and they're deaf but they know how
to get to mom's belly and they know that they need to get the milk from mom's belly what do they do
they stimulate that milk to come out just like that so as they get older they will do this
because it reminds them of that safety and that primal kind of relationship between uh them and
their mom but again that's a compliment if your cat is is sleeping with you and making biscuits on
your shirt or making biscuits on something that smells like you like your blanket or something
that is that primal relationship association coming back to them because it smells like you so
you are mom congratulations you you are now a cat mom or dad officially because that association of
kitten to mom is on display with their smurgle so happy smirking to you okay so now
i'm going to give you a hint about this next so if i give you a hint
then you get to guess what this next strange behavior is in cats ready okay listen closely
what is it the zoomies the zoomies you got it all right it's the zoomies what are the zoomies
a manifestation of of like the sleep cycle and the energy cycle of cat cat with a capital c
the raw cat because that also explains why cats sleep so much they sleep so much because
they're gearing up for the hunt so then when they wake up and and and they've just okay
the balloon is full let's do something and then there's just nothing to do with that body that
body just has nothing to hunt and off they go just running all over the place hanging from the
chandeliers just just you know going as vertical as they can anyway this is totally normal if your
cats are doing the zoomies at a time where you're not zooming where your family's not
really active that you're possibly asleep or you're gearing down for the night or whatever
there's a very simple way to approach that it shows you that your circadian rhythm your body
clock and your cat's body clock are just are just out of sync and you can get that synced in
and i'll link to some videos that talk all about getting the body clock set but through uh feeding
meals not free feeding because don't forget one of the things that may contribute to the zoomies
is grazing on food especially dry food which converts to sugar really fast in your cat's
system and kabang they're off so now we're down to feeding meals and playing on a schedule every day
and if you just get that energy out when they eat feed those meals like you know three times
at least a day you're going to start seeing a rhythm that coincides with yours you got
to give it a little bit of time but you know look the zoomies are cute they're fun to watch
but nobody me included likes to hear like the freight train go through the living room
at three o'clock in the morning but there's something you can do about it
hey come on buddy what come on get out of the way come on man i got work to do you know where
i'm going this is our next weird behavior why do cats do that why do they sit on your
keyboard why do they they hog monitor space why do they sit on top of your clothes comp
anywhere near you well because pay attention to me like hey hey buddy but it's also a desire to be
with you near you now the other reason why cats might be attracted to things especially if they're
electronic is that they're warm and cats are just heat seeking missiles they just look for
anything that's why cats are always seeking out the sun we also talked about cats sitting
in boxes whatever generates heat is good by a cat you fix that problem by giving them an appropriate
heated surface there are cat beds that you plug in there are other beds that they have a layer of
mylar underneath them in fact i make one of those beds a link in description so when they sit on it
it reflects body heat back to them and warms them up and then there's the other secret part of it
let's say that here i'm sitting at my computer it would be killer if near me either on my desk
or near my desk maybe you have a side table where you can put a bed so now we've got two
things going on your cat is got proximity to you you can pay attention to them and they're warm
so why do cats chew on plastic bags well and the easiest sort of low-hanging cat fruit reason is
that crinkles are fun and that's why we make toys that crinkle those sounds are attractive to a cat
depending on the crink ability of the bag yes
that's a word and in which case we know that your cat likes to play then with crinkly things
get crinkly things and not the crinkly thing that was laying on the floor a lot of bags are
treated with stearates steroids are are derived from animal fat and so it smells like animal
product to them anyway their sense of smell is so incredible that they can smell the animal product
on that bag and so they start chomping on it also some bags are treated with fish oil or even fish
scales which keeps the bags from sticking together so that's another reason why your cat would smell
if they go with a fishy treat now the third reason and the more problematic reason why a cat might
chew on a bag would be a condition called pica technically it means the eating of undigestable
objects it's just anything that's non-edible that they're actually eating it's a real ocd
type of behavior once it starts it's really hard to stop them the best thing to do is to pika proof
your house whatever your cat likes to chew on or that thing that really just triggers them to chew
put it away get it away one way or another don't leave plastic bags on the floor no matter how cute
it might seem it's just not good for them plastic bags are not cool to have around cats they can
suffocate around plastic bags if they love being in bags then get paper bags you know
they can do the if it fit size sits inside of a paper bag but not a plastic one
so this is another behavior strange especially to folks who have never seen cats or observed cats
before but for someone who's like what is this thing you call oh what's your cat what's that cat
doing you know we'll call it radar ears for now so radar ears are when your cat is looking straight
at you they're you know i'm your cabin looking straight at you and suddenly my ears go or or
like that what are radar ears about well using the word radar kind of helps to to describe it
it's to basically again remembering cat is in the middle of the food chain predator and prey
so they're always looking to kill something and they're always
looking to not be killed by something the cone part of the ears these are the pin this is a pinna
these are pine when they're pleural pine so the pin a are controlled by 32 tiny tiny little
muscles and those muscles uh can move independent cause the pin a to be able to rotate independently
in order to catch the sound of wait i hear a mouse back there or and they can rotate 180 degrees
that mouse behind me or uh oh mountain lion behind me gotta run you know either way i am maximizing
my my hearing and cat's hearing skills are already off the charts amazing but by doing this they
can up the range of their hearing up to about 30 percent so uh for this next one we are going to uh
okay so i want you to see if this weird behavior is something you've seen in your cat ready
the casual word for that is stinkface check out this video over my head all about stinkface so
i'm not going to go into great detail about it but it's also called the flemin's response if
they smell something that they really have to gather up more information about because it's
just something that's that important to them then the this thing called the jacobson's organ
our hair and the palette that jacobson's organ is a secondary way of gathering scent so that's why
they're going to come up i guess because they've been using the jacobson's organ and they're doing
the fleming's response the time we see that the most is around unfortunately things like cat pee
urine is really or feces those are the kind of things that cats are really going to go
after and try to get a lot of scent off of because it's important territorially it's
it's a paramount importance that way of collecting scent again everything pertains to staying alive
defending territory you know really the things that define what is cat but
territorial security is right up there so smelling uh something that that has either
male or female hormones in it or just something as simple as urine or feces anything that really
holds the identity of another animal in it let's just put it that way the smell identity of another
animal then that's when stink face might happen so it's not your cat just pulling it like a
freddy krueger and like just trying to freak you out it is actually um explainable and i just did
and the number one strangest cat behavior because this is the one i hear about all
the time which is why does my cat get up on my chest and put his butt
right there so what is the explanation behind that sort of egregious cat behavior well you should
take it as a compliment in fact i call it the back-ended compliment i worked hard on that one
but the back-ended compliment derives from when cats are our little baby
kittens and when they're really really young and they're just getting mobile and everything
mom has to stimulate them to pee or poop after they've eaten so they are used to going up to mom
at first mom will just go up to them and stimulate them to go with their tongue well then as they get
a little older it becomes this sort of kitten parade by mom and they walk by her like that she
cleans them they move on i'm not suggesting anything i'm just giving you an explanation
if your cat just walks up to you and backhanded compliment right in your face while you're
while you're laying down it's just saying that i see you as my mom where if they're
if i'm laying and their butts in my face i just pick them up with one hand and go
hey this is the way we do it in civilized culture cat alrighty then well that wraps it up i mean man
that was a lot that was a lot of weird behaviors but i'm sure you got more positively sure
that before this video is even done premiering somebody's going to be typing going you forgot
hey jackson come on man tell me put it in the comments i want to see it
i want to answer it who knows maybe there's going to be a volume 2 to this whole thing
all right in the meantime please subscribe to this channel because uh subscriptions and likes and
all that kind of fun stuff and comments that's what makes the world go around on this channel
it's what keeps us ticking along so please do that and don't forget to send in whether it's
cute cat stuff or your questions jackson what's this what's my cat doing all you got to do is
film it on your little camera what's my cat doing then film yourself going jackson what is that and
then send it to this link right here right there and who knows there's a decent chance you know
that i'll answer it all right you guys until next time all light and all love all mojo to you
next that'd be a good t-shirt don't cut the belly don't pat the belly and just put it on me
don't pit the belly meena likes to do the whole pillsbury doughboy thing with me
and then gets angry if i don't do it
meow