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i don’t think cats are capable of understanding right and wrong in the way we anthropomorphize them to be able to. i doubt dogs are too, but i’ve spent much less time with them.

we often say things like “he knows he shouldn’t be up there” or “he knows he shouldn’t do that” after catching the cat sneaking into some place we don’t want him to be, and that word choice implies that the cat is doing something consciously immoral. however, it’s probably more accurate to say “he knows that if i see him up there i’ll forcibly remove him / squirt water at him”. the cat isn’t aware of the right/wrong of his actions, just that he needs to weight the pros and cons of this action against the risk of you getting out bed, walking over, and squirting him with water

btw, this is totally hypothetical and not at all related to loki waiting until i turn off the reading light before leaving the room and jumping up on the kitchen counter.

kotek na p?otku, originally uploaded by miriku?.

also, testing flickr’s “blog this” functionality

cat’s have two primary stalking modes. the famous one is the cat crawling low to the ground, sneaking up on something. we’ve all seen it in every cat themed cartoon ever, and it does happen when the cat is about to pounce on something that it can see

there’s a second mode too which is the long term stalk. it’s the one cats do when waiting in front of a mouse hole for a few hours. it involves the cat sitting down in a straight line pointed towards where it saw the ‘food’ disappear, all feet pointed forward, and while looking relaxed definitely paying attention towards the hole.

i mention this cause loki recently took up stalking his automatic food dispenser. starting around 6:30 he’ll sit down in front of it and stare quietly, taking breaks every now and then, but inevitably returning to wait.

eh, beats begging me.