My cat managed to crash a fresh install of Debian Stable to an unrecoverable state, just by walking across the keyboard.
I had to reinstall, but of course she still got treats for doing such a good job as software tester.
I don't know of a Linux equivalent, though I'd swear I remember something similar that was targeted at the author's young 2-year-old daughter, was named after her, but which I cannot now find.
I tried to keep her off my stuff in the beginning. But she's more stubborn than I am, and keeps trying again, for hours and days if necessary. At some point I just gave up.
Now, when she wants to sit down on the keyboard, I quickly lock it and accept that it's time for a break and some scritches.
Kika (16?yo): she likes to be petted, but she's wants to be petted in a very specific corner of the house - currently her cardboard box, but it changes over time. So she begs me "pet me, pet me!", then as I move my hand to pet her she runs to the box, and keeps meowing. Until I go pet her in the cardboard box.
Siegfrieda (7?yo): I don't know what's weirder: looking at the rain and meowing at me as if saying "can't you stop it?", watching anime with me, or the "overly attached girlfriend" face that she does when someone is eating yoghurt.
My best girl is really into being petted while standing in a bathtub or shower. No water. She's done this since she was a kitten. Like Kika, she'll lure you to the spot for petting, then meow until you and she are both standing in the tub and she's getting pets.
Two different houses and three different tubs are involved here.
I sometimes wonder if it's related to the time I had to give her a bath when we first took her in as a stray. She was weak and underfed, and had a bad case of fleas. I gave her a bath, which she hated and I hated - but when she hit the water you could see blood in her fur from all the flea bites. Poor kitty. It was probably the first time a human had given her much attention. And it helped with the fleas, so she probably felt much better afterwards.
Sometimes I tell myself that she's trying to tell me she's still grateful for that, and that she trusts me.
Or else she's just a weirdo. I'm fine with either.
Perhaps she associated bathtub = attention and feeling good afterwards? Cats do show some sort of weak "past cause, present effect" connection.
In Kika's case I don't have an idea, as the place changes from time to time. It used to be on the stairs, then on the sisal mat, now the box. It's kind of annoying when I'm taking my morning yerba though, as I'm in the kitchen and she's meowing constantly.
I was minding a friend's cat one time. She wanted out into the back garden, but changed her mind when she saw the rain. She walked through to the front door and meowed there. I had to open the door and show her that yes it's raining on this side of the house too.
He puts himself to bed! There’s a blanket on the lounge - he wraps himself up in it, and goes to sleep, for hours. If I can’t find him, I look for the breathing lump inside the lounge blanket. I used to think the depictions of Garfield wrapped in a blanket in his bed were just, well, comic book stuff, but no, some cats do this lol.
He also knocks on the door when he needs his toilet changed (we use litter tray liners), to let me know to do it. Yes milord. Work work.
Another one - he’s bad at climbing and has realised when he wants to get up somewhere high (to watch the world from above), he doesn’t actually have to climb up himself. He can just squeal and whimper if I’m in the room and I’ll lift him up there. Hahaha cute lazy bugger.
I couldn't find my cat when I got back to the room yesterday. I searched all over for her, and finally saw a tiny face inside the cover. She came crawling out before I could take the picture
haha searching for my little fella freaked me out the first time he decided to “go to bed”. Now I’m completely chill with the fact there may be faint snoring sounds coming from an otherwise inconspicuous blanket
Comes up and puts a paw on my arm or leg, but only when she feels the problem is serious. It could be water, food, liter box, or just a notion that I need to give attention due to hours working on some project or something; usually when I'm seriously hurting or sleep deprived. I'm always present, only ever leaving for doctors or a physical therapy routine. I'm accessible for both cats most of the time. The older seems to intuit not to abuse the gesture or use it often. When she does put her paw on me like that, I always look into the issue, so we've developed it as a form of direct communication that seems to work. I didn't train her to do this, I did however train her to be quiet using positive reinforcement. We got the older cat about 6 months after I was disabled, so we've been through a lot together in the last 10 years.
My orange cat has appointed himself as house monitor, so he'll alert us to any danger or weird situations. When the kitten escaped from the back patio, which is enclosed, he ran to my husband and alerted him. He can be a jerk, but overall he's a good dude.
When I'm home alone I can always count on him. If I hear a weird noise? If that little guy is snoring I know that it's just the wind.
I have a cat with a heart condition who sleeps in the middle of the floor with his eyes open. He is all black too so you can't see if he's breathing. It's gotten me just so many times.
Another cat doesn't eat directly from the bowl, instead she sits next to the bowl and spears food on her claws and licks it off like it's a fork.
I read this on reddit so might not be true, but some cats don't like it when their wiskers touch the rim of the bowl. Try feeding them with a flatter bowl or plate for a few days and see if they stop licking their paw.
Yeah, I've read the whisker fatigue thing, I've read that it's probably not true also, but my cat bowls are wide anyway. The cat is just nuts. Like in general. Like she may actually have mental illness. The colony I got her from has produced a lot of cats with congenital issues. I have one with a vsd and another with testicular agenesis (which is apparently extremely rare).
I have a weird-ish cat that sometimes follows me on my walks. I'm his best friend when we're hiking buddies. When I see him on the trail, he's all meowing at me, rubbing up against my legs trying to get me to pet him. And if I stop petting him, he bites me. So that makes me think I'm special.
But, if I happen to go over to my neighbor's house (his owner), he won't come near me. He runs off if I try to speak to him or coax him to come over to me.
Till next time I see him on the trail, and we're back to love bites and heavy petting.
I don't know how weird it is but my cat seems to understand that when faces are talking from the computer screen my hands will be free for the more important duty of skritching.
She has become a hit during team meetings, to the point where one time she was sleeping and didn't come prompting half the team to send concerned DMs.
My almost 18 year old lady makes me play follow the leader every morning. She needs a pill, but before she'll let me grab her we have to walk around the house so she can show me the things that are hers.
My 4 year old likes to watch screens and is particularly enamored with the little webcam views in Teams. So he shows up almost every morning for my stand-up meeting.
He chews on everything - paper bags? Food. Our wooden furnature? Tasty! The metal folding chairs? Yum!
This same cat also breifly learned to turn off the internet and force us out when we were being too boring (such as when trying to fall asleep). We started locking him in a room overnight for a little while, and he seemed to forget how after that, luckily.
When I was younger my mom had cats(started normal 1 or 2, got insane... Highest number I remember is 37 but now she has 0). One cat was a hunter through and through. Basically there was a hall way that ended in the kitchen and my room was the first door from the kitchen. I was sitting at my computer desk, the cat was on top of the fridge. The cat jumped up the fridge, hit ground, jumped again reached my door frame, backfliped off it, caught a fly in it's front paws, landed, ate fly, looked at me like "aren't you impressed?"
Another time... Same cat actually... Another cat had a litter of kittens(old enough to walk and see etc but still kittens)..
Hunter jumps in my living room window with a live chipmunk. Puts it down and calls the kittens. The basically encircle the chipmunk and the hunter removes its paw and steps back. Nothing happens. Chipmunk is terrified. One kitten walks up and swats it. Chipmunk runs. Hunter chases, grabs it and brings it back to the circle. This cycle repeats until the kittens have a good idea as to how to attack pray. Hunter kills chipmunk, at which point I intervene and put it outside. It's was like watching a savage show but it was also just nature playing course. Honestly really interesting... Not idolizing the violence and death but the watching one animal teach its family how to hunt and eat.
Holy shit, mine does that too. It's how we got her, we went to the shelter to pick one and when we entered the cage with all the cats in it, she jumped on my shoulders.
That's exactly what happened with Porkchop! We opened the kitty cage and he lept out into our arms. I was like, now we can't just get the first cat that jumps at us, so we did a full walk around but inevitably went right back to him.
Cat's not even mine but if he sees me when I am outside and I don't stop to pick him up and cuddle him, he slaloms between my feet and bites my ankles until I do.
My current oldest was a stray for about 4-5 months and she seemed to regard anything wrapped in plastic as a valid food source. We assumed that reason is that she had been scavenging garbage.
One of my favorite "new kitten" moments was coming downstairs to find that she had taken about 12 sample bites from a package of toilet paper. She stopped doing that.
I swear we fed her well, but she had some habits from life on the streets.
I had a dog who'd lived rough and he stole stuff too. The pack of toilet paper was his biggest disappointment - "Hey this is all wrapping! There's nothing inside!"
After my cat takes a shit, she'll run around and yowl. Not meow, yowl. She never yowls except post-poo. But she doesn't want to interact with me during this time. If I acknowledge her then she stops and just meows and walks around regular. So I just let her have her post shit crazy sesh. Like, I get it, I feel great after dropping one, so its good she feels comfortable enough to express her after shit joy.
We had a cat that loves to be spun on our office chair. He would dig his claws into the seat while we spun the chair around and around. When it stopped, his head would do the dizzy circular-nod thing. Then he’d meow at us until we did it again. And again. And again.
One of mine is obsessed with plastic wrappers. She'll run from any area of the house as soon as she hears one. She'll steal them if they aren't thrown into the garbage can with a lid. She's always sad when I won't let her have it.. she doesn't understand it's for her own good 😭
Another thing you can and should do anyways is add water to their food. Even if it's kibble. That's how they got most of their water in nature, through food.
My cat actually prefers her kibble with a few ounces of water added now. Idk if they have a sense for things being watered down like we do, at least my cat certainly doesn't.
My cat, a 3 year old tuxedo, does this strange yawn-meow when it’s time for dinner. It’s a combination of him meowing mixed with a full wide mouthed yawn. Its especially funny because he only does it once per night shortly before feeding and he typically has a chirpy meow anyway.
When my cat is hungry and I'm at my computer, she will put her front paws up on my chair and then gently tap my leg to ask "food plz". She increases in frequency over time.