Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology. I'm pro bird rights on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: my pet dog is very disappointed in me today because
Speaker 1: today's episode is all about cats. Cats the confusicle. That's right.
Speaker 1: I sat down and watched one hour and forty nine
Speaker 1: minutes of c g I human cat hybrids wiggle around
Speaker 1: on screen, and I get the impression that if this
Speaker 1: movie is the best Hollywood can do, that people may
Speaker 1: be misinformed about what cats are and what they look like.
Speaker 1: So today I'll be talking cat facts. What are domesticated cats,
Speaker 1: where do they come from? And what are the answers
Speaker 1: to some of the most common questions about cats. Then
Speaker 1: we'll discuss wildcats and hand out awards to cats who
Speaker 1: are the top of their catategories. Finally, we will discuss
Speaker 1: the movie and offer some sensible, calm, rational critique. Discover
Speaker 1: this and more. As we answered the ageal question what's
Speaker 1: it like getting high off cat nip? And is the
Speaker 1: experience similar to watching the Cats movie? So our domesticated
Speaker 1: cats actually domesticated? Did we capture cats from the wild
Speaker 1: and breed them to be our pets. Well. No, as
Speaker 1: with most things, it seems that cats had to have
Speaker 1: things their way when it comes to domestication. Our relationship
Speaker 1: with cats as we know it today is started around
Speaker 1: eight thousand years ago, as humans lived in agrarian societies
Speaker 1: and the fertile Crescent. The cats were after the rodents
Speaker 1: that plagued our farms, and humans were likely happy enough
Speaker 1: to have these furry exterminators help out with their crops.
Speaker 1: The Near Eastern and Egyptian wildcats were the two ancestral
Speaker 1: lineages of the domesticated cat, the Felis catus, and these
Speaker 1: cats decided they didn't really need to bother changing much
Speaker 1: for us. At least on the DNA level, Domesticated cats
Speaker 1: are remarkably similar to their wild counterparts. Unlike dogs, cat
Speaker 1: didn't really need to change much. They already killed pests
Speaker 1: for us at no extra charge. They were playful and
Speaker 1: relatively non aggressive towards humans. As evolutionary geneticist even Maria
Speaker 1: Geigl says, quote, I think there was no need to
Speaker 1: subject cats to such a selection process since it was
Speaker 1: not necessary to change them. They were perfect as they were.
Speaker 1: Joining me to talk about the World's most Perfect Animal
Speaker 1: is comedian Cat Fancier and Garfield impersonator Joey Cliff. Hey,
Speaker 1: everybody and all the cats in the audience. You know. Now,
Speaker 1: you might notice my voice is a little different this episode.
Speaker 1: It's got a nice sort of raspy, lioness light quality.
Speaker 1: That's because I am sick as a dog. How dare
Speaker 1: you use that? I know? Well, yeah, I actually a cat.
Speaker 1: Cat did got my tongue of I've knows everything. It's
Speaker 1: all full of ats, all full of cats. Got cat
Speaker 1: in my throat. Um. Fortunately, my voice did just come
Speaker 1: back in the nick of time for this very important
Speaker 1: episode about cats in general. We will talk about cats
Speaker 1: the movie, but I do want to load this episode
Speaker 1: with information about cats to kind of fight probably the
Speaker 1: disinformation that people are getting from this movie, namely that
Speaker 1: cats don't have butt holes, which is not true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cats don't have butt holes? Is that that's a major
Speaker 1: plot point of the Cats movie? Yeah, it's it's sort of. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't understand why they didn't just give them all
Speaker 1: suspenders like they gave one of the cats and spend
Speaker 1: skinble shanks got these really tight, form fitting suspenders, and
Speaker 1: I don't. God, it would have been better if they
Speaker 1: all got those. I feel like all the other cats.
Speaker 1: I mean like usually if you put clothes on a cat,
Speaker 1: it's like not a fan of it. I feel like
Speaker 1: Skimble Shanks was the one that like was okay with it.
Speaker 1: When I owned cats as a kid, I did try
Speaker 1: to put one of my cats in one of my
Speaker 1: shirts and it was interesting in that the cat was
Speaker 1: not a fan of it. But I never I never
Speaker 1: tried to do um type fitting overall, so I feel
Speaker 1: like that might have been better apparently according to the movie.
Speaker 1: I think that the difference is if you put a
Speaker 1: cat in like something that's baggy, it thinks that it's
Speaker 1: being eaten by that thing, whereas if it's form fitting,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, this is fashion. I got it right, right.
Speaker 1: So that's just they like stuff that's form fitting. That's
Speaker 1: what we're saying is put your cat in in really
Speaker 1: tight form fitting jeans. I men get like five hundred
Speaker 1: tweets about like I tried this on my cat and
Speaker 1: now I don't have eyeballs if you try to. If
Speaker 1: you try to put form fitting tailor clothes under your
Speaker 1: cat and it did not go well, please tweet at us.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about I kind of did
Speaker 1: the Google auto auto field thing where I was like,
Speaker 1: why do cats and then saw what auto field did?
Speaker 1: Or wire cats blank? And I got a lot of
Speaker 1: the most frequently googled things, and I would like to
Speaker 1: answer them, and I think some of these answers are
Speaker 1: not as intuitive of as you might think. I would
Speaker 1: like to know that what are the top what are
Speaker 1: the weirdest how to cats auto fills that you saw? Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a good question I did see. I did see
Speaker 1: one which was do cats have a penis? Which I
Speaker 1: thought was kind of interesting. Has proven No, No, they no,
Speaker 1: they don't. They just don't. All situations, Um, No they do,
Speaker 1: they do. It's just you can't they are sheathed. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that I think that was the funniest one
Speaker 1: I thowt. And I mean it makes sense because you
Speaker 1: can't really see it on a cat, so you'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: where where does it go? Right? Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I guess that That's a question that I had up
Speaker 1: until now. So first question I want to answer is
Speaker 1: why do cats pur? And I think sort of the
Speaker 1: intuitive answer is because they're happy, they're content and that's
Speaker 1: it's it's not that that answer is wrong. It's just
Speaker 1: a lot more complicated than that. They're filled with bumblebees
Speaker 1: because they are filled to the brim with bees. So
Speaker 1: both domesticated cats and wildcats per. Although lions, tigers, jaguars,
Speaker 1: and leopards can't per, they can roar, they can't pur
Speaker 1: there Apparently the um structure of their learns to allow
Speaker 1: them to roar is mutually exclusive with their ability to pur,
Speaker 1: so it's a trade off. Cougars are the largest wildcats
Speaker 1: that can purn. I've got a got a short audio
Speaker 1: clip of a cougar purring, which is this is going
Speaker 1: to be very really excited. Oh isn't that nice? That
Speaker 1: is really relaxing. That was kind of like how I sounded,
Speaker 1: um when I was trying to sleep the past couple
Speaker 1: of weeks with my cold, Just like you're mean, you're happy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: real happy. There's a there's a podcast called just speaking
Speaker 1: of the relaxation of cats. There's a podcast I believe
Speaker 1: called the per cast just literally just six minutes of
Speaker 1: a cat purring. That's by the editor of My Favorite
Speaker 1: murder Right. Oh no, that's a there's two different perst
Speaker 1: there's the percast with Stephen Ray Morris's nice Guy. That's
Speaker 1: where they talk about cats. Then there's the percast how many,
Speaker 1: so it's a different number of ours. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't I think that they might just be named the
Speaker 1: same thing. I see. Okay, Yeah, it's a good it's
Speaker 1: a solid pun, so I'm not surprised. I don't blame them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should change the name of this to the perkase.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, just like, let's get as much use out
Speaker 1: of the percast as you could drive this into the ground. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. I would definitely. I do sometimes listen to
Speaker 1: like cat purring, just like to help me sleep. It's
Speaker 1: very soathing, which is interesting, and we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about why that might be so soothing. Souh. Typically
Speaker 1: our cats will pur when they're being petted. They but
Speaker 1: they can also pur when they're stressed, scared, or in pain.
Speaker 1: So what's going on. It's kind of confusing. We know
Speaker 1: that kittens pur to help their mothers locate them for nursing,
Speaker 1: and they pur during nursing, and that I think is
Speaker 1: kind of probably one of the major reasons for purring,
Speaker 1: is like that that interaction between the kittens and the
Speaker 1: mothers and cats will also purr when they're grooming each other,
Speaker 1: including big cats in the wild. The ones that can
Speaker 1: per will per when they're grooming each other. So it's
Speaker 1: a social interaction as well. And as a researchers sort
Speaker 1: of delve into all the various possibilities for why they
Speaker 1: pur it becomes even more mysterious because purring could be
Speaker 1: a multi functional communication and self soothing, self healing process.
Speaker 1: So this is really surprising to me. Actually it may
Speaker 1: help promote bone and muscle tissue healing. Yes, so the
Speaker 1: frequency of purring is between fifty hurts, and it sounds
Speaker 1: that this frequency is thought to trigger bone and tissue
Speaker 1: repair and increase bone density, and that it's it's basically
Speaker 1: it's rating at a way that's like stimulating the cells
Speaker 1: and the bones and the tissues to engage in repair.
Speaker 1: And it's a like our tissues will regrow and repair
Speaker 1: and the same thing with bones. It goes through these
Speaker 1: regrowing and repairing things and that helps increase your bone density.
Speaker 1: Another way to do that is exercise, if you do
Speaker 1: impact exercise, or you you lift small weights or big weights,
Speaker 1: I suppose to for me, tiny tiny weight to cheerios
Speaker 1: on a toothpick. That's that's the way for me. Really,
Speaker 1: you've gone up. I've been doing um. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: so that that may help stimulate repair, which is great
Speaker 1: for cats because they're very sedentary. And that could also
Speaker 1: explain why they per when they're distressed or anxious, because
Speaker 1: it could be a healing thing where they're sort of
Speaker 1: like healing their bodies may be soothing themselves as well,
Speaker 1: because it may have a soothing kind of reminds them
Speaker 1: of them they were kittens as well. We know it's
Speaker 1: a social context sort of a you know, when you
Speaker 1: pet the cat, they purer. When they nuzzle each other
Speaker 1: and groom each other, they pur so it's sort of
Speaker 1: a you know, it's like a it's like a soothing
Speaker 1: mantra for the cat. I wonder how much of that is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I forget the exact percentage of it. But
Speaker 1: it's like cats don't really meow to each other. They
Speaker 1: only me out really to humans because they kind of
Speaker 1: view us as their mommies and daddy. Yeah, they do
Speaker 1: me out to their their mother when they but adult
Speaker 1: cats don't know. They aren't as vocal to each other, right,
Speaker 1: right right in terms of mewing, Like I wonder if
Speaker 1: it is one of those things like you said, of
Speaker 1: like it just kind of takes them back to being
Speaker 1: a kitten, of you know, that's something that they do
Speaker 1: and taken care of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they
Speaker 1: do the cats cats in the wild do per to
Speaker 1: each other when they're grooming each other, which is really cute.
Speaker 1: That is adorable. Is that what's happening with the cougar? Well,
Speaker 1: it was actually purring your response to its caretaker. This
Speaker 1: is a at a wildcat rescue, So he was he
Speaker 1: or she actually I don't know, was responding to the
Speaker 1: caretaker coming up to it. Very cute, delightful. Um. So,
Speaker 1: even though we don't have like a solid answer to
Speaker 1: why cats purn, there may not be a solid answer.
Speaker 1: It may be sort of a multifaceted thing. Like we've discussed,
Speaker 1: we do know how they do it. So inside the
Speaker 1: cats larynx muscles expand and contract the glottis, which is
Speaker 1: that's sort of like to exact um, the thing that
Speaker 1: in cartoons like they jiggle and it makes their voice weird,
Speaker 1: and that causes air to vibrate as it's pushed out
Speaker 1: or breathe in, so like when cats are purring, they
Speaker 1: can pur as they breathe out and breathe in. So
Speaker 1: that's why it's that constant, like little like humming drum rolls.
Speaker 1: You know, that makes sense. Yeah, So the next question
Speaker 1: is why do cats lick themselves? And again it seems
Speaker 1: like it has an obvious answer and magic because it
Speaker 1: turns them on um so no um so. Answer number
Speaker 1: one is that it cleans themselves and it's um and
Speaker 1: that is true, But I do want to talk about
Speaker 1: the complexity of why they do that and the tongues themselves.
Speaker 1: So their tongues, as you probably know, have that like
Speaker 1: sand paper texture, and that's due to the little papilla,
Speaker 1: the little bumps on their tongues, and each of those
Speaker 1: little bumps are shaped like tiny rasping hooks, and they're
Speaker 1: made up of caratin like what's found in your finger nails,
Speaker 1: and they're shaped like tiny hollow claws, which allows them
Speaker 1: to brush through fur. And that's why they also get
Speaker 1: like stuck on blankets. Like have you ever seen a
Speaker 1: cat and it's flicking itself and then its tongue accidentally
Speaker 1: gets on a blanket and it's just like stuck on
Speaker 1: its tongues. Yeah, because all those little it's like velcrow,
Speaker 1: all those little hooks have gotten stuck on the tiny
Speaker 1: fibers on the blanket. But these scratchy tongues are great
Speaker 1: for coming through their fur. It detangles their fur. It
Speaker 1: acts as fleet combs to brush out parasites, and it
Speaker 1: also combs out their protective oils that happen at the
Speaker 1: base of the hair from the fallicle and then brushes
Speaker 1: up through their coat which helps waterproof them. And it
Speaker 1: can also keep them cool in hot weather. So it's
Speaker 1: sort of a multi multi tool and omni tongue. It's
Speaker 1: also like the hooks on their tongue. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if it's with house cats, but some some species of
Speaker 1: cat um their tongue also allows them to remove meat
Speaker 1: from bones. They do use it for that too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where it's like they they'll lick bones and they'll get
Speaker 1: some of that meat off of the bone right um.
Speaker 1: And it also I think it's main purpose is for grooming,
Speaker 1: but they'll use it for for everything else. So that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do lick bones and that helps them rasp off
Speaker 1: that that meat at the end of the bone. And
Speaker 1: that's yummy. Yeah, love love. I love chewing on bones personally,
Speaker 1: and no, I do. I love bone marrow. So I'll
Speaker 1: crunch those things open so I could use like a
Speaker 1: real sticky tongue to get all the extra meat off.
Speaker 1: What is the okay? So do you do it with
Speaker 1: like chicken bones? Do you do it with like? Do
Speaker 1: you do it with like a cow bone? Well? I
Speaker 1: can't chew a cow bone open without breaking all my teeth,
Speaker 1: but I have had I do like I I've had
Speaker 1: cow bone marrow and it's very good. Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: bone marrow is very good. It's it's good on toast.
Speaker 1: What was the wait? Really? Yeah? What what was the
Speaker 1: This is probably very off topic. What was the point
Speaker 1: in life where you realized that bone marrow was the
Speaker 1: thing you liked? Was it a recent thing? No, I've
Speaker 1: done it since I was a kid, just like I
Speaker 1: guess I just love love chewing on bones. That's Katie guarantee,
Speaker 1: love chewing on them bones. Um, I guess that it's
Speaker 1: the similar thing for me would be I just I
Speaker 1: developed a taste for just like tuna fish out of
Speaker 1: a can, and I was really I can't that tuna
Speaker 1: fishes smells really strong to me the odor, and I
Speaker 1: can't deal with the smell. I like freshly cooked tuna,
Speaker 1: but can tuna fish. That smell just knocks me, knocks
Speaker 1: me out of my socks. I think it's just were
Speaker 1: you a picky eater growing up? I was very much
Speaker 1: except for bones, loved bones bones. I think this might
Speaker 1: have been I think that I think we were similar.
Speaker 1: I was also a really picky eater. It's like, when
Speaker 1: you're a picky eater, you pick like two things that
Speaker 1: you like and for you it was just bones for
Speaker 1: me chi For me, it was like it was tuna
Speaker 1: fish heated up in a microwave, which I do not
Speaker 1: do anymore good. You'll get kicked out of the office,
Speaker 1: kicked out too many offices as a ten year old. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was that and like cinnamon toast crunch or something. Yes,
Speaker 1: it makes sense, yea. So now moving on to how
Speaker 1: do cats drink water? And speaking of which, I'm going
Speaker 1: to drink some water right now. The way I drink
Speaker 1: water is basically throw it towards my mouth and hope
Speaker 1: I catch it now. So I humans drink with some suction.
Speaker 1: You pursh your lips, you slip up that water. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you use a bit of gravity to help. Cats don't
Speaker 1: drink that way. As you know, cats lap, and it's
Speaker 1: actually really interesting bit of physics. They don't. I think
Speaker 1: the popular conception is that they curl their tongue backwards
Speaker 1: and form like a little scoop, like a little ladle
Speaker 1: with their tongue and then like scoop it into their mouth,
Speaker 1: which is not true. So they can't suck water in
Speaker 1: through section because as if they tried, they just just
Speaker 1: I'll come out of the sides of their mouth. They've
Speaker 1: got a joker mouth, yeah, because they have that really
Speaker 1: long mouth, which is great for chewing off an antelope's head,
Speaker 1: but it's not so great for sucking water. And so
Speaker 1: instead they actually bite water right out of the air.
Speaker 1: So they dip the tip of their tongue, which is
Speaker 1: slightly curled, to actually increase the surface area of the tongue.
Speaker 1: Just touching the surface of the water, they barely even
Speaker 1: break the surface tension of the water, and then they
Speaker 1: rapidly pull it back up and then they the water
Speaker 1: will cling to the tongue as through liquid adhesion, and
Speaker 1: liquid adhesion is the property of water that it clings
Speaker 1: to surfaces. It moves across like rain drops down a
Speaker 1: window pane, and so it'll cling to the tongue and
Speaker 1: they pull it up create this column of water, and
Speaker 1: then they just bite down on the column of water,
Speaker 1: sealing their mouths shut so they can get a nice
Speaker 1: bite of water without it leaking all over the sides
Speaker 1: of their mouths. There's actually some really nice slow motion footage, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, taken with a high speed camera of I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if it exists for cats, but of dogs
Speaker 1: drinking water does exist for cats. I'll post a link
Speaker 1: to it in the show notes like it does look
Speaker 1: really cool. It's essentially like they create a missile of
Speaker 1: water then intercept out of the air with their mouths.
Speaker 1: It's a really badass way to drink water because you're
Speaker 1: biding the water. Yeah, I I've got I would try
Speaker 1: it right now. I've got a cup of water that's
Speaker 1: not super full, but if it was full, I would.
Speaker 1: I would see if that would work for me, and
Speaker 1: then we get water all over this microphie. It would
Speaker 1: work for humans if we could do it as quickly
Speaker 1: as cats too. I don't think our tongue muscles are
Speaker 1: quite good enough to lap that quickly. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you're right. The next question is why do cats rub
Speaker 1: their heads against things? So this is called bunting, and
Speaker 1: they're doing a form of scent marking. They have scent
Speaker 1: glands and their cheeks that can mark their territory. It's
Speaker 1: also a social gesture. Lions and other cats will greet
Speaker 1: each other and express affection through bante you've seen cats
Speaker 1: do what You've seen lions do it. All sorts of
Speaker 1: cats will. That's when they just like kind of smash
Speaker 1: their faces into each other like rams, but the adorable version.
Speaker 1: And pet cats will also rub their faces against owners,
Speaker 1: other cats or you know, other pets. Like sometimes it's
Speaker 1: really cute to see cats just like headbutting a dog
Speaker 1: and the dogs like what, Just for the record, bunting,
Speaker 1: I've never heard that term, but that is the cutest possible,
Speaker 1: it's like. So another question is why do cats need
Speaker 1: and that's where they put their little paws, like making biscuits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with their little paws. So there's a couple of theories
Speaker 1: for this. It could be a carryover from their wild
Speaker 1: ancestors who had to do bed making, like tamping down
Speaker 1: grass and foliage to make up comfortable bed. It could
Speaker 1: also just be similar to the purring, where it's a
Speaker 1: carry over from their kitten hood where they needing motion
Speaker 1: that they make on their mothers to stimulate lactation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um yes, thank you, to stimulate the nipples to um
Speaker 1: and it helps the mother produce milk for the kittens,
Speaker 1: and so mimicking that motion might be comforting and some
Speaker 1: cats to kind of lend itself to that particular theory
Speaker 1: is that some cats will need a blanket and then
Speaker 1: suckle on the blanket as they're sleeping. It's really cute.
Speaker 1: It's like it's kind of like sucking a thumb like
Speaker 1: sort of form of comfort. But we never like tell
Speaker 1: cats like, hey, stop sucking your thomb. That's weird. If
Speaker 1: a cat stopped doing that, I would be said, encourage
Speaker 1: if your cat, your cat needs and then drules uh
Speaker 1: just like yeah, don't tell it, no, tell it more. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that, like I'm not in necessarily sure with
Speaker 1: the research is behind it, but I think that it
Speaker 1: is like a you know, a stimulating electation thing, because
Speaker 1: it's like when cats need, they tend to also rule
Speaker 1: emperor while they're doing it. Yeah, Like it's clear that
Speaker 1: when they're doing it, they're like they're having a good time. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: So next question is why do cats scratch furniture? Answer
Speaker 1: number one is that they do hate you. It is
Speaker 1: a way of showing their frustrating Actually, that is a
Speaker 1: little bit true, because they can scratch out of frustration
Speaker 1: and boredom, so it can be a passive aggressive thing.
Speaker 1: It's not that they hate you, it's that they hate
Speaker 1: your furniture choice, that you're not a very good designer. Well,
Speaker 1: the common belief is that it's too sharpen their claws,
Speaker 1: but there's not really evidence showing that this is true.
Speaker 1: The main reason seems to be a form of communication,
Speaker 1: a kind of cat business card, because they seem to
Speaker 1: select specific places, like a specific chair they love to scratch,
Speaker 1: or a tree stump or fence or your priceless ottoman.
Speaker 1: You know. It's so it's like not my ottoman ittens.
Speaker 1: Why so they have sent glands in their paws and
Speaker 1: so it's likely a form of communication, either marking their
Speaker 1: territory or just kind of a a cat business card
Speaker 1: or like or a cat tweet where you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: Mitten's was here and she's she's chilling. It's also an
Speaker 1: enriched thing. They love getting little things in their in
Speaker 1: their pots, so it can feel good, kind of be
Speaker 1: a tactle thing. It can also be done out of
Speaker 1: boredom or frustration when they don't have toys. So if
Speaker 1: you have a cat who's scratches furniture, one of the
Speaker 1: best things you can do is give them a bunch
Speaker 1: of toys, especially scratchy things and things that make noise.
Speaker 1: So speaking of the playfulness, it kind of leads into
Speaker 1: this next question, which is why do cats love boxes?
Speaker 1: I'm very excited. So you give a cat a box,
Speaker 1: it will immediately jump in and it's actually kind of
Speaker 1: funny how quickly they will. I was interacting with a
Speaker 1: cat over the holidays, and the which I was interacting
Speaker 1: with a cat over the holidays, I just put it
Speaker 1: that way because it's not my cat. So there was
Speaker 1: someone else's cat on somebody else. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I was, I was. I participated in an interaction with
Speaker 1: a cat over Also, don't pot these cat details tell
Speaker 1: me about this cat? Did look like it's a cute
Speaker 1: ginger cat named Loki, like like yes, and yeah, he's
Speaker 1: a real stinker um and so the I tipped over
Speaker 1: a gift bag and the cat immediately went inside and
Speaker 1: you could pick up that, and he was he's kind
Speaker 1: of a wildly cat, so he doesn't really like sitting
Speaker 1: in your lap, so I, but when you put him
Speaker 1: in this bag, he suddenly just loves being in the bag.
Speaker 1: You can carry him around. He's just purring like crazy.
Speaker 1: So boxes or bags provide well, let me say, a
Speaker 1: gift bag that has an open area where he can
Speaker 1: escape through. Don't put your cat in like a closed
Speaker 1: bag or or a trash bag. For the love of God, right,
Speaker 1: there are cats that, like, like a friend of mine's
Speaker 1: cat loved climbing in a grocery bag. Grocery bags are
Speaker 1: a big thing because they make noise and they have
Speaker 1: they have the box like quality and they can escape
Speaker 1: from it. It has to have a clear escape path,
Speaker 1: like they're not going to like something where it feels
Speaker 1: like they Yeah, they don't want to put in like
Speaker 1: a duffle bag. Although my cat growing up, so Mitten's
Speaker 1: love to get in my suitcase every time I was
Speaker 1: going off to college, like she would just like get
Speaker 1: in my suitcase and be like, all right, we're ready
Speaker 1: to go. Did you ever surprise everybody taking her to college.
Speaker 1: She surprised me by hiding in my car and then
Speaker 1: I would drive somewhere and then I'd hear this. We're like, well,
Speaker 1: I gotta take Minton's back home. That means she wanted
Speaker 1: to go to wanted to go to high school with us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like an indoor outdoor cat. Yeah, she's in your
Speaker 1: outdoor cats. That makes sense. She killed so many native birds,
Speaker 1: probably very bad. Were gonna talking. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about that later. Cats killing birds. Oh, it's too depressing,
Speaker 1: but they do. They kill a lot of They kill
Speaker 1: a lot of birds. I think that there's something like
Speaker 1: thirty three species of birds that are extinct only because Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like when cats get on like a remote island,
Speaker 1: they can just wipe out a bird population really quickly
Speaker 1: because the birds aren't used to a predator like a cat,
Speaker 1: and then just like pulverize the bird population. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's something that I don't want to say.
Speaker 1: I I don't love that cats commit bird genocide, but
Speaker 1: that's a good take. You don't love it, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't don't love, don't love genocide, but but I do
Speaker 1: think that there is something kind of adorable about Like
Speaker 1: the cats are so adorable that you kind of forget
Speaker 1: that they're like the perfect chilling machine. It's the cutest
Speaker 1: mass extinction event. So back to boxes. The reason I
Speaker 1: have love boxes is delightful that they boxes provide a
Speaker 1: feeling of security for the cats. So cats are ambush predators,
Speaker 1: not not all cats hashtag not all cats, but are
Speaker 1: domesticated cats are ambush predators, and they are also preyed
Speaker 1: upon by larger animals, um at least like their ancestors were.
Speaker 1: So so the security of being in a little box,
Speaker 1: like being tucked in a little corner. It's great when
Speaker 1: you're an ambush predator because you're hidden, and it's great
Speaker 1: when you're hiding from from predators. So like it's like
Speaker 1: their favorite place. They both they feel powerful, they feel secures.
Speaker 1: It's also safe because they can kind of monitor the
Speaker 1: only entrance next exactly they're not going to get they're
Speaker 1: not going to fortress right that they can plot their
Speaker 1: next move. My other kiddie growing up, Binkie loved it
Speaker 1: when I would build him a pillow fort and he'd
Speaker 1: get right in the cute. Do you have pictures of
Speaker 1: this oh, I probably do somewhere in an old full album.
Speaker 1: I don't have one right now, but so you'll have
Speaker 1: to just use your imagination, good imagination station. Imagine a
Speaker 1: very stinky cat. He smelled very bad, hiding in a
Speaker 1: pillow fortress. Okay, if you're listening to this, um, if
Speaker 1: you want to do fan art of what do you
Speaker 1: think a pillow for? It looks like that would make
Speaker 1: me help. I'll help the fan artists out. He was
Speaker 1: a gray striped cat with green eyes. He was very
Speaker 1: stinky and dumb. Was the chunky short for he was.
Speaker 1: He was weird, he was lanky. He was kind of
Speaker 1: an awkwardly shaped cat. And there's like an Adam Driver cat. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: he was is yeah, exactly, very very much. So that's
Speaker 1: a very good description. So researchers have found that providing
Speaker 1: boxes to shelter cats significantly reduces their stress levels and
Speaker 1: it makes them more interested in interacting with each other
Speaker 1: and with with humans. Also, cats love to ball up
Speaker 1: in small spaces for warmth. So cats, one of the
Speaker 1: reason they like will go in your sink and seem
Speaker 1: to just go in little crannies and like curl up
Speaker 1: into these little little croissants is that they're thermoneutral zone.
Speaker 1: And the thermon neutral zone is the temperature range where
Speaker 1: you don't have to produce extra body heat to make
Speaker 1: up for the heat loss to the environment, So they're through.
Speaker 1: Thermon neutral zone is about eighty six two d degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: In humans, it ranges from about sixty to eighty seven
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. So, in other words, cats would love to
Speaker 1: turn up the thermostat if they could reach it. This
Speaker 1: is where I learned that I'm a cat. Like I
Speaker 1: even during the summer, all like sitting my else in
Speaker 1: my apartment, like wrapped in a blanket. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: I have a space heater and I once turned it
Speaker 1: on and put my feet up to it and like
Speaker 1: took a nap, and I turned it on so hot
Speaker 1: it melted the varnish on the table that it was on.
Speaker 1: My feet were fine. I don't recommend doing that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: my feet were fine. So, speaking of napping, why do
Speaker 1: cats nap all day? Real real easy answer to this
Speaker 1: one is that, so cats aren't nocturnal. I know it
Speaker 1: seems like they're nocturnal because you know, they're little creatures
Speaker 1: in the night, but they're actually crepuscular, meaning that they're
Speaker 1: most active during dawn and dusk, so any other time
Speaker 1: of the day nap city. So that's why, you know,
Speaker 1: that's why they can sometimes get the kitty jitters in
Speaker 1: the morning that really excited, like four in the morning,
Speaker 1: and then like and they get the kitty jitters or
Speaker 1: I like to call it the kitty Jimmy's ut in
Speaker 1: the evening to Okay, how long do you called it
Speaker 1: the kitty Jimmy's for about five seconds? But I call
Speaker 1: everything something like you know, now Jimmy's like like the
Speaker 1: Jimmy legs is when jim Jimmy legs wiggle around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like I just applied to the kitty Jimmy's. Sometimes
Speaker 1: my dog gets like the food Jimmy's where she really
Speaker 1: wants food and she's kind of like pacing around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're eating sandwich exactly. Yeah. The chicken Jimmy's is
Speaker 1: a big one because like she really wants chickens, so
Speaker 1: she's getting really to give her chickens a treat. How
Speaker 1: occasionally I try not to give it to her like
Speaker 1: too much though, because not great, but you know, but
Speaker 1: she does. She still gets the chicken Jimmy's so all right,
Speaker 1: next question, but about napping. Something I think is really
Speaker 1: interesting about specifically lions is they sleep around eighteen hours
Speaker 1: a day, um, just so they can be like extremely
Speaker 1: active for six hours per day. They they're sleepy, cute
Speaker 1: kitties like most of the time, and then that like
Speaker 1: ten percent of the time they're just like murder machines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the way that I picture it is that
Speaker 1: they sleep. They sleep eighteen hours a day and then
Speaker 1: they open their eyes just ready to murder. Basically, they're
Speaker 1: open their eyes to the terminator point of view. Do
Speaker 1: you want to that's the energy I want to bring
Speaker 1: to sleep as much as I can and then wake
Speaker 1: up and be ready to kill. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: that's good. You could do that. You can get the
Speaker 1: killing Jimmy's the murder Jimmy's so perhaps the biggest, the
Speaker 1: most popular question about cats is how do cats mate?
Speaker 1: You horny perverts? So it was at the top of
Speaker 1: the one of the top ones. Yeah, unspayed female cats
Speaker 1: are called queens, which I love. Yeah, yas cat queen.
Speaker 1: Every play cat queens slay all those native bird species.
Speaker 1: Every cats cat queen to me. Un Neutered male cats
Speaker 1: are called tom's or full tom's like is they also
Speaker 1: like the intact tom's because they got their bullsh So
Speaker 1: females go into estros several times a year, so estress
Speaker 1: is when they're fertile ready to make some kitten's. Tom's
Speaker 1: will fight over the right to mate with queens who
Speaker 1: are an astros. And when a female cat allows a
Speaker 1: male to mate with her, she exhibits lordosis behavior, which
Speaker 1: is where when they stick their butts in the air
Speaker 1: like they just don't care. Yeah, And so the male
Speaker 1: will bite the back of her neck, not to hurt her,
Speaker 1: but probably to prevent her from like spinning around and
Speaker 1: attacking him. It's also speculated it may have a soothing quality,
Speaker 1: like when you grab a cat by the nape of
Speaker 1: the right. They have sort of a reflex to relax,
Speaker 1: like with the kittens when the mom grabs them, it
Speaker 1: kind of relaxes them. That's why the vets. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: grab the napo the nap when they give him a shot.
Speaker 1: And so the male's penis is barbed, which is a
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's a pretty popular fact now.
Speaker 1: But the reason it's barbed is first of all to
Speaker 1: help clear out rival male sperm, and it also induces
Speaker 1: ovulation in the female cats, but through the tactile uh sensation.
Speaker 1: Females yell as males inimating sort of like this loud,
Speaker 1: kind of distressing sounding mew uh. Some speculate it's because
Speaker 1: the penis barbs hurt and suck for the female, although um,
Speaker 1: some research suggests it's actually a defensive yowl to let
Speaker 1: the mail know that she'll attack him if he tries
Speaker 1: any funny business because she's kind of vulnerable. So she's
Speaker 1: like she's like, you know, like Netflix chill, but like
Speaker 1: don't Netflix chill, but like don't steal my food, and
Speaker 1: now like step the heck off. Like. Researchers have actually
Speaker 1: tested these theories and it's insane. Researchers denervated female cats vaginas,
Speaker 1: which yeah, it's when they cut off the nerves, which
Speaker 1: numbs just kind of horrifying. Yeah, come on, guys, like
Speaker 1: a come on, um, And then they found that this
Speaker 1: caused the cats to emit fewer, fewer mating yowls, and
Speaker 1: did not opulate as much in response to the you know,
Speaker 1: mating So yeah, sure, okay, great, now we know that
Speaker 1: that's a weird it's a weird study. Know that that
Speaker 1: was somebody's somebody's PhD thesis was that somebody had to
Speaker 1: write a grant convincing someone else to give them money
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, what what's that person's problem? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I respect science. Sometimes science gets
Speaker 1: a little weird, is all I can say. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think that that's the thing with like a
Speaker 1: lot of research studies and then like you understand like okay,
Speaker 1: like that's going to get us from point A to
Speaker 1: point B or point C or whatever. But then there
Speaker 1: are some studies where it's like do we need it's necessary?
Speaker 1: Why did you get why did you get a million dollars?
Speaker 1: And like multiple t A s to do? What do
Speaker 1: you want? Why? Well, you know now now we know
Speaker 1: though and knowledge about cat vaginas as powers. What I say, Yeah,
Speaker 1: next question. I feel like the more I feel like
Speaker 1: the more valuable thing to do would be to just
Speaker 1: teach cats to talk and then ask him, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would, I would. I would do it. Grant for
Speaker 1: that for cats to do like a cat vagina monologue.
Speaker 1: That would be really good cat vagina monologue, very fun.
Speaker 1: So next question is why are cats afraid of cucumbers?
Speaker 1: That was a big Google one. Um easy answer to this. Basically,
Speaker 1: they're startled by them because they think it's a snake.
Speaker 1: And if you startle your cat with a cucumber, it's
Speaker 1: pretty mean. So don't do that. Yeah, I am. I
Speaker 1: run a cat Facebook group and whenever anybody posts the
Speaker 1: cat cucumber videos, I'm always like, no, I don't don't
Speaker 1: do that. Cat. Yeah, I think it's a snake. They
Speaker 1: don't like it. It's a mean prank. It's a it's
Speaker 1: kind of one of those it's like one of those
Speaker 1: pranks where like you just scare someone. I think that's
Speaker 1: like those are really mean pranks. I hate it when
Speaker 1: people do that, Like I'm going to hide in a
Speaker 1: garbage can then jump out at you, Like, what's the
Speaker 1: cleverness of that. You're just scaring someone. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: if you're prank as a surprised punch somebody in the face,
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, that's yeah, you're just at this point,
Speaker 1: you're just terrorizing somebody. You're just bowling people and terrorizing them.
Speaker 1: So don't So don't scare your cat with cucumbers please.
Speaker 1: Uh And then to like. The last one I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is cat taste. So cats, like people
Speaker 1: are like, how do cats taste? Which I'm sure means
Speaker 1: I'm not going to talk about that cat. I love cats.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they mean, like, how do cats experience taste
Speaker 1: the sweetness sourness? But the cats don't taste like humans.
Speaker 1: They don't. They're sweet taste buds don't bind two sugar molecules,
Speaker 1: so they can't taste sweetness. Um, they're actually all about
Speaker 1: the taste of amino acids. They can taste bitterness. I
Speaker 1: don't think they like bitterness, but they can't taste it.
Speaker 1: And they're they're also sensitive to the temperature of their foods,
Speaker 1: so uh, they prefer warm meals over cold meals because
Speaker 1: if you think about it, like a warm meal, it's
Speaker 1: probably more fresh. Cold meal more likely to be going bad.
Speaker 1: So if you have a fussy eater cat who you
Speaker 1: just like, it does not want to eat it's especially
Speaker 1: wet food. If you warm that up into mic a
Speaker 1: wave like that'll that'll do I mean, make sure it's
Speaker 1: not like hot, but you know, warm it up, So
Speaker 1: don't do it in the can. Don't do it in
Speaker 1: the can. I don't think you can microwave a can
Speaker 1: like that, but but yeah, warm it up in a
Speaker 1: little dish and the microwave taste it to make sure
Speaker 1: it's you know, the right time. Yeah, a little bit
Speaker 1: of it, A little bit of it right right exactly? Uh?
Speaker 1: And then would you is that like something that would
Speaker 1: be confusing for you because you would microwave tuna and
Speaker 1: then like, oh yeah, basically you're telling me that when
Speaker 1: I was ten years old, I was a cat, right right? Well,
Speaker 1: would you start kind of salivating if you started microwaving catfood?
Speaker 1: Would it bring back to that? Would start salivating? And
Speaker 1: then I would start just like needing the microwave like
Speaker 1: it was bunting the microwave disturbing. Hey, you eat bones.
Speaker 1: I do love bones. I'll love me some bones. Do
Speaker 1: you eat cold bones? Warm bones? It doesn't any bones,
Speaker 1: any bones. It's not like a temperature thing. I gotta
Speaker 1: gotta I can crunch it open, I'll eat it. You're
Speaker 1: in such a carnival, I know, so crazy, cat ladies.
Speaker 1: Let's dissect this whole thing. I'll start off by acknowledging
Speaker 1: some of the most obvious problem with this trope. The
Speaker 1: sexism and the stigmatization of mental illness. There's the idea
Speaker 1: that a woman who owns multiple cats is making up
Speaker 1: for the fact that they're an old maid, filling the
Speaker 1: man shaped holl in her heart with cats, which is
Speaker 1: on every level dumb had a enormative sexist and catist.
Speaker 1: It also assumes that there's some sort of connection between
Speaker 1: anxiety and cat ownership. Well, I'm a nervous rack and
Speaker 1: I own a dog. Explain that people. As it turns out, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: there's absolutely no evidence to back up the crazy cat
Speaker 1: lady trope. A U c l A studied surveyed students
Speaker 1: and found no connection between anxiety, depression and whether they
Speaker 1: own cats, dogs, or no pets. So what about the
Speaker 1: gender part? Are women cat magnets never going a week
Speaker 1: without picking up a new cat? A global survey done
Speaker 1: by German market research institute JFK found that of men
Speaker 1: surveyed owned a cat and twenty percent of women surveyed
Speaker 1: owned a cat, which is a pretty underwhelming difference. So
Speaker 1: where does the crazy cat lady troupe come from? Then?
Speaker 1: Could it be from the nine six documentary Gray Gardens,
Speaker 1: which features an eccentric wealthy aging woman whose house is
Speaker 1: filled with cats and raccoons? Does it trace back to
Speaker 1: the association between witches and cats or is it a
Speaker 1: covert operation by the dog lobby when yes, definitely. When
Speaker 1: we return, we'll take a look at some of the
Speaker 1: wildest cats that you probably don't want to keep as
Speaker 1: pets unless you're not all that attached to your eyeballs
Speaker 1: and hands. Wildcats are found all over the world, but
Speaker 1: there are only thirty eight species of cats. They vary
Speaker 1: greatly in size, habitat, and behavior, and they all belong
Speaker 1: to the clay field day pro Aluis is the old,
Speaker 1: the snown genus of cats. These cats were lanky and
Speaker 1: not much bigger than a house cat. And we're shaped
Speaker 1: more like civets. And if you're wondering what a civet
Speaker 1: is shaped like, well it looks like a sort of
Speaker 1: mongoose cat. And if you're wondering what a mongoose looks like,
Speaker 1: well a banana with legs and fur. Anyways, I can't
Speaker 1: help you further than that, but what I can do
Speaker 1: is recite all thirty eight species of currently living wildcats
Speaker 1: in one breath. Here we go very excited about this
Speaker 1: li lions, tigers, leopards, snow leppers, clouded lepers, jaguars, bay cats, servols, caracules,
Speaker 1: pampas cats. Also lots of bobcats, cheetas, cougars, jagger on
Speaker 1: these fishing cats, sand cats, black footed cats, Jeffrey's cats,
Speaker 1: Andian mountain cats. Okay, there's still more cats very close
Speaker 1: that I was almost there, So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about some of my favorite wildcats and the winners of
Speaker 1: some of our top Cat awards in their category. So
Speaker 1: the smallest cat in the world, this is my one
Speaker 1: of my favorite cats because it's so dark and not
Speaker 1: quite it's sound. Cats are small, black footed cats are small.
Speaker 1: But the smallest cat in the world is the rusty
Speaker 1: spotted cat. So the rusty spotted cat is found indeciduous
Speaker 1: forests in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Uh They are
Speaker 1: tan with brown spots and striations, and the adults look
Speaker 1: and sound like a kitten. Let me show you a
Speaker 1: video of these cats. They are extremely cute. Here's this
Speaker 1: little guys at right that is an adult. I think
Speaker 1: it's like it's tinier than a leave. Well that's a
Speaker 1: pretty big leaf, to be fair, but it is tiny,
Speaker 1: so it looks like a little kitten and it is
Speaker 1: an adult cat, and let me okay, actually, I'm going
Speaker 1: to play that meal because I think that is very cute.
Speaker 1: Such a cute meal. So it weighs about two to
Speaker 1: three pounds and its body is just over a foot long.
Speaker 1: They are reportedly very active and playful. They're great climbers.
Speaker 1: They hunt rodents, birds and insects and newborn's. Newborn kittens
Speaker 1: way two ounces or tiny? Is it a foot long
Speaker 1: from the tip of the head tip of the tail? No,
Speaker 1: foot long minus the tail, and then it's a little
Speaker 1: the tails a few inches long. Yeah. Are actually tails
Speaker 1: actually pretty long? It's um, yeah, it's it's disproportionately long
Speaker 1: to its body. But yeah, so with tail it's forty
Speaker 1: ft long with its tail, No, it's probably like an
Speaker 1: extra like half foot or something. Um. I feel like,
Speaker 1: do you get this with cats where it's like, if
Speaker 1: you hear a cute cat me out, Like, it feels
Speaker 1: like your body just uncontrollably goes like, oh I become
Speaker 1: I become a seven year old. Yeah. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting because cat mews and mews are kind of
Speaker 1: similar to baby baby prize. So I think they have
Speaker 1: tapped into one of our own sort of instinctive responses
Speaker 1: to want to protect babies. And that's why cats are
Speaker 1: so miawi at us because they can get us to
Speaker 1: do what they want us to do. It's an evolutionary
Speaker 1: development where it's like the reason that we love cats
Speaker 1: is essentially that they make us think that their baby
Speaker 1: right exactly, like, I'm fine with it. I'm fine, I'm
Speaker 1: okay with it. So now onto the largest cat. So,
Speaker 1: the largest cat you can possibly get is actually, uh,
Speaker 1: something that humans kind of help out with making. And
Speaker 1: uh it is an adult male liger, which is a
Speaker 1: hybrid between a lion and a tigress. And the largest
Speaker 1: one of these is named Hercules, and he weighs over
Speaker 1: nine hundred pounds and is ten ft tall when standing
Speaker 1: on his hind legs. He's a big boy. Um. I
Speaker 1: wish that, just like an alt pitch, I wish that
Speaker 1: the smallest cat in the world was named Hercules and
Speaker 1: the biggest cat member was named Tiny. That would be ironic,
Speaker 1: very cute. But that sounds like a chalky cat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So why do likes get so big? Yeah, so a
Speaker 1: liker is bigger than a lion or a tiger exactly.
Speaker 1: He is a big The biggest cat you can basically
Speaker 1: create is a liger. You put like a saddle on
Speaker 1: one and ride it like a horse. You could briefly
Speaker 1: before you get killed, but like the brief moment, it
Speaker 1: would be a pretty good way to go as long
Speaker 1: as they got like a good Instagram photo of it,
Speaker 1: and the cat was like not too mad. So the
Speaker 1: reason ligers get so big is actually very interesting. It
Speaker 1: has to do with the competition between male and female genes.
Speaker 1: So sometimes male and female genes of a species will
Speaker 1: be at odds, so lionesses may mate with multiple males.
Speaker 1: There's often a dominant male and a pride, and that
Speaker 1: dominant male can get changed out by competition. A new
Speaker 1: male can come in and mate. Sometimes more than one
Speaker 1: male and a pride can mate at once, and male
Speaker 1: jeens favor offspring who grow bigger faster so that they
Speaker 1: can dominate resources from other offspring that may not share
Speaker 1: their genes. Females, however, want all of their offspring to
Speaker 1: succeed for obvious reasons, because they're related to all of
Speaker 1: their offspring, and so they don't want one of their
Speaker 1: kittens to grow really big, really fast and out compete
Speaker 1: all her other kittens, so their genes actually counteract the
Speaker 1: male growth genes so that she can spread out her
Speaker 1: resources more evenly amongst her offspring. So that's sort of
Speaker 1: a arms race with the genes of the female cats
Speaker 1: and the male cats. Tigers actually don't have to compete
Speaker 1: in this way because tigers were made monogamous during each
Speaker 1: breeding season. They do have multiple partners over their lifespan,
Speaker 1: but they remain monogamous over a period of time. So
Speaker 1: that means that the male tigers don't really need their
Speaker 1: offspring to grow competitively because they will be related to
Speaker 1: all of them per per batch and per per mating season,
Speaker 1: and so females don't need any defensive genes to stop
Speaker 1: these fat babies from happening. So when a male lion
Speaker 1: mates with a female tiger, creating a liger, the male
Speaker 1: turbo growth genes aren't met with any defensive genes from
Speaker 1: the female, so it just grows as big as it
Speaker 1: wants to, and that's how you get that big old
Speaker 1: hercules cat. Isn't there a deal? I could be completely
Speaker 1: wrong here, but like ligers can't mate with each other,
Speaker 1: that's correct, sterile, that's right. So so it's the same
Speaker 1: thing with mules across between donkeys and horses, and in fact,
Speaker 1: most of these hybrid species are sterile because of the
Speaker 1: way that So the way that the genes work is
Speaker 1: that you know, you'll have with with this within the
Speaker 1: same species, you'll have the same number of genes and
Speaker 1: they'll match up basically evenly, you know, one to one
Speaker 1: amino acid to amino acid, whereas like when you have
Speaker 1: two different species, they may have different numbers of of
Speaker 1: of sex genes, so like when they're matching them up,
Speaker 1: there will be a mismatch. Which so because the chromosomes
Speaker 1: of their parents of a of a hybrid animal like
Speaker 1: a Liger's uh, don't really match up, they can't produce
Speaker 1: sex cells and like sperm or eggs, so they can exist,
Speaker 1: they can be you can have that mismatch and create
Speaker 1: a baby, but that baby then can't make sex cells.
Speaker 1: And this is because there's a difference between mitosis, which
Speaker 1: is the process of a developing fetus, and myosis, which
Speaker 1: is the formation of sex cells. So in mitosis, you
Speaker 1: get one set of chromosomes from your parents sex cells
Speaker 1: and they're duplicated and split up, so you have two
Speaker 1: new cell copies that are exactly the same. But in myosis,
Speaker 1: you're creating sex cells by jumbling up your d n
Speaker 1: A into non exact copies. So when in my mitosis,
Speaker 1: if you have two sets of chromosomes that aren't from
Speaker 1: the same species and they don't exactly match up, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a death sentence, like you can still you know,
Speaker 1: they're basically duplicated exactly as you're growing as a fetus.
Speaker 1: But when you make sex cells in myosis, you're you
Speaker 1: have to recombine it because if we're not a clonal species,
Speaker 1: you don't have a baby that is your clones. So
Speaker 1: but in that recombination, if you don't have the same
Speaker 1: number of chromosomes from your parents, it gets all messed up,
Speaker 1: and so you get this mismatch. It's like trying to
Speaker 1: zip a sweater like halfway up. It doesn't work. I
Speaker 1: guess in that case, it would be like zipping a
Speaker 1: sweater to another sweater exactly. Yeah, that's right, a different
Speaker 1: length sweat. It's like if you say yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: where it's like, oh, I guess that those are stuck together.
Speaker 1: I guess made a new article of but like, I
Speaker 1: mean you can, yeah, it's not an effective sweat, right right,
Speaker 1: and then you like and then you chop up those
Speaker 1: sweaters and trying to mix them up and stitch them
Speaker 1: together and just does not work. Yeah, and it's like,
Speaker 1: well you congrats, you ruined two sweaters. Alright. So the
Speaker 1: award for the most flat headed cat is drum roll,
Speaker 1: the flat headed Cat. Yes, that's the name of the cat.
Speaker 1: It's a small wildcat found in Borneo, Sumatra, the time
Speaker 1: Lay Peninsula in wet lands, and it is endangered. The
Speaker 1: wild population is only a couple of thousand, which is
Speaker 1: very sad because I love this doofy little cat. I
Speaker 1: gotta show you a picture of them. Yeah, just google it.
Speaker 1: It's the that's the cutest cat ever. It's got got
Speaker 1: a head you can serve drinks on. It's got a flathead. Look.
Speaker 1: Scientists spend less time and less grant money trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how cat vagina is working more money getting
Speaker 1: me more flatheaded chat. So they're rust colored with a
Speaker 1: white underbelly. It's a couple of feet long with a
Speaker 1: five inch tail and weighs three to five pounds. So
Speaker 1: they're they're a pretty small cat. Um. They're a bit
Speaker 1: smaller than a domesticated cat who weighs from seven to
Speaker 1: nine pounds. It's called a flat headed cat on account
Speaker 1: of its big old flathead. It's adapted to a wet
Speaker 1: land environment, so it's skull shape and jaw shape is
Speaker 1: ideal for catching fish. Its teeth are hooked like little
Speaker 1: fish hooks, and its eyes are forward facing and close together,
Speaker 1: giving it good depth perception. It has prominent foot webbing
Speaker 1: that allows it to navigate muddy and aquatic environments. And
Speaker 1: it's just a real doofy looking kiddy that deserves our
Speaker 1: love and protection. It's got big guys, so it always
Speaker 1: looks surprised. I always look surprised Scott, like, like, are
Speaker 1: you guys talking about Scott? Do you feel little duck
Speaker 1: feet in a flat head? What's not to love? Next cat?
Speaker 1: Canada's Links the biggest leg warmers of all cats. I
Speaker 1: guess I kind of gave that one away, but yeah,
Speaker 1: the winner of the biggest leg warmers is the Canada Links.
Speaker 1: So it looks very cute. Yes, so. Native to Canada
Speaker 1: and Alaska and sometimes found in the Rocky Mountains in
Speaker 1: the US, it lives in boreal forests, which are often
Speaker 1: quite cold with a lot of snow. It's just a
Speaker 1: bit bigger than a bobcat and it's way flu fier,
Speaker 1: So it's adapted really well for cold environments with a
Speaker 1: real thick fur coat, and it has these huge chunky
Speaker 1: paws and that act as insulated snowshoes on the snow. Um.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of um if you remember like teenage
Speaker 1: Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, how there would be like
Speaker 1: Arctic action like Donna Tello and stuff like this. This
Speaker 1: just feels like an Arctic action cat where it's like
Speaker 1: it looks shoved those big old military ug boots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's a here's one with like the biggest pas I've
Speaker 1: ever seen on the ca It's just these big old
Speaker 1: like muppety paws. Yeah, and it's like they look they're
Speaker 1: probably deadly, but like also like you just want a snuggle.
Speaker 1: You just want to snowgle that kittie. It'll scratch your
Speaker 1: face off, but you want to suggle. My last words
Speaker 1: will be worth it. Uh, my last words will be huyo.
Speaker 1: Speaking of muppets, the most muppetist cat is the Palace's cat.
Speaker 1: So here's a picture of this guy. Oh that that
Speaker 1: cat looks like it should be voiced by the guy
Speaker 1: that voiced Yoda. Yeah, it looks like it should be
Speaker 1: in a Star War Like. It looks like a Star
Speaker 1: Wars cat. Like, it looks like a Wookie, looks like
Speaker 1: a Wookie. No, it looks like a a Wookie and
Speaker 1: a Yoda had a baby. That's the I feel like
Speaker 1: that's that's the real baby Yoda that I want the
Speaker 1: baby a Woda. I've got some fan fictions. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guarantee that there's a there's Yoda Chewbacca slash fiction
Speaker 1: out there, like whatever, Like it's gotta be and Yoda
Speaker 1: is going to be ripped under those those Jedi robes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, there's gonna be a moment where
Speaker 1: like Chewbacca is going to touch Yoda's robe and then
Speaker 1: feel his muscles and be like oh um. So. The
Speaker 1: Palace's Cat is found in Central Asia in montane grasslands
Speaker 1: at high elevations up to sixteen thousand feet. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: about the size of a pet cat. It has real
Speaker 1: fluffy fur that is grayish brown. It's legs are proportionally
Speaker 1: shorter than most cats, which gives it a do fear
Speaker 1: looking here, it's got tiny ears and round pupils, unlike
Speaker 1: the slitted pupils, which makes it look pretty cute and silly.
Speaker 1: They feed on gerbils, voles and young marmots. So if
Speaker 1: you're wondering why the round pupils, some cats have round
Speaker 1: pupils like big cats like lions and tigers, and smaller
Speaker 1: cats tend to have slitted pupils and it's so it's
Speaker 1: unusual for this Palace's cat to have the round pupils
Speaker 1: because usually the smaller ones have the icelets. So researchers
Speaker 1: have found that ambush predator cats tend to have slitted pupils. Uh,
Speaker 1: So that makes sense for the smaller cats that rely
Speaker 1: on ambush it makes sense because I'm sure like most
Speaker 1: of their hunting is like and crepuscular. Right. They need
Speaker 1: to be able to see during the day so they
Speaker 1: can't be blinded by the light, but they need to
Speaker 1: be able to have these big pupils so they can
Speaker 1: lit light in during the nights. That slitted pupil really
Speaker 1: works well for them. Whereas for big cats, they're active
Speaker 1: foragers and they do ambush to some extent, but they
Speaker 1: also chase down prey are long distances and they so
Speaker 1: like having the big ground pupil is pretty important. I
Speaker 1: feel like the reason this cat has big ground pupils
Speaker 1: is marketability. Marketability, just like like it's so people are like,
Speaker 1: this should be a stuffed animal. I will see this cat,
Speaker 1: I will feed this cat everything. Well, yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: really find a definitive answer, but I do have a guess,
Speaker 1: which is that it may have something to do with
Speaker 1: its high altitude montane environment. Um. So they do stock
Speaker 1: in ambush prey, we do know that, but I wonder
Speaker 1: if the harshness of the high altitudes means they have
Speaker 1: to chase prey over greater distances and they have to
Speaker 1: be able to spot them against this kind of rocky
Speaker 1: environment and be able to give greater chase. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, maybe maybe it's just a guess. It could
Speaker 1: be also could be the quality of the light in
Speaker 1: these montane regions. Maybe like the the days are are
Speaker 1: shorter and it's it's uh, but yeah, I'm not really
Speaker 1: not really sure. I'd really love to hear from some
Speaker 1: I experts on the this one, on their theory of
Speaker 1: why does the Palaces cat? First of all, why does
Speaker 1: the Palace's cat look like? And also why has it
Speaker 1: got them around? Pupils um. If you're a scientist, if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this, please tweet at us till us now. Also,
Speaker 1: if you're an artist and you'll listen to this, please
Speaker 1: uh do a drawing of Yoda romancing chew paca and
Speaker 1: sent it and having a baby Palaces cat? Yes, please
Speaker 1: please send us that. Please got some homework for a
Speaker 1: fan artist? Can you really tame a wildcat? As we've
Speaker 1: discussed earlier, our house cats aren't much different from their
Speaker 1: wild ancestors, as their claw marks and bloodthirsty antics may demonstrate.
Speaker 1: So can you tame a lion and keep it as
Speaker 1: a big old house cat? Well? No, you can certainly
Speaker 1: train a lion and other big cats to tolerate or
Speaker 1: even enjoy your presence. You may make friends with them
Speaker 1: just as easily as you make friends with mittens, your
Speaker 1: little tabby cat. But the difference between mittens and a
Speaker 1: line is just their share ability to kill you. In
Speaker 1: is piste off at you, she could give you a
Speaker 1: nasty slash on the hand, whereas a lion with a
Speaker 1: bite force of six fifty p s I with teeth
Speaker 1: the size of plantains could just destroy you. If Mittens
Speaker 1: was lion sized, she may on a whim eviscerate you.
Speaker 1: And this podcaster's opinion, wildcats make bad pets for those
Speaker 1: of us who enjoy being intact, and more importantly, most
Speaker 1: humans aren't equipped to give wildcats a good quality of life. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: that doesn't stop people from trying. They're over ten thousand
Speaker 1: wildcats being kept as pets or kept in captivity outside
Speaker 1: of zoos. In the US. There's no federal law regulating
Speaker 1: wildcat ownership, so in many states it's legal. Many of
Speaker 1: these cats are abandoned once their hold. Huge wild animal
Speaker 1: antics get too much for their owners to handle, and
Speaker 1: they can end up in crowded sanctuaries. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you want the experience of owning a tiger house,
Speaker 1: cat is just as likely to go around murdering prey
Speaker 1: and trying them all you, but in a much smaller,
Speaker 1: more ethical package. This leads me to my next theory.
Speaker 1: The recent movie Cats is our attempt to finally dominate
Speaker 1: and humiliate cats by turning them into shambling, humanoid abominations.
Speaker 1: When we return we'll discuss this movie and try to
Speaker 1: answer the profound question the Cats Movie provokes why anthropomorphism
Speaker 1: didn't start with Disney or furries. Throughout human history, we've
Speaker 1: been fascinated by giving humans animalistic traits or vice versa.
Speaker 1: The Low and Men's figuring found in Germany is a
Speaker 1: thirty two thousand year old ivory sculpture that is shaped
Speaker 1: like a human with a lioness's head. Bastet and sec
Speaker 1: Met were ancient Egyptian goddesses with women's bodies and the
Speaker 1: heads of a cat and a lioness. So carrying on
Speaker 1: this ancient tradition is the feature length movie Cats, which
Speaker 1: I watched in its entirety completely sober. And I'm not
Speaker 1: exactly sure or where we went wrong, whether it was
Speaker 1: thirty two thousand years ago with the Low and Mensch figuring,
Speaker 1: or maybe further back in our cultural history, but the
Speaker 1: Cats movie is perhaps the last piece of art that
Speaker 1: humans should ever be allowed to make ever again. I
Speaker 1: think it's the last piece of art that we need
Speaker 1: to We've done it. Yeah, I so the Cats movie,
Speaker 1: whatever you say about it, I think it cements itself
Speaker 1: as art just because it's a lightning rod in the
Speaker 1: cultural zeit guys like it is. It's a thing that's
Speaker 1: something that I oftentimes think about. This is just like
Speaker 1: you know, comedian comedy writer guy who makes stuff whatever.
Speaker 1: Is like the purpose of entertainment is to give people
Speaker 1: basically shared experiences to bring them closer together, right right.
Speaker 1: They never said that experience had to be a good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they never said it had to be a good experience.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that the Cats movie was a
Speaker 1: bad experience. Like for me, I've seen it twice. The
Speaker 1: first time that the first time I saw it like
Speaker 1: one a m on like a Sunday opening weekend, and
Speaker 1: I saw it with like two people that are in
Speaker 1: the Cat Facebook group that I run, and like there
Speaker 1: were maybe ten of the people in the theater, and
Speaker 1: within five minutes, everybody in the theater was just openly
Speaker 1: shouting the screen. And it's like afterwards, like every person
Speaker 1: in the theater like we all just like gave each
Speaker 1: other high five and it was like, oh, like this
Speaker 1: brought even just the random people in this theater together
Speaker 1: for it, and I um on New Year's Day, I
Speaker 1: really wanted to see Cats with a crowded theater of
Speaker 1: people that we're going to get it. So I basically
Speaker 1: found a screening of Cats in Burbank that had zero
Speaker 1: tickets sold, and I just posted my cat Facebook group
Speaker 1: and on Twitter. I know I was invited. I couldn't come,
Speaker 1: unfortunately I was across the country, but I really wanted
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah. I was basically like, let's sell at
Speaker 1: this theater and have just like a really rowdy Cats screening.
Speaker 1: And we sold it out within four hours, about forty
Speaker 1: eight pairs of catiers that I gave to everybody that
Speaker 1: came in in the theater. That's excellent, and um, it
Speaker 1: was just like probably the most fun I've ever had
Speaker 1: watching a movie. Was like just screaming at the screen
Speaker 1: with all these people singing along the magical Mr Mustaphiles
Speaker 1: with strangers. That sounds lovely. Yeah, my cat's experience was
Speaker 1: a bit different. Um. I was extremely sick, so I
Speaker 1: couldn't make it out to the theater. I got a
Speaker 1: bluntline Crompy of Cats and cat Burg co cat burgled
Speaker 1: the copy. Um, and I watched it with my boyfriend,
Speaker 1: high on cough medicine, and we just kind of in
Speaker 1: stony silence watched this thing. Sometimes looking at each other
Speaker 1: in a gas horror as I you know, sipped on
Speaker 1: my tess in. But right, right, right, it was no, No,
Speaker 1: it was funny. I mean we were we were talking
Speaker 1: the whole time about it because it was just unbelievable.
Speaker 1: It was unbelievable how this got made. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it's something that I've talked about to a lot of
Speaker 1: friends in that it's i mean, like the Broadway production
Speaker 1: doesn't really make a ton of sense storyline wise. It's
Speaker 1: basically just cats introducing. It's the spectacle. It's the spectacle.
Speaker 1: It's a cat going like I'm Mr Fibbley Banks and
Speaker 1: I'm the banker cat, you know or whatever, very good
Speaker 1: cat character. Mr Fippley Banks, the banker cat. I'm pippoty
Speaker 1: PLoP the podcast cat. Um, I'm Kibledie Katie. This the
Speaker 1: cat who's got a cold, right right? Um, Yeah, It's
Speaker 1: basically what we've done is essentially the Cats movie, right. Um,
Speaker 1: it's that for several hours. Um, and like they stitched
Speaker 1: together like kind of an like a little bit of
Speaker 1: a narrative of um, Like there's the cats that want
Speaker 1: to belong. There's a cat that like wants to learn
Speaker 1: how to do magic and blah blah blah blah, and
Speaker 1: like it's, uh, it's kind of nonsensical inter terms of plot,
Speaker 1: but the spectacle of it is it's as um, it's
Speaker 1: as entertaining as it is insane, and it is very insane, yes,
Speaker 1: so to kind of I think the most powerful kind
Speaker 1: of representation of what this Cats movie is is looking
Speaker 1: at reviewers who have had to write up a full
Speaker 1: review of Cats, and um, there's this great Esquire article
Speaker 1: called pinpointing the exact moment Cats reviewers lost their minds Um,
Speaker 1: So here are some of my favorite quotes from these reviewers.
Speaker 1: So this one is from Casper Salmon, which I'm sorry
Speaker 1: actually sounds like a name from Cats. Like it's a
Speaker 1: great name. Not making fun of the name, it's an
Speaker 1: excellent name, but so writes for a Prospect quote, Why
Speaker 1: do some of the cats wear shoes? Why are they
Speaker 1: sometimes as big as a human and sometimes as big
Speaker 1: as a shopping bag? Why do some walk in some crawl?
Speaker 1: Why do they have no X but no anuses? And
Speaker 1: that's a that's a very good questions. Why do they
Speaker 1: have why do they have butt cheeks but no anuses? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a big That's my thing is like,
Speaker 1: you know, like if they had gone either give them
Speaker 1: all suspenders, like they give one of the cats that's
Speaker 1: very form fitting suspenders, leaving nothing to the imagination the
Speaker 1: railway cat, or or just give them buttles. Have the
Speaker 1: courage to give them butts. Yeah, I guess that. It
Speaker 1: just it feels like my friend Haley Mancini, the way
Speaker 1: that she described it is, it's like the way that
Speaker 1: the cats look isn't in the uncanny It's so deep
Speaker 1: in the uncanny valley that it's Uncanny Canyon, and it's
Speaker 1: like it is just like it's it's insane, like there
Speaker 1: are cats the Uncanny Mariana Trench, Yes, exactly. Like their
Speaker 1: cats will have full conversations on two legs, sing songs
Speaker 1: on two legs, and then they'll like drop to all
Speaker 1: fours and crows at the scene. Here's a review from
Speaker 1: Alison Wilmore of the Vulture quote. Are the coats that
Speaker 1: some of the cats, like Macavity, Idris Elba and Old
Speaker 1: Deuteronomy Dinch where actually made from the skin of other cats?
Speaker 1: And if so, does this mean that Jinny any Dots
Speaker 1: who at one point unzips herself out of a full
Speaker 1: body first is the kind of twice Buffalo Bill in
Speaker 1: Silence of the Lambs tipself multiple form fitting skin. I mean,
Speaker 1: I really think that I was kind of really frustrated
Speaker 1: at the movie of how like kind of rude the
Speaker 1: movie was to Rubble Wilson. I thought it was pretty
Speaker 1: disrespectful of her, the way they made her kind of
Speaker 1: fall around and stumble over herself all the time. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the unzipping, she's she's in a skin tight you know,
Speaker 1: like c g I fur, then she unzips that for
Speaker 1: and then is wearing like a show girl dress under that,
Speaker 1: but then there's more for under that. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like an It's a Loony Tunes move, right, It's like
Speaker 1: any Tunes move but it doesn't work on human people
Speaker 1: in a c g I thing. Well, the Jenny any
Speaker 1: Dot scene, there's a moment in the scene where Jenny
Speaker 1: any Dots reveals that she's enslaved mice to sing and dance,
Speaker 1: and the mice have the faces of human children. They
Speaker 1: are played by human child actor there. She reveals later
Speaker 1: in that scene that she has an entire polluted platoon
Speaker 1: of cockroaches. Also humanoid. Every This is what's so crazy
Speaker 1: about this Sortically, while they're screaming and dancing and doing
Speaker 1: a show tunes thing, but this is what's crazy about
Speaker 1: this universe. Every living creature is humanoid, Like like an
Speaker 1: earthworm is going to be a gooey long human, which
Speaker 1: sounds like like birds are going to be humans. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like a turtle is just gonna be like a turtle
Speaker 1: head pokes out, it's a human face. There's also just
Speaker 1: weird logic stuff of like mcavity is the He's essentially
Speaker 1: the cat devil um. There are wanted posters on the
Speaker 1: side of buildings from a cavity, which opens the question
Speaker 1: of like are their jellical police? Like why like our cats? What?
Speaker 1: Like what what used to cats have for money? Like
Speaker 1: I don't know. They're also like like the cavity search
Speaker 1: the police cat. Yeah, it's like that, and then it's
Speaker 1: like who funds the police cats? It's like it's the
Speaker 1: It's the sort of movie where it's like a it's
Speaker 1: like Cathulu where it's like the more that you look
Speaker 1: at it, the more in Jin Yamamoto of The l
Speaker 1: A Times tweets quote me watching cats movie, why human
Speaker 1: faces and human hands? Why so small? What is Judy
Speaker 1: denches for coat made of? How do they poop? How
Speaker 1: did I get here? Why so boring? Who is responsible
Speaker 1: for this? What hath cat Maddie do rot? There are
Speaker 1: also moments in it where, like Judy Dench and Ian
Speaker 1: McClellan is in it as old Gusts, they like give it,
Speaker 1: They're all. That's the thing is everybody in this movie.
Speaker 1: Really it works so hard in this movie, which is
Speaker 1: what maybe that's part of why it's so embarrassing too,
Speaker 1: Like Ian McClellan went goes full method where he like
Speaker 1: will interrupt scenes to nuzzle on things. Um, Like, there's
Speaker 1: definitely a shot where like, I think he did nail
Speaker 1: the cat nous the bass, like he did get the
Speaker 1: cat attitude. Maybe that's what, like fifty years of Shakespearean
Speaker 1: acting gets you the ability to act like a cat.
Speaker 1: Like if you want to see Ian mcclawn like lap
Speaker 1: milk out of a saucer, then oh boy, this is
Speaker 1: the movie for you. And like Judy Dench, she like
Speaker 1: she also like does she does a really good job
Speaker 1: as Old Deuteronomy, But there are moments where she'll like
Speaker 1: she'll be like talking in a scene and she'll lift
Speaker 1: her leg overhead casually. Uh. They also like they patched
Speaker 1: the movie where there's the first version of the movie
Speaker 1: that was released because the movie was the director finished
Speaker 1: editing the movie the morning it came out into theaters,
Speaker 1: and um, but they like messed up a lot of
Speaker 1: visual effects where like there you can see multiplied James
Speaker 1: Dame Judy Dench's human hand ring. Yeah, there's a point where, um,
Speaker 1: like what's his name hosts a late night show, James
Speaker 1: James Gordon where he jumps through jumps through a cat
Speaker 1: door and just disappears. Um, I haven't seen this, but
Speaker 1: I've heard that there was a moment where you can
Speaker 1: see an actor just like completely without c g in
Speaker 1: their mo cap suit in the background. I didn't notice that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I was I was on a medicine. There's just
Speaker 1: like so much stuff in this movie that's like it's
Speaker 1: like everybody but like everybody gives it. They're all and
Speaker 1: like all like all the stuff that I'm describing, Like
Speaker 1: it's if you like Lucky Rocky Horror Picture Show, if
Speaker 1: you liked The Room, if you like just like crazy
Speaker 1: midnight screenings of movies, then like you will love Cats
Speaker 1: because there's so much insanity to it. It is kind
Speaker 1: of escapism because it's so bizarre. It kind of made
Speaker 1: me forget myself for a while, but so lost in
Speaker 1: how bizarre it was. Yeah, and like and like the
Speaker 1: songs are great, like everybody's everybody's musical performances are so good.
Speaker 1: Like there are things like the skimble Shanks, the dancing
Speaker 1: the Railway Cat Dance number where it's like clear that
Speaker 1: guy's a world class cat happen dances the hell out
Speaker 1: of that dance. Yeah, and it's tight. I cannot get
Speaker 1: over how tight those overalls are. Sorry, this brings me
Speaker 1: to this other review that Nigel Andrews of Financial Times
Speaker 1: rights worryingly erotic. Yeah, that's the other thing is like
Speaker 1: these cats, Frank, I mean it is they There's a
Speaker 1: scene where Dame Judy Dinch is like the head of Cats,
Speaker 1: is in with with all her cats in the theater
Speaker 1: and they're just it's like they're rubbing up against each
Speaker 1: other and flipping around and thrusting theater. And whenever cats
Speaker 1: would get close to nuzzling each other, everybody in the
Speaker 1: theater would chant nuzzle, And it happened a lot. My
Speaker 1: response was much different. It was going like no, God, please.
Speaker 1: There's also a point where Jason Trullo makes a makes
Speaker 1: a joke about eating Rebel Wilson's but uh and then what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like right when he comes in, Uh he was,
Speaker 1: he was a rum tum tugger. I think, Um, it's
Speaker 1: the end of Rebel Wilson's thing, right before it gets
Speaker 1: into his like funk number, he jokes about eater. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he says it's something about like I'm excited
Speaker 1: you're behind or whatever, and then he that and the
Speaker 1: ends the song about like almost sucking on like Victoria
Speaker 1: Veronica or whatever. That was weird. That was super weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like this is the movie is and everybody,
Speaker 1: I hope I pronounced this name right. Devin Cogan wrote
Speaker 1: an article for Entertainment Weekly titled I took my dad,
Speaker 1: a veterinarian to see Cats. He has some thoughts, Oh,
Speaker 1: I read this article. I highly recommend this article, but
Speaker 1: I just I love it. Uh. And so she asks
Speaker 1: her dad, like, what's the most bizarre aspect of the movie,
Speaker 1: and and her dad, the veterinarian, says that the faces
Speaker 1: are the worst, and I agree cat faces. He says
Speaker 1: cat faces can be expressive, but they're extremely subtle. Um,
Speaker 1: seeing all these cats make all these exaggerated faces was
Speaker 1: kind of horrifying. Yeah, well, I think that like what
Speaker 1: they think that they needed to make a choice between
Speaker 1: are these like like in the Broadway play where it's
Speaker 1: essentially people wearing leotard's or these just straight up cg cats.
Speaker 1: And it's like, because it's this weird human cat hybrid
Speaker 1: that looks like an an island of Dr Moreau there,
Speaker 1: like it just gets into this area when whenever you
Speaker 1: see a cat, you're not like, oh, you're like it's
Speaker 1: like a visceral respect. And the thing is like with
Speaker 1: the the long with the long tails too, like humans
Speaker 1: with long tails doesn't read to me as cats. It's
Speaker 1: almost like the in the way they walked it almost
Speaker 1: like also like clear like gluteal must right. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: it kind of almost like gave me like huge lemur
Speaker 1: kind of thing, Like they looked like like huge lemurs,
Speaker 1: which is unsettling. There is a moment where there's a
Speaker 1: coordinated tail dance. Oh that's right, and they're all their
Speaker 1: tails twitch in unison. Yeah, that made me that that.
Speaker 1: I think that was the moment I lost my mind
Speaker 1: because that was just like it made me want to
Speaker 1: like un watch that part. I lost my mind literally
Speaker 1: Frame one, when there's a cat face in the moon.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, my god, And I just knows, like dissonant music,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a ride. It's a real ride, like
Speaker 1: like honestly, like see the movie, right, there's this scene
Speaker 1: or Taylor Swift gets all these cats high with with catnip.
Speaker 1: She's got a she's got a bedazzled canister of cat
Speaker 1: up that she pours on it, and the nip has
Speaker 1: catnip written on it in bedazzle, and she rides into
Speaker 1: this scene on the DreamWorks logo, I do want to
Speaker 1: talk about cat nip. So the cat nip is a
Speaker 1: member of the mint family, and cat nip affects adult
Speaker 1: cats and not kittens um. And the reason is that
Speaker 1: it is actually acting as an artificial cat pheromone. So
Speaker 1: the the nepotalactone oil and cat nip acts as like
Speaker 1: an as basically an artificial cat pheromone. And so when
Speaker 1: cats are super strung out on on catnip, they're also
Speaker 1: kind of horny. So that's like one of the accurate
Speaker 1: things in the movie is like when she like, you know,
Speaker 1: gets them all high on cat nip and they're all,
Speaker 1: I mean, to be fair, they are perpetually horny the movie.
Speaker 1: It's not that big of a difference play cat nip.
Speaker 1: They still want to post catnip. They just look drug. Yes, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean, would you do anything to fix
Speaker 1: this musical or do you think it's perfect the way
Speaker 1: it is? One moment woman, before I get to do
Speaker 1: it Talking about that, there's a moment at the end
Speaker 1: of the movie where Judy Dench looks at the camera
Speaker 1: and addresses you. She breaks the fourth that's fourth ball,
Speaker 1: well for three minutes to tell you what you should
Speaker 1: have learned from the movie. Item one being that cats
Speaker 1: are not dogs. That's like, that is like the the
Speaker 1: ultimate lesson, Like that that's the profound thing, Like that's
Speaker 1: what I was supposed to learn importantly at all. It's
Speaker 1: not a dog theater that I was in screens along
Speaker 1: with her, and you're like, I mean, like, but the
Speaker 1: thing is that the movie is so insane leading up
Speaker 1: to that that when she says that, you're like, are
Speaker 1: they I don't know? Cats dogs? Ups is down. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what. Taylor Swift has a disturbing scene
Speaker 1: where she walks around in high heels and as a cat.
Speaker 1: Also there's like breakdancing cats wearing tims like it's just like, um,
Speaker 1: I mean personally, I'm gonna say this is a perfect movie.
Speaker 1: I would I would perfect movie. I would change nothing
Speaker 1: about it. This was the most fun that I've ever
Speaker 1: had watching a movie. I'd give them all by far,
Speaker 1: I'd give them all bee holes, like this was better
Speaker 1: than Star Wars. I want to see I would want
Speaker 1: to see a cat in the Cats movie, like a
Speaker 1: cough up a hair ball. That would a cat does?
Speaker 1: I believe Bustofer Jones does on the barge scene at
Speaker 1: the end, So like, look they thought everything they did
Speaker 1: they did it would have been really fun to watch
Speaker 1: and use the letter box would have been fun to
Speaker 1: see that. That's something we all want to use that.
Speaker 1: I mean, like all these are ideas that they can
Speaker 1: include in A Cat's to write Cats to Cats to
Speaker 1: the squeakol But it's like Cats. The thing is is
Speaker 1: the format of the movie is so easily refillable because
Speaker 1: it's just the next jellical ball, which the Gelco ball.
Speaker 1: They're all jelical cats. I've never really explained what a
Speaker 1: gelical cat is. Still, don't cat Um is a cat
Speaker 1: who does not have a bee holes. It doesn't never
Speaker 1: the whole. Yeah, it doesn't have nips. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have said that they should have cat noses, that
Speaker 1: the worst part is that their noses are human noses.
Speaker 1: I think I think the worst part is everything about
Speaker 1: their bodies, like the toes, the fingers, human fingernails. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like even like, I'm I'm upset that the director
Speaker 1: made those changes to graphical errors to me that that
Speaker 1: is my han shot first, that is my George Lucas
Speaker 1: treating tweeting the trilogy. What a lot? Just hum, just
Speaker 1: give them human feet and hands like no fur on.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I mean, I think make it more horrifying.
Speaker 1: I think I think the holes that we see a lot,
Speaker 1: I think lean into the horror of it. Yeah. Absolutely, Well,
Speaker 1: this has been a real trip. I gotta say. I
Speaker 1: think as soon as I saw the trailer for The
Speaker 1: Cat's Musical, I knew I had to have you on
Speaker 1: and I knew I'd have to do this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was set up months ago. Um, yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. This was super fun. Yeah for sure. Um,
Speaker 1: you got anything anything to plug? Anything to plug? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at Joey Tainman. Follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Joey Clift with like five eyes. The reason
Speaker 1: it's five eyes is that like a twelve year old
Speaker 1: took regular Joey Clift and now I just got the
Speaker 1: stle with the one I got. And um, other than that,
Speaker 1: let's see, I got a short film that um was
Speaker 1: posted online recently. You can find it on my Twitter account.
Speaker 1: It's called telling people your Native American when you're not
Speaker 1: native is telling it? Bear? Your bear, not a bear.
Speaker 1: The name is twenty four words long. Uh not. Other
Speaker 1: than that, I don't know. Yeah, follow me on the
Speaker 1: socials and uh, I don't know. Just like see the
Speaker 1: Cats movie. I'm here to promote the Cats have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it, but I think you should watch it.
Speaker 1: You can find the podcast online Creature Feature Pod on Instagram,
Speaker 1: Creature feet Pot on Twitter. That's f E a T,
Speaker 1: not f E teeth. That will be something very different.
Speaker 1: I am Katie Golden. You can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Katie Golden and also at pro bird writes where
Speaker 1: I'm actually, you know, I kind of want to make
Speaker 1: a bird's musical properd rds. I gotta say, it's such
Speaker 1: a funny twitter I think. So I'm gonna do birds
Speaker 1: musical and have like Mr cheap cheap mcbeet beeps. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's a good name, and uh you know old goosey
Speaker 1: quacker bottoms bottoms yeah, like like like skimble feathers, the
Speaker 1: airplane chat or airpane plane birds, chicken e cheep cheep
Speaker 1: the beat beat cheap cheap all this makes more sense
Speaker 1: than The Cat's Movie. Thanks to the Space Cossacks for
Speaker 1: their magnificent song. Ex Alumina Creature features a production of
Speaker 1: I Heeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, m oh