It's Monday, and it's a holiday (albeit quite an important one), so here — have a cat video. It's not your average cat video, though; no, this one is full of weird facts about cats that might just blow your mind. Not literally, of course — that would be messy — but BuzzFeed wasn't messing around when they named their latest video offering "9 Mind-Blowing Cat Facts." I honestly didn't know most of the tidbits included in it, which is pretty impressive in and of itself. It's hard to shock a crazy cat person, but BuzzFeed managed to do it with ease this time.
The video in question is animated, so if you're looking for hilarious footage of cats falling over or failing to make a jump or whatever, you'll have to go elsewhere. But that's OK — it's still worth your time. Cats are strange and mysterious creatures, and this video provides a tiny window into their fuzzy little world you probably haven't seen before. It explains why cats are generally uninterested in certain types of human foods (whereas dogs will eat anything not nailed down), it introduces one of the most entertaining words you'll ever hear, and much, much more. You'll have to scroll down to watch the whole video, but for the curious, here are my favorite bits in five pictures. The more you know, right?
1. The term referring to a group of cats is amazing.
Murder of what? Who cares? "Clowder" is the single greatest word I have ever heard in my entire life. I will now find an excuse to use it at every opportunity, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop me. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it's a variant of "clutter" that was popular in the 1800s.
2. There's a reason your cat's ears are so expressive.
That's a lot of muscles. And if your cats are anything like mine, they use each and every of them to let you know exactly how they're feeling and what they're interested in every single moment of every single day.
3. They're never, ever going to be interested in your dessert.
Not only that, but even more fascinating, they're the only known mammal that doesn't have sweet receptors.
4. Purring is multi-functional.
If you've read Oryx and Crake , you're probably already familiar with this piece of trivia. Alas, though, it dos not actually appear to work on humans; when I tried to get my cat to purr over a burn I sustained from my oven last night when trying to remove dinner from it, the burn persisted in stinging and stayed all blistered and gross. File under "not intended for human usage."
5. Cats have dominant paws, just like humans have dominant hands.
And it's apparently a gender-based trait, too. Who knew?
Watch the whole video below:
Images: BuzzFeed Blue/YouTube (5)
