Is it to see them have fun? Is it so the owners have fun? Is it good for them?
I never quite understood why catnip was so socially acceptable when we view other drugs with such different eyes.
Do you treat "drugs are bad" as an axiomatic statement, or do you accept "drugs are bad" as the contingent conclusion of a series of more fundamental statements?
We drill the former into (young) children because it is true enough for them, and they aren't ready for the latter.
If you can understand the latter, then take the underlying statements, and apply them to the cats. You'll find most of them simply don't apply to cats. Maybe a couple of them slightly do, but none of them work like humans. Humans have a unique capacity to be affected by drugs due to our superb executive functioning. Non-humans are all but incapable of bending their entire life around drug-seeking behavior the way we are partially because we're really good at making them, and also because we're uniquely good at refining them. (It's a long cognitive distance from "let the fruit sit a while to taste fun" to "let's build a still!".)
I grew up in Israel, where qat is legal, seen as equivalent to coffee and culturally acceptable. It's fairly common as an ornamental plant.
Giving your cat whiskey would cause an uproar, but I guess catnip gets a grandfather exception.
Eating very large quantities of catnip can give them gastrointestinal discomfort though.
I don’t know about cats with catnip specifically, but many wild animals are observed to purposefully seek out and consume rotten (i.e. fermented, alcoholic) fruit to get drunk/high. (We know that alcohol is harmful to animals, so we don’t tend to offer e.g. captive apes rotten fruit; but we also don’t really stop them from hoarding fruit to make it become rotten, and then eating it. It’s a natural thing that they do. Cats gonna scratch each-other up play-fighting. Apes gonna drink.)
But why do we have such a different mindset toward this?
I think one big difference is that the human social norms on the acceptable recreational activities for humans are mostly defined/circumscribed by what doctors think is okay (i.e. we take the lead of the medical establishment — if doctors are chill about something, there isn’t usually a social norm against it, while if doctors get upset, other people also get upset.) And doctors don’t like recreational drugs very much, because they usually think in a “harm reduction” mindset rather than a QALY mindset: they’d rather decrease “risk of a loss of capability to experience a satisfying life”, than increase “the area-under-the-curve of satisfying-life-years.”
Meanwhile, the human social norms on the acceptable recreational activities for animals are mostly defined/circumscribed by what zoologists think is okay. Zoologists are the people with voices and platforms to talk about animals, since engaging in animal conservation and study tends to directly correlate with seeking funding for that conservation and study, which is usually implemented through educational outreach activities (i.e. building zoos/aquariums/nature parks, giving tours in conservation areas, etc.) And zoologists, traditionally(?), mostly care about what they observe happening in nature. The whole field of zoology is built on observing animals in nature to figure out “what they do.” So our norms on animal recreation lean much more toward “natural ⇒ good” (regardless of harm potential) than “potentially harmful ⇒ bad” (regardless of naturalness.)
If veterinarians had the voices and platforms instead, I assume you’d see much more of a harm-reduction mindset in our social norms toward animal recreation.
Good for them? Maybe. It's certainly not bad for them. This has been very much studied. Cats can't overdose on catnip. At worst, after 5-15 minutes of sniffing and rolling around in it, they stop responding to it.
> when we view other drugs with such different eyes.
Because most drugs humans take are harmful. The hard stuff like meth, cocaine, heroin, etc., is easy to overdose on. Alcohol can make some people belligerent and can easily be deadly. Tobacco causes cancer, among other things depending on how you consume it. Marijuana is the least harmful, but as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on whether or not it's as harmless as people think it is, especially if smoked.
But catnip? It's completely harmless. The cat will sniff or eat it, roll around in it, and appears to experience euphoria, but there are no health dangers in it.
To be fair, tobacco isn’t the drug, it’s nicotine, and nicotine does not cause cancer. (But I’m sure you knew that.)
I don’t think there’s a long-term tolerance that builds up. I get the sense it is short-acting. I’ve read once a cat has catnip, giving them more in a 15-20 minute window is pointless because they’ve already been “activated” by it. They need to come down from the initial dose first.
My cats’ vet has suggested to use catnip to encourage activity (they’re a big chunky and need some exercise).
If catnip isn't destroying cats' lives, what's the harm?
I used to think that too. And I still smoke ( hash, which is different ).
However, it does make me complacent, which sometimes make me endure situations I would otherwise change.
Not to mention the toll on the lungs. Ask Willie Nelson if you'd like anecdata about how that can play out over a lifetime.
I've recently made the leap to edibles exclusively after a stint with a hot-air vaporizer (a la Volcano devices) and I now find the resin smell of smoking incredibly off-putting. The coughing, hacking, and lung stiffness that results from a bong rip even more so.
Doesn't lessen the complacency, but the delay your metabolism introduces can help you get started on projects before it sets in!
I've met christian, conservative, Swedish country-side folk who frown on anything the government considers illegal or drugs.
But at the same time will use catnip on a new cat toy as a tool to make the cat take to it. Or just watch it roll around for their own amusement.
Maybe that's a fringe example but I have had that experience a couple times.
More often I have contact with younger people in their 20s and 30s who don't view human drugs as anything morally wrong and just enjoy giving their cat what they assume is enjoyment.
Yes