Hacker News Reader

Comment by pestatije | Hacker News Reader

They don't bring the stick back either

Back in the 90s we had a cat that liked to play fetch. Every now and then it would come to you with a bobble (a hairy ball) and you were supposed to throw it and it would bring it back (it would even drop it to your open hand).

She also liked to eat cheese puffs.

Every one of my cats liked to play that way. It was like a video game form of play hunting to them. I miss all of those furry assholes.

Yes, many of mine too.

Sometimes mixed in with their usual exercise I'll throw the toy (a piece of a padded envelope wrapped around a plastic straw) into some unexpected places and they seem to like the challenge of finding it. My one current cat that fetches will search for something for a few minutes even and carries it back every time.

My cats also play fetch: I throw the ball, they run over to where it landed, and then they sit still while they wait for me to walk over and throw the ball again :)

haha mine too.

She wasn't playing fetch - you were playing throw!

I've seen a few cats that'll bring back toys you throw for them so you can throw it again.

Cats can be trained quite well do to activities and if you can understand them correctly. It is still very rare, tho. I've seen videos of cats doing skateboard and other things their human trained them to do, but he was a cat behaviourist.

I always wanted a dog growing up. My parents finally agreed to a cat, so I made do. She knew sit, shake, high five, would "play" the piano, and could be sent off to touch a mark. When my sister's cat came to live with us for a few months, I taught him to sit and to jog on the treadmill. The treadmill trick was no longer allowed after the day mom was running on the treadmill and he jumped on and ran up between her feet.

That's damn cute. While I've always grew with cats I've never been able to make one do things! They always loved me deeply (in their own ways, for example my first one was always walking me to school and doing silly things for fun on the walk, coming back at the pause, and coming back to search me when school ended).

I think I only accomplished any of that because I was a kid before kids having their own computers was a thing. So I had nothing but time to spend and all the patience an 8-15 year old could muster. Once I got a job and could drive places, I never really taught any more tricks.

My cats love it. In fact I've found that most indoor-only cats do, as they have to spend their energy on something.

I used to play fetch the ball with our cat, somehow I had managed to teach him to bring the ball back. And about 4 months ago we got a border collie and the cat now best best likes to watch how the bc fetches the ball, it's like he's watching a TV show.

I played fetch with my male cat with very few breaks for an entire sunday back in 2005, which i remember because we were watching NFL games for a considerable part of the time.

Our Siamese cat absolutely loves to fetch and fetches more reliably and to your hand far better than our German Shepherd ever did.

mine does! it seems to be an inherited trait, since you can see some of his ancestors marked as "fetchers"

playing fetch is normal for kittens

My cat fetches, very consistently. Most days I make him run and leap over things to fetch a throwing toy that he likes. I've known two others that do too.

My cat defends me too, or at least fights off the local strays at the door. But he just likes to fight in general.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com