Cats are (almost) liquid
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I just skimmed, but I didn’t see any mention whiskers. It’s seems to me that cats can make highly precise measurements of width just by sticking their heads in a space, but height judgments requires additional consideration.
> Wiskers are mentioned, but using the scientific name - vibrissae
Their whiskers are a major factor in their perception.
I think they can also dislocate their spine.
My cat likes to sit in what we call his "Buddha" position, with his back bent about 90 degrees, and his paws in front. This seems to be a common position. He'll sit like that for an hour.
The smartest one that we've had is a Cyprus (looking) cat. She's incredibly athletic, has fantastic spatial awareness, and is a murder-machine if given the opportunity.
I don't think that's what you meant to say. Or maybe it is.
Cats also tend to be extremely picky about the feel of the litter in their litter boxes because their paws are extremely sensitive (like walking on your finger tips). Not to mention their sensitivity for smell (flehmen response and affection for well-worn clothes or backpacks).
I think cats just generally tend towards some form of hypersensitivity and the distress of anything you put on them can come from any number of places. No wonder so many seem to suffer from some kinds of neuroses.
They are just trying to back out of it. This is also their reaction when you first put a collar on them too, until they get used to it.
You got me thinking about this, as I've dealt with a number of sick kitties / foster kitties, etc but we've always used a paper plate with a hole in the middle in lieu of a purpose-made plastic cone. So thinking out loud here, our solution might not have been more generally affordable but also had the benefit of not interfering with whiskers.
The cone is pretty much a giant scoop, and cats sniff the litter to find the right spot before doing their business. You can see where this is going. She would take some of the litter with her each time.
On top of missing her tail, she is also missing a few teeth (I'd like to point out that she came like that) so she drools when she sleeps. The litter + drool makes a hardened mess on the cone, which required constant cleaning.
0/10, do not recommend.
You've just reminded me of watching the family cat when I was a child, wanting to squeeze himself into the gap between the end of a sofa and the wall. He tested the gap with his whiskers a couple of times - nope, too narrow. Then the lightbulb moment - he turned just his head sideways, and tested again. Plenty of room! So he rammed himself into the gap. And got stuck.
Now I think of cats more like amorphous blobs with some hard bits stuck on. I think anyone who owns a cat will know what I mean by this.
I have no clue how that is even possible.
Wish both of you a happy and derpy life together.
Taken from: https://www.gq.com/story/aleksei-goloborodko-real-life-diet
Is this really just a matter of stretching? I read the article and he sums it down to he needs to stretch every day (he said himself thst his diet doesn't matter too much) He was also in the circus since 4, but this doesn't seems like something I could do in a lifetime of practice.
$ meme init
meme template initiatedI like to think I always know if there might be some voles in my boxes and cabinets.
"Chicken" as a synonym for "total, utter coward" is slander. Yes, running is their first play, but they do not just roll over and die like a sheep or a rabbit; if running isn't working they can and do fight back for all they are worth. And they don't have to be "backed into a corner" and only fight if it's the absolute last option, it just has to be as I phrased it: "running isn't working".
We were worried their cat would attack our chicken at some point, until one day we saw their cat running for its life while a small chicken chases after it trying to keep up with the agile predator using its tiny chicken legs.
From that day forward the neighbor's cat understood its place in the pecking order.
A chicken is literally a dinosaur.
Genius phrasing!
The other thing I remember is that brushing down horses was kind of fun - though I'll be honest at the end of the day I never really trusted those animals; they were just too damn big for my tastes.
Cat 1: Fairly timid, very cautious cat, is remarkably light-footed. If she jumps on my bed and starts wandering along my back while I'm trying to sleep you barely notice she's there... that is until she has started hitting me in the face with her paw.
Cat 2: Smaller more hardy cat is a bit more heavy footed, slightly less cautious, but she seems to make some attempt to be light footed.
Cat 3: By far our biggest cat - and also the offspring of Cat #2. Does not try to be light footed at all. He just stomps around. If he climbs on to me, will put all his weight on his front 2 paws, and causes immense discomfort, as he stands there figuring out what he wants to do.
I love them all the same
After a few days of recovery and starting to get comfortable, he started to snooze and literally poured off the couch, like a bag of beans... and he loved to stretch in my lap while I coded, putting up with all the typing & mousing... Truly liquid, indeed! Wonderful little guy, I still miss him.
Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes
Less than themselves; will not be pinned
https://web.archive.org/web/20050203111131/http://bonsaikitt...
Obviously it was a hoax, probably one of the first ones reaching the first generation of internet users. But lots of people fell for it.
If my quick math is correct, for the de Broglie wavelength of a cat to be comparable to its width, it would need to be travelling no faster than about 10^-33 m/s.
"On the Rheology of Cats":
https://www.drgoulu.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Rheology-...
"!!!" I said.
"What?" She shrugged back into cat form.
"You're a shape shifter?"
"All cats are. There's just never any reason to not be a cat."
Except in the case of one very sweet but not exactly brilliant large dog I know that legitimately believes his entire body is just the tip of his nose that he can see. I’ve seen him walk straight through a 2” hole in a screen door, and he will repeatedly try to sit on e.g. a chair armrest and not understand why it doesn’t work.
My wife and I go between two locations, today will be the first time 4 of the cats meet the murder noodle.
The feeding logistics of four, one with a special diet, are difficult. I can't imagine having seven of them long-term, especially the litter boxes. I've fostered kittens before, so I had nine cats in the house and it felt like all I did for those weeks was feed cats and scoop poop.
The reader becomes, in a sense, a greeble.
This paper would have been a fun project for a scientific illustrator.
So instead of the real cat staring at the imaginary greeble, we the reader are the real greeble staring at the imaginary cat. Who is staring back because it can see us.
Detached collarbones is one of the many interesting things I know about cats because of my cat obsessed kid!
"If you have a vertical slit, you're very likely to be an ambush predator," says Banks. That's the kind of animal who lies in wait and then leaps out to kill. He says these predators need to accurately judge the distance to their prey, and the vertical slit has optical features that make it ideal for that.
But that rule only holds if the animal is short, so its eyes aren't too high off the ground, Sprague says."
Ergo, cats have vertical pupils but tigers have round pupils. The tiger can probably judge horizontal distances better than the cat.
1 - https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/08/07/4301496...
It's something about how scientific papers are not "for pleasure", they're informational tools. An easter egg in a game is cool right, but an easter egg in a graphics driver? That's the distinction I'm making here.
Scientific articles are informational tools that report results of experiments and nothing more. If the results are interesting to the peers, they are published. By they are not world's laws made paper unless sufficient replications are made. This means that each article need to be read with the context of the literature in mind and with a critical eye. Each are a single point of evidence to a phenomena.
Hence, there are subjective informational tools, written toward a specific audience (the experts of the domains) to inform of a specific result in a specific case.
On top of that, their are specific journal/issues where these types submissions are allowed. Don't read these submissions if you are looking for serious "information tools"
Scientific literature must be handled the same way as legal literature. If you are not a law expert, you ask a lawyer. If you think you are a legal expert when you are not, surprising consequences may arise.
In universities, they are classes dedicated to handling the scientific literature. They are provided for a reason.
So please, don't use cat's physic for liquid simulation in game engine... or please do?
But in their catalog of articles, one will have the title: Cats are (almost) liquid
And this is cute, slightly funny, but not correct. From an informational standpoint, this is not related to whether or not cats are liquid. From a material standpoint they consist of both solid, liquid and even gaseous substances. (to the extent we can consider co2 a part of their bodily function)
In a newspaper or such, this would not be a problem, you read it, enjoy it, and move on. But not for serious science. A dry and purely objective title is better in that case, just like how a function should be named based on what it does, not based on some meme regarding what it does.
The paper could be named: Awareness of body flexibility among cats. A function should be named get_employee(), not get_luser().
And the reason why this is true, is because the fad of naming a function get_luser() will become "not worth it" the day someone who didn't understand the meme comes across it, and has to ask you about it. Again especially if you're making a driver/library, something to be used by many, not by just yourself or a few others. And also, the "funny" aspect of it will present a mental hurdle. Instead of simply calling get_employee() in your new context, you will be calling get_luser(), and laughing for a bit and thinking about the bofh comics. Train of thought is lost.
The human mind is limited, and attempting to "capture" it attention leads to an attention arms race. And this arms race leads to tiktok. Which is why we use dry naming for serious pursuits.
Speaking from personal experience >:3
https://youtu.be/O7PkYkXdKwc?si=-8BTPVvAK19WVEF
This is like “hey what if this cat video was a research paper”