The first peer-reviewed academic study to investigate and document the internet’s cat-video-proliferation-phenomenon might well [we think] be : ● Do Cats Know They Rule YouTube? Surveillance and the Pleasures of Cat Videos by Radha O’Meara, in the M/C Journal, Vol. 17, Issue 2, 2014. Since then, the prevalence of scholarly investigations which reference internet cat videos […]
Tag: feline
“Cat Typing” – towards a possible remedy
Opportunities for Animal Computer Interactions (ACI) are, it seems, in ascendance : “Take, for instance, the phenomenon where a cat walks on a keyboard when its owner is trying to work. This is called “cat typing”, and it results when the cat wants to be near the owner, and is attracted to the typing motions […]
Flea distributions on stray cats (updated)
“Osbrink and Rust (1985) reported that there was no significant difference in the mean number of fleas collected from any particular area of the cat.” Ref. Osbrink, W.L.A., and M. K. Rust. 1985. Seasonal abundance of adult cat fleas, Ctenocephalides felis (Siphonaptera: Pulicidae) on domestic cats in southern California. Bull Soc Vector Ecol. 1985, 10, […]
Olly the Cat (r.i.p.) and feline politics in organization
“[…] a ginger mackerel tabby cat is sat on a mat at the foot of the marble entrance. It is sat outside the entrance to its own rather imposing mini ‘Berkshire-style’ wooden townhouse that abuts the tinted windows of the concrete and glass steel tower of Olympic House.” [a building at Manchester Airport, UK]. The […]
Fat Cats Disambiguation (tubby tabbies, or….?)
To (very loosely) paraphrase Murphy’s law : “If there’s a chance that something might be misunderstood, someone will come along and misunderstand it.” That’s exactly what happened when Improbable came across a 2010 paper in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, entitled : ‘Novel dietary strategies can improve the outcome of weight loss programmes […]
The physics of skulking and falling cats
Cats may skulk, and cats may fall – but no matter what they do, cats must obey the laws of physics. Scientists have tried repeatedly to figure out how they manage to do it. At the extreme, physicists analysed what happens to a dropped cat. That’s a cat in free-fall, a cat hurtling earthwards with nothing […]