Best video for cats I've ever seen

June 18, 2024 4:32 AM

YouTube video from Paul Birder titled "Cat games mouse hide & seek, squeaking and playing for cats to watch".
posted by amtho (21 comments total)

There are more.
posted by amtho at 4:33 AM on June 18

Finnsie says thank you and she wants to go to there. (Cat tax.)
posted by humbug at 4:48 AM on June 18 [5 favorites]

This seems like a bizarre video to [be able to] monetize, given the intended audience.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:49 AM on June 18

Thus proving the classic truth that on the internet, nobody knows you're a cat.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:44 AM on June 18 [6 favorites]

I put a bird version of one of these on a while back and had to stop because our cat was going to wreck the place trying to get at them.
posted by jquinby at 5:51 AM on June 18 [5 favorites]

This was extremely compelling content. The Mayor is still trying to get at where the mice were.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 6:04 AM on June 18 [2 favorites]

Spike the Cat loves these videos. We no longer put them on the TV because we worried that she'd knock it over. If I'm playing games on my computer, though, she'll jump on my desk, and wait for me to put her games on the second monitor so we can both play. It's been a bonding experience.
posted by Spike Glee at 6:19 AM on June 18 [7 favorites]

I used to have a game for my cat on my iPad. It was an animation of a mouse bouncing around “inside” the screen of the iPad. It would squeak every time my cat would bat at the screen. My cat seemed highly entertained by it.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:02 AM on June 18 [3 favorites]

The sound of the mice thunking onto the floor brought me to a horrible realization. For some reason I just didn't that kind of sound = mice. Ugh.
posted by HotToddy at 7:42 AM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Cordelia LOVES these videos, and we did in fact have a near miss at my mother's house while we were packing and I put the TV on for her and as I left the room there was an enormous crash as she bounced off the 50" TV and took out a jar of change on the way down. So she only gets them on the ipad (where she invariably touches the screen and has on several occasions nearly left comments) or an old laptop now. This is a video of her that day, wrestling her pickle kicker while she watches her stories.

(We also can't watch Girl With The Dogs when she grooms cats, if they make any noise, because Cordy paces around the TV looking for a fight.)
posted by Lyn Never at 7:47 AM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Can confirm, a very large cat with a tiny lil peanut brain is more than a match for any type of upright screen or tv. He WANTS that thing and knows it's behind the screen. Horizontal clutter is my only defense.
posted by winesong at 8:08 AM on June 18 [2 favorites]

I think putting this on the projector would be very bad and result in Greg hanging by her claws from the projector screen, slowly ripping great trenches in the fabric. I mean it would be hilarious. But also expensive.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:15 AM on June 18 [1 favorite]

"sound is recorded separately with many of professional mic like rode NTG"

I mean, what other mic could you possible use for that than the RODE NT(g)!
posted by bigendian at 8:47 AM on June 18 [4 favorites]

My cats love these, but nth-ing that you need to be careful with your TV.

One of my cats will also chew on the corners of my iPad if I put on one of those mouse games Thorzdad mentions.
posted by misskaz at 8:56 AM on June 18 [1 favorite]

My kitty Luna (RIP) used to enjoy these kinds of videos, so I would put them on a propped-up iPad from time to time. The flaw in this plan is that she would bat at the rodents and birds, and the capacitive screen would register the paws as a pause command.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 10:20 AM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Ok, that is the very first time that I have ever seen Frankie pay any kind of real attention at all to a screen.

And she's an outdoor/indoor forest cat that has plenty of stimulation and she's seen a lot of nature documentaries with me and at best might casually stare at the screen sometimes.

She was half asleep and curled up next to me in bed when I put the video on and now she's very awake and going nuts. She even did the whole stand up and look behind the screen thing and was probably about to cronch on the corner of my laptop screen. I turned off the video and moved and she was just like "No bring that back that's mine now!"

I'm actually mildly worried I just gave her kitty crack and woke something up in her, because she's been good about not bringing me presents for almost a year.
posted by loquacious at 10:36 AM on June 18 [2 favorites]

We have gotten our cats addicted to YouTube. They sit and yell at us in the morning until we get up, go into the kitchen, and turn on the cat video channels on YouTube.

If we do not, they throw things on the floor and are generally belligerent until it gets turned on.

We had to develop a cat proof box that the iPad could fit in that they can't knock over because otherwise they would knock it over and come yell until we fixed it so they could watch more.

There's a lesson here in terms of using screen as a stand-in for something something something, but I'm not sure what it is.

Either way it's adorable to have cats who have a screen time addiction. Once they get their fill in the morning, they go about their day doing cat things (looking out the window, sleeping, eating, wandering the land), so I don't thiiiiink it's causing brain damage.
posted by Lord_Pall at 11:21 AM on June 18 [2 favorites]

My cat has gotten sort of jaded about the usual Cat TV bird videos, but this one absolutely galvanized her--many thanks for posting it!
posted by Kat Allison at 11:31 AM on June 18 [1 favorite]

My rescue kitty says meow! (I'm pretty sure that's unterpreted as two paws up.)
posted by mightshould at 2:09 PM on June 18 [2 favorites]

ok i tried it and Greg did get up on the credenza and get very long and tall and put her paws on the screen to touch the mice. no damage. i think this is a sometimes treat.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:19 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

My former cat, Small, loved the videos on the TV BINI channel. They got the rodent pitch just right; as soon as we started one of their videos, she'd race right over.

A few weeks ago, we hung a bird feeder in sight of the window, and Snow loves the live show. We've had a clear window-mounted feeder for a while, but Snow has managed to chase away any birds who dared try to eat from there.
posted by cheshyre at 5:22 PM on June 18