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Saturday 8 October 2022

Domestic cat's instinctive desire to entertain themselves based on hunting

This charming, short, video of a ginger tabby cat playing on a loose flagstone and with water is novel in my opinion. It shows a domestic cat instinctively using his hunting skills to entertain himself through play. 

And he's observed that when he pounces onto a corner of the flagstone water is ejected. The pouncing behaviour is reminiscent of the hunting technique of the serval which often hunts for small prey animals such as rodents in long grass. 

Domestic cat's instinctive desire to entertain themselves based on hunting
Domestic cat's instinctive desire to entertain themselves based on hunting. Screenshot.

The serval picks up the sound of these rodents even though they can't see them and then leaps into the air and stuns the animal when they make contact with the ground.

This 'stunning technique' is very clear in this video. The cat is effectively hunting, and it is not clear to him why the water is being ejected upwards as the flagstone squashes it underneath, forcing it out and up.

It is a variation on play-hunting in using whatever is available as a "toy". It caught my eye but please note that this is an embedded video from the Reddit.com website which may well end up being converted to a link to that website or the video may disappear. If that happens, I'm sorry but I have no control over this.

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