Cat becomes angry when its potato is misplaced

[Video Link] If someone moved my potato I'd be mad, too. (Via Arbroath)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

I love everything about this.. the kitty’s feigned outrage (& insistance on results!), the genial and delighted banter between the humans, and their laughter.

Also: a potato hunting cat–Jonoathan Franzen would be pleased!
doggo

That’s not an angry cat. That’s a cat playing with a potato, a potato it wishes it was something more lively and tastier than a potato, like a mouse, or an anole.
wylkyn

That’s not an “angry” cat. That’s a “playing” cat.

Place any object that a cat sees as a toy in a hard-to-get spot and the cat will attempt to retrieve it. The more difficult it is to get, the more excited the cat will get. Our cat loves it when a plastic bottle cap gets lodged in a small space – hours of fun pouncing, desperately scrabbling at it, leaping away like the bottle cap was about to defend itself. If I try to help by freeing the stuck object, I get no thanks – she gives a cursory sniff at the now boring toy and then walks away.
Jack

Now Iâ€™m hungry for cat and potato stew. Damn you BoingBoing!
Antinous / Moderator

Bitch, your potato looks fine to me!
KatoKitty

I agree with the others who say this is “playing cat”, not “angry cat”. My 6-month old kitten plays like this too. Her favourite toy is a ball of scrunched up tin foil. There are several scattered around my flat and she dashes happily around, batting at a ball like she’s a feline Ronaldo. She seems happiest when the ball gets lodged underneath something or behind a door. The look of sheer happiness on her little face is a joy to behold.

And like Wylkin mentioned, don’t retrieve the toy. Cats love working out the puzzle.
Anonymous

I kanz haz tater now? If you lived cooped up inside all the time you’d go bonkers too.

Must be an Irish kitty.
Anonymous

Man, he loves the spud!
Paul Dreyer

Devo cat is afraid nobody around here understands its potato.
- ackpht
  
  I think it’s only a spud cat, looking for that REAL tomato.
  
  (amped cat = chase anything)
Anonymous

Methinks the order of this video has been switched; cat removes potato and it rolls to door, on camera. Woman THEN puts it back in the… bin. Cat goes away and does cat stuff, off camera. Less interesting than the idea of an anal-retentive cat however.
- Jerril
  
  Owning a cat, I suspect not.
  
  I took the razor guard off a new disposable razor and put it on the side of the tub.
  
  My cat hopped up and casually batted it down off the tub side. I picked it up and put it back.
  Cat stares at the piece of plastic, then bats it off. Same paw, same direction. I smother a snigger and pick it up, put it back.
  Cat bats it off with more vigor (“I’ll show you!”). I catch it and put it back.
  Cat WHACKS it, sending it flying. I pick it up and put it back.
  
  I’ve played this game with a toddler in a highchair, so I thought I knew the rules. Turns out, I was RUINING the feng shui or something because after she knocks it down, the frustrated cat ATTACKS my fingers as I put it back again, then uses the OTHER paw to whack it in a DIFFERENT direction (hoping for better results I suppose).
  
  I put it back.
  
  Cat freaks out, verbally abuses me, and storms out of the bathroom.
  
  It started out fun, but then it got personal :)
askjacob

I saw the watermark as “supavapid” not “supavid” – which while also amusing is also somewhat correct :)

Don’t get me wrong – vapid video is almost exactly what I see as the ‘correct’ use of the internet, and passed a dull day wonderfully.
Anonymous

My cats go crazy over potatoes, all kinds of potatoes. I have to put them up first thing when I’m home from the store because otherwise they’ll end up all over the house scratched up, bruised and bitten. Sometimes I give them one, it keeps them occupied for a good hour.
billstewart

Saw a book on the shelf the other day called “Who Moved My Mouse”, parodying the corporatist parables about change…
daen

*Definitely* a cat having fun. They are cute scary little hunters. However, I always wonder how cute we’d think they were if they were, say, ten times bigger (or we were ten times smaller …)
pjcamp

Clearly, the French need more TV channels.
gwailo_joe

The potato obviously belongs in that spot.

Feng shui, architectural dynamics and just plain good sense demands it.
skeletoncityrepeater

Yeah, this is just a game the cat loves to play. Most wouldn’t do ‘extreme bin-diving’, but put an object underneath a floor mat and any cat will hunt it like it’s the craziest little prey in the world.
Chang

IN SOVIET RUSSIA POTATO MISPLACES YOU!!!
- mellowknees
  
  1,000 internet points for that, Chang! Too hilarious.
  
  I love cats. Their utter illogic (in our eyes) is almost always hilarious.
technogeek

As others have said: Not angry, just playing. Think of cats as having about the intelligence of a 2-year-old; they love the “hide it and find it and pretend to lose it and find it and pretend it’s running away and hunt it down” game, and In and Out are still interesting concepts to them. They’ll make this more dramatic than it has to be while being quite aware that it’s make-believe.

One of mine loves to “hunt” a small plastic frog. She knows it isn’t self-motivating… but it looks like it ought to be, and that’s good enough for her to bat it around, put it into her box, chase it as if it was running around the box rather than being batted by her, hid it under things and try to find it again by touch. (She’s trying to teach me to play this game with her; I’m trying to teach her to retrieve instead. We’re both being partly successful.)

All of which is good hunting practice, of course. Which may be why evolution has made it fun for her. She’d be even happier if it was actively trying to run and hide, and moving unexpectedly; that would be more of a challenge. (When a well-fed cat hunts a mouse it isn’t being “cruel” — mouse is just one of the world’s best cat toys, at least until its batteries run down or the cat breaks it.)

They’re both currently Watching me, waiting for me to do something amusing…
noah django

yo, I heard that this cat can also count… TO POTATO!
Anonymous

fuckin a, I wish I wasn’t allergic to cats
Anonymous

Haven’t met a cat yet who didn’t go berserk over potatoes.