Cat needs to learn water conservation

Here is a random cute cat video. I pass it on because it's adorable.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: cats • cuteness • lol • video • water

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http://twitter.com/BettinaTizzy Beverly Millson

A fave of mine.
esquire

yo, cat – if it’s yellow, you gotta let it mellow. Only if it’s brown may you flush it down.
MooseDesign

s-cat-alogical behavior.
eljefe900

This plus a litter quitter and you are set.
- http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch
  
  My dumb >^..^^..^< can't seem to get it into their fuzzheads that when the litter quitter moves through the door threshold to the bathroom, that it's the same thing they've been using when it was in the other room.
  - http://halljake.com Jake Hall
    
    Are you moving it slowly enough? Cats are creatures of habit. If you move it slowly enough (so they can’t notice any change from the day before) you should be able to get them to go in the bathroom and eventually the toilet. I think litter quitter recommends an inch per day.
    - http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch
      
      An inch per day! No wonder my cats couldn’t find the thing. I’ll try moving it slower!
Mr. Son

Oh wow, that’s a pretty old one. Nice to see it again. I forgot to add it to my favorites the first time.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  Time for it to make the rounds again to amuse the couple billion n00bs who’ve joined the webtubes since ’06.
http://twitter.com/henrybaum Henry Baum

Yes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFp1z7uA6g
Geoduck

Now if he can just claw the toilet paper into the bowl so it gets sucked down with every flush..
technogeekagain

Makes sense. Most of us were fascinated by running water, and by pushing buttons, as toddlers.

Keeping the lid down removes most of the reward and goes a long way toward discouraging the behavior. Not to mention making the women in the house happier.

(My cats will bat at the flush lever since they’ve seen me hit it, but they don’t make the effort needed to actually flush. On the other hand, since they love the dripping sink, I’ve delayed fixing that.)
dragonfrog

I remember when my I first learned that my parents’ cat did this.

I was about 11 or 12 years old, and home alone except for the cat, of course. For context, the toilet window at my parents’ place looks out over a the kitchen roof. A few years before, a burglar had tried to break into the house by getting onto the kitchen roof and breaking my bedroom window (we got home just as this was happening, the burglar heard us coming in and ran).

It took a while for my heart rate to return to normal once I realized what was happening…
Brood-X

If I were a neighbor in their line and heard this I would be both totally annoyed and concerned about what is going on in my neighbor’s apartment. I might suspect that they could be engaged in some type of illicit activity, say a meth lab, and possibly disposing of hazmat. I would not hesitate to report this to the authorities. But that’s just me. Others might think ‘oh, they probably have a pet cat that likes to flush the toilet like the ones I see on YouTube.’
- Finnagain
  
  I’m glad we’re not neighbors.
- http://twitter.com/haikutweeter haiku tweeter
  
  The leap from a repeatedly flushing toilet to meth debris is not one that (for me) readily comes to mind.
  
  I can’t help wondering what unfortunate incidents in your background could lead to this association. No criticism, just a little… hmm.
  - http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
    
    I’m guessing living in Detroit
- dragonfrog
  
  If you’re pouring liquid waste down the toilet, you only need to flush once, to clear the last of it from the bowl The rest drains on its own by gravity. Go get yourself a big pail of water and test it yourself.
David Kopelman

The funniest part was when that cat flushed the toilet.
BarBarSeven

Cat flushing the toilet don’t care. Cat flushing the toilet don’t give a shit. Cat flushing the toilet just takes what it wants.
http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

He doesn’t care if he’s wasting water. He likes to push the handle and watch the water go down.

Also, the things you should never teach a cat are to flush the toilet and to open the freezer.
- Susan Carley Oliver
  
  My poodle can open the refrigerator.
  
  How did I discover this?
  
  I feed my dogs a raw diet, and came home to a bloody mess throughout the house one day. And what he hadn’t eaten he’d buried. In my down comforter.
.

It really isn’t too far a leap to imagine where the Kilrathi came from. ;)
BombBlastLightingWaltz

My cat knows to jump on the floor very close to the computer to make the C driver skip and crash or walk across the key board and muck things up, but only when he is hunger or lonesome, other wise he ignores me.
MandoZink

All of our cats used to like to watch the water flush. Luckily, they did not discover the toilet paper roll. Unfortunately, our newly adopted stray(indoor cat #6) did discover the roll. Now we only let her enjoy the flush. None of them ever learned to operate the handle.
EH

This is actually a problem when you teach your cat to use the toilet as a litter box. You don’t want to teach them how to flush, or they’ll do it all the time.
- Paul Renault
  
  Or don’t leave the lid up – thus removing the incentive to flush.
  
  And a possible death trap for kittens.
  - EH
    
    How does a cat use the toilet as a litter box with the lid down? Cats using the toilet is a useful thing, the flushing not so much.
http://twitter.com/mbaldelli Michael Baldelli

Nice to see that this one (more than 5 years old) is still being circulated… Go go gadget Viral Video.
cdh1971

My observation…cats love whirlpools, cats love pressing buttons that make things happen, like garage door buttons they can reach by jumping on things (over & over & over.)

When I watched this video I saw an amusing cat at first glance…at second I thought of the attached pics.

(man-apes from 2001 Space Odyssey w/monolith.)