Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

  • Boundegar

    What do you mean sweet?  That awful cat is killing that snow to death!

  • redjade

    Nice!

    But our 9 month kitten’s first experience with snow is cuter – so there!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7gBdo1QbmI

    • EH

      Watching snow from inside isn’t quite the same thing as this.

      • redjade

        he’s a very bourgeois kitty, even at 9 months

        • EH

          You know that “bourgeois” isn’t a compliment, right?

          And no, a cat watching snow is not cuter than a cat playing in show. Sorry.

      • kiwidebz

          You couldn’t let this one out – you’d never see it again!

  • Conan Librarian

    Why is the internet so obsessed with cats? 

    • EH

      Dogs need their diapers changed every few hours so they don’t lend themselves to people who sit in front of a computer.

      • Jake0748

        I saw a post on FB a couple days ago that speaks to this issue.

        Q:  What would be hardest to explain about contemporary life to someone visiting from, say, 1950?

        A:  I carry a device in my pocket that gives me access to pretty much the sum of human knowledge… I use it to look at pictures of cats and argue with strangers.

    • AnthonyC

      Not obsessed with. Made of. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8VTeDHjcM

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

    This makes me wish my old cat was still around. He never did get introduced to snow, but he loved it when I’d turn on the sink. He’d try to catch the water. 

  • dragonfrog

    Our cats, being old hands (paws?) at snow, have a different approach.

    They meow at the door to be let out, as they do all year.  As soon as the inner door starts to open they shrink back and start to assess their escape options; as the outer door opens they run either down the basement stairs or back into the house.  By the third round of this game, they will start to hide under the couch or on a chair hidden by a tablecloth, to make it more bother than it’s worth to boot them out.

    If I manage to get a foot behind their butt before they make their escape, they compress like a spring – the front half doesn’t move out the door, even as my foot pushes the back half forward.

    What gets me is that they clearly already know as they’re asking that they don’t really plan on going out.

    • vonbobo

      “What gets me is that they clearly already know as they’re asking that they don’t really plan on going out.”

      That’s called Kitty Games in my house.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      they compress like a spring

      Until you reach maximum compression and the back end lifts off the floor.

  • Roose_Bolton

    I live with two of these monsters. Their poop contains something that makes me cross streets without checking for traffic, they shred all my carpet, and puke on everything but the ceiling. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t oooh and ahhh myself to death.

    • Roose_Bolton

      Kidding, this is actually kinda cool. They’re still monsters, however.

    • http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan

      Then feed them better. My cat’s poop only stinks if I have to give him store-bought food. On a diet of nothing but ground bird, there’s almost no smell.

      • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

        Unless I’m mistaken Roose’s comment has nothing to do with smell, but rather is alluding to the fact that cat shit can contain toxoplasmosis (a parasitic disease) which can cause humans and other animals to engage in risk taking behaviour.

        • http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan

          Oh yeah, I see that now. He was too subtle for the me of that moment. I took it as a humorous way of saying ‘deeply repulsive’. My bad.

          I doubt anything I do in terms of my cat’s diet helps with that issue, although I would imagine that not having a litter box helps mitigate the odds of transmission somewhat.

          • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

            When my wife got pregnant multiple doctors warned us of the risk of kitty litter and toxoplasmosis. On the flip-side two vets told us that cats unfairly get blamed for most cases of toxoplasmosis in humans then informed us that cats can only transmit the disease for short periods, once in their lives before their immune system kills it off and stops it spreading from their faeces again. The vets both argued that gardening without gloves is the most common way for people to catch the disease, simply because garden beds are full of different animals crap, in Australia mainly possums.

            I’ve no idea whether the doctors or the vets were more correct.

  • Rickenbacker4001

    I showed my contractor in China this video and he was confused on how clean and pristine our snow is.
    Well, back to goofing off…

    • oasisob1

      Didn’t you get fired from that job for spending all day on Reddit, etc?

  • BethanyAnne

    Hehe “I know there’s a mouse under here somewhere!”

    • chaopoiesis

      This is what art museums should be like.

    • Eric Hill

      It really does look like it’s chasing something under the snow the way it stops and listens and then jumps.

  • IronEdithKidd

    Every cat I’ve ever had:  step gingerly into snow, front paws only, pick one paw up, look at snow with WTF face, shake paw vigorously, run like hair is on fire back into the house.

    • BillStewart2012

      When one of my cats first went out the front door and encountered snow, she stuck her paw in it, meowed “Hey!”, came back inside and went to the back door to go out.  And there was snow there too!  WTF!

      As a friend of mine put it, she was looking for the door into summer….

      • http://beautifulsynthesis.com Andrea

        Our old cat Olympia was the same way. For him it was rain: if it was raining at the front door, he’d have to try the back door, too. “Door into summer”, I like that!

        He didn’t mind snow so much. He’d take a step, shake the snow off his paws, take another step, shake off more snow…

  • rocketpjs

    My cat has been known to door shop – if the weather looks crappy out the front door he heads to the back hoping for a better result.  

  • ObeyMyBrain

    The camera work is freaking me out man…with it’s unnatural smoothness and weird vortex like warping when it’s panned quickly.

    • http://twitter.com/j0nny5 Jon Rodriguez

      Just the way some smartphone/small device lenses work; they focus by running a current through a sealed-in gel in front of the lens to change its composition, something called “electrowetting”. It can cause a “wobble” effect when the lens is moved suddenly while recording video. More info here: http://www.varioptic.com/technology/liquid-lens-autofocus-af/

    • evanplus

      it’s youtube’s de-shaking filter.

  • James Mason

    Reminded me of the first time my daughter (then 2) saw a snowstorm – lots of big fat flakes slowly coming down.  She looked around in amazement and yelled “BEEES!!!”

  • franko

    your move, snow-loving dogs.

  • SomeGuyNamedMark

    My cat likes to lick the snow.  “Errrm, snow cone!”

  • mike wolf

    cats are definitely people.

  • kiwidebz

    I love how, about 1:37, cat thinks “Ohhhhhh… it’s coming from the skyyyyy….!”

    • Sparg

       That’s why I thought the cat was smacking the snow, seeing the flakes and batting anything that moves.

  • Paul Renault

    At the house before this one, on mild Winter days, the red squirrel which lived in the nearest tree used to root around the snow for food.  When the snow wasn’t very deep and was powdery, I used to watch him/her burrow through the snow, à la Bugs Bunny, stop and then pop up with a maple key in hand, split it open and eat.

    I wished I had had a video camera to film it, it was pretty funny to watch.

  • allenmcbride

    This is great. It reminds me that the folk harpist Amy White has a tune called “St. Clair’s First Snow”, about her cat’s corresponding experience.

  • Vian Lawson

    I wonder what the cat’s reaction was when she got back inside, and found that she was WET?  “What sorcery is this?  I was dry outside, and I haven’t been near my water bowl … ”

  • ymr049c

    ‘Touch ALL the snow!’

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=847810626 Jesse Nikolic

    I too read Reddit.

    • Nate Foote

      I, however, don’t. 

      I’m happy my joy to see the video negated your jaded ennui.

  • smut clyde

    BAD SNOW.The snow must be PUNISHED.

  • http://thisisonlya.blogspot.com robcat2075

    Cute cat videos… saving the internet every day.

    On cats and doors.  I have a back door with a cat port my cats can enter and exit any time they want. But if I’m in the kitchen, one of the cats will insist on being let out the kitchen door even though it’s only a 20-foot difference from the cat port door.

  • Ed Ligget. Tuba.

    To borrow a phrase from the video game culture…that snow got pwned.

  • http://twitter.com/chrisjimson chris jimson

    I think I’ve watched this three times now.  Sure it’s just a cat, but. . . I dunno, the phrase “joie de vivre” comes to mind.

  • http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan “bytehead” Price

    I would love to watch my cats play in the snow.  They would be amazed by it.  Although I wonder how they would take the cold, first.  Florida just isn’t conducive to snow.

    Now, when I was growing up in Ohio, the (white) cat would wait for our beagle dog to go out first, just to make a path for him to go out and do his duty, especially if it was a big snow.

  • Gloo

    Cute ! My cat was nicknamed “snowplow” as he had the habit of pushing the snow with it’s head while running. That was hilarious and I wish I could’ve filmed that (he’s now passed away).

  • http://twitter.com/Brimshack northierthanthou.com

    Bwahahha! That’s great.

  • http://twitter.com/coherent_light Scott Elyard

    How excellent!

  • kayskitty

    Watching this video brought tears to my eyes. My Ms. Kitty, a white calico with a dense undercoat, LOVED the snow! She did all that in the video and ‘snowplowed’, slid around and would jump into it. We had a detached garage and we would make a foot path with our boots so she could go out to her favorite place and go into the pet door there,where she had warm blankets to snuggle in. We would watch her jump off the deck into ‘really deep snow’ and watch for her red and black spots to pop up. ;) She also loved chasing snow balls that would disappear. te he She’d stay out nearly all day. Rain didn’t bother her either, it would just run off her like a duck, until someone would touch her to the skin and seemed to penetrate her shield. Boy, what a dirty looked I’d get. I had her for 18 yrs. and passed 3 yrs. ago. I love this video! :)