Comment on It must tremble

• nyctre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Well, they probably mean that it feels like more work for us because we also have other shit to do, we’re tired, etc. while the cats only sleep and eat the rest of the time. And also, depending on the cat, sometimes they just hide in a corner for a few minutes, run after the toy for 3 seconds then they hide again for a minute, then they run again for 3 seconds and so on. Meanwhile you keep trying to entice them and they’re just sitting there while you dance for them with the toy.

  Also, from what I’ve read, unless you’re using treats at the same time as a reward sort of thing, lasers might be stressful for the cats because they don’t get to catch anything.

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  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I mean… I have had a cat, and played with it in the manner I described till he got too old for that sort of thing.

    It did not to me seem at all that I was putting in 900x the effort, either in physical energy terms, or mental effort / discipline and dedication terms, or both those combined.

    Maybe… a roughly equivalent amount of combined mental and physical energy?

    …

    And yes, my cat would also wait hidden for periods of time… its part of their hunting strategy. Just pretend you aren’t there, and then when a sense of safety has come about… strike swiftly with the element of surprise.

    Cats… are generally solo, stealthy predators, after all. A … stealth, glass cannon, low durability berserker build, to try to mangle it into video game terms. Capable of intense bursts of extreme athleticism, but also requiring significant down time to recharge.

    Sort of the opposite of the human hunting strategy of using pure raw stamina to chase down prey over long periods of time, in group coordination with other humans, and then basically just finish off an animal as it is basically having a heart attack from redlining itself for too long.

    …

    To me, I made it into a game: learn my kitty’s strategy, bait it and goad it accordingly… leaving some grace for him to enjoy actually catching and monching on it, but also challenging him with new patterns and movements, introduced gradually.

    If kitty is either utterly uninterested… or just waiting for you to rope-a-dope yourself into exhaustion, and then he grabs it when you are tired… congratulations, you have been tactically outsmarted by a cat lol.

    The cat has managed its stamina levels and recharge rates better than you have managed your own.

    …

    I just set aside a few 30 minute blocks each day, or at least most days, to just set up some music, and do nothing other than play with kitty.

    Like how a dog owner might set up an hour or so every couple of days to take a dog on a walk.

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    • nyctre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Yeah, I know, I agree. But it’s a joke, ofc it’s exaggerated. Nobody is seriously saying it’s that much effort to play with a cat. At least I hope not

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      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Well, on one hand, I am Autistic, I default to literal concrete meanings without fairly explicitly clear context indicating otherwise.

        On the other hand… seems to me that just sort of broadly, generally, everyone is kind of… a combination of losing their minds and becoming hyperbolic as a default (due to massive stress of hypercapitalism collapsing living standards)…

        …while also there is a massive trend that… basically the post-irony language/humor style of Zoomers has imploded, and nobody can really tell who is or is not joking any more, everything is a Schrödinger’s shitpost whose ‘true’ meaning is nebulous until it is observed and commented on.

        I used to be able to tell what were jokes, irony, satire… took me a long time to learn all the nuances.

        And then basically that all just collapsed in the last couple of years.

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