UNMUTE THIS, I BEG YOU

[Transcript:]

Cat: Arr-rar! (weird chirp noise)

Cat: [weird mechanical-sounding hiss]

Cat, while licking finger, in a very gravelly voice: Ah mlem-a-mlem-a-mlem-mlem-a-mlem-a-mlem… mrowr rowrrr…

Person holding camera: I love you.

Cat: [hisses]

wahwah

You WRAP Nettle?! You wrap Nettle like the shawarma?!!? Oh! Oh!!! Jail for human! Jail for one billion years!!!

@donskoi

Tell us your secret oh great kitty whisperer.

Step one: let him hide or shy away from you if he wants to. He wouldn’t let me touch him for a couple days after we got back from the shelter. His comfort was more important than me getting to touch him.

Step two: make yourself nonthreatening. In my case this meant being very quiet, bringing food and lying down on the ground within his eyesight as an invitation to investigate.

Step three: watch his body language and don’t do things that make him uncomfortable. Turns out my cat often bit when he was overstimulated so I made sure not to overwhelm him.

Step four: draw lines, but not with brute force. Even though his biting wasn’t meant to hurt, I wanted to make sure he wouldn’t injure anyone in the future. So I decided when he bit me, I’d yelp “ow!” And then withdraw all physical contact for a few minutes, sometimes leaving the room. Now he never bites, but sometimes he puts his teeth on my hand and then thinks better of it.

Step five: provide a good outlet for destructive behaviors. Aka PLAY WITH HIM, SEVERAL TIMES A DAY.

Step six: be patient.

Step seven: get lucky and somehow pick up the best cat in the entire shelter. I don’t know how it happened but he’s a godsend. He’s literally cuddled me out of a panic attack. We both really needed each other.

This gives me so much fucking anxiety, please kitty keep limbs in the boat

Worry not! This kitty is a bengal!

They’re notorious water lovers and enjoy swimming. Even if he fell in, he’d probably be pretty stoked

*edit: plus it looks like whoever is holding the camera also has the leash looped under that metal bar to catch him if he leans too far

Ma'am your cat is leaking out your boat MA'AM

Always look at the ears!

That cat is fully engaged and is comfortable being there! He’s very excited, so this may be a pretty new thing for him, but he’s not scared. See how his eyes are very wide, taking it all in, but his ears aren’t to the sides, or swiveling? They’re pointed straight ahead, oriented in the direction he’s facing, and ever so slightly out, maybe picking up some sound reflections from the water? It must be very neat for him to experience! He trails his paws in the water so he can feel it (that water is very calm and cats can’t see water very well, he’s probably trying to feel where and how deep it is). (That’s my opinion, anyhow, I’m not an expert, just had buttloads of cats.)

And his owner does seem to have put him on a short enough lead that if he fell in, his head would still be above water and he’d be fine. Although, as the above commenter stated, he’s a Bengal, the leash is probably there to keep him from going in on purpose.