Stuff You Should Know - Our cats episode - right here, right meow

Episode Date: April 6, 2016

Cats are the most popular pet in the United States, despite the fact that we've only been keeping them indoors for 50-60 years. Learn about more cat facts in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's to the great American settlers. The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills. Of course, there is something else you could do if you got something to say. Start a podcast with Spreaker from iHeart and unleash your creative freedom. Maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your old boss, hey, I'm no settler. I'm an explorer. Spreaker.com, S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R.

That's a lot over today. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Start building your website today at Squarespace.com and are offered code STUFF at checkout and you will get 10% off. Squarespace, set your website apart. Tour, tour, tour, tour, live shows, live shows, da-da-da-da, da-da, tour. It's baseball season. Yeah, that's right, it is.

That means we're going on tour, right? Yeah. Josh, Seattle and Portland are sold out. I know. We'll see you guys there. Denver, Colorado, you are very close to selling out. Yeah. Colorado, Denver is like right there, right?

And then Houston. Right there. Houston's doing okay. It's respectable, but it's definitely, Denver was like, give us those tickets. Yeah. And I got to say, Houston, we really stuck our neck out for you after Dallas and Austin. We heard from a lot of Houstonites about how big your city is. So prove it.

Oh. So they call filming on the gauntlet, Chuck. And we have two more shows to announce. Is that correct, sir? That's right. We are doing night one and night two at the Bell House in New York City. That's right. In Brooklyn, New York, Bell House has been our home there for many years.

Yeah. And these... We're coming back home. Yeah, these are very special shows because they're smaller than places we've been playing. And we love it there. And I think it's... I think it's going to be pretty great. Yeah.

So that's June 29th and June 30th, and tickets go on sale Friday, this Friday. That is correct. And we will have links at our Squarespace website, sysklive.com. Make sure you buy tickets to the correct night that you want to go. Oh yeah. And it's going to be the same show both nights, right? It'll be the same show both nights. And now all I need are tickets from Lin-Manuel Miranda to go see Hamilton on Broadway.

Oh yeah. Sure. Sign me up for those as well, please. That's a pretty tough ticket to get. So if you're a listener, sir, you can come to our show. Yeah. Oh yeah, totally. Even though it conflicts with the Hamilton performance.

Skip it. Yeah. That's what I say. That's what I say. So like we said, sysklive.com, powered by Squarespace, so you can find all the tour deeds. Yeah. We'll see you soon, Brooklyn. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Yeah. I'm Josh Clark. Meow. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Wow. And Jerry's over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast.

The annoying podcast, apparently. The what? The annoying podcast. Cat meowing is annoying to you. Oh, it's like there's rusty nails in my blood vessels. You don't like cats, do you? No, I'm just kidding. I don't climb with cats.

I think people are like, I hurt cats. Or conversely, people are like, I hurt dogs. I think those people are weird. Maybe not humans. Yeah. I mean, I get the preference. I have both, as you know, and as everyone knows. Two dogs, two cats.

Sure. And I'm going to be talking about my cats a lot, so. Loran and the Wiz. The wizard, yeah. Right. I call him the Wiz. It's my pet name for him. No, we call him the Wiz.

Oh, OK. Or Wizzled with an L. I haven't reached the point where he's comfortable with me calling him that. Oh, sure, he is. Well, we have tons of nicknames like everyone does for their pets. Right. I even made a list one time. You made a list?

Of pet nicknames for our pets, just so we had them all down. Do you have that on your refrigerator or something? No. Do you have a tattooed on your arm? On the old hard drive, on the laptop. What were you drinking when you did this? Milk. By the way, let me just say, I now, too, have tried the Crown Royal Northern Rye.

What did you think? It is the bomb. It's good, huh? It is very good. Yeah, mine's gone. Is it really? Yeah. Yeah, mine's getting there.

I'm not surprised. All right, let's get into this. If you don't like hearing cat stories from me, then this might not be the show for you. Yes. You ready? I'm ready. CAT is defined. So let's talk history with cats.

This is where we usually like to start. Yeah. Feels good. Feels normal. For a very long time, everybody thought Egypt was the culture, the group of humans that domesticated cats, although if you've listened to our Animal Domestication episode, you probably had your mind blown a little bit, or your suspicions confirmed that cats are not technically domesticated animals.

They're technically a feral species still, but some of them will deign to hang out with humans. For the most part, though, they're not strictly a domesticated animal. That's just semantics, though, at this point. What I'm saying is that everybody thought that the Egyptians were the first to quote unquote, domesticate cats. Yeah, and we think that for good reasons, because Egyptians loved their cats. They were worshiped.

They were mummified. If you look at Egyptian artwork, there's cats all over the place. There's a cat deity named Bastat. Oh, really? Yeah. That was the cat-headed deity. Oh, that'd be a great cat name. Apparently, the cult, oh yeah, it really would be, like modern cat name.

Right. Speaking of modern cat names, we found out that the Egyptians may have been the first to really revere cats, but they were far from the first humans to live with cats. The Egyptians went back two, three, four thousand years, maybe five thousand tops. We found evidence that in the Fertile Crescent, something like 12 or so thousand years ago, when people first started toying around with agriculture, they started storing the grain that they harvested from agriculture, and the cat said, I like these piles of grain that are attracting rodents.

I don't need to be a fierce wild animal anymore, I'm just going to hang out where these peeps are. Yeah, and they formed what can only be described as a symbiotic relationship with humans, because humans all of a sudden were like, these crazy cats are doing us a kindness, and so in turn, maybe we should start feeding them. Was that a reference to the trivia night? No. What was the kindness a group of?

Oh. Remember the ferrets? I think it might have been. I can't remember, but it is. Or no, a business of ferrets. A business of ferrets, a kindness. I can't remember. I can't either.

That's a fascinating topic though, the groups of animals and their names. I'm sorry for interrupting you, please continue. So they said, hey, they're doing us a kindness. I'm going to start feeding them, maybe they'll hang around more, and hey, maybe when we go on a ship, we've got a lot of mice and rat problems on ships, maybe we should put them on our ships too. Right. Because they're great mousers, and before you know it, cats were all over the world

doing kindnesses to humans by way of killing rodents. But like you said, it was symbiotic, like we're the ones who piled up the grains at the first place, you know, they owed us. That's true. But the point is, is that our history with cats goes back far, far farther than just ancient Egypt. Absolutely. And so like I said, speaking of great cat names, you said Basat would be a good one.

I agreed. But I found that all cats are descended from the African wildcat, it turns out. And the African wildcat is Felix Sylvesteris libica, which means Felix the cat and Sylvester the cat, both were very appropriately named cats. Yeah. Did you know that? Well, I wonder if that's where they got it. I bet, I bet.

Surely. You think? Can't be that coincidental. Felix, I'd say for sure, Sylvester, well, I might be sure about that too. I think you're right on the money. Boom. You should have looked it up. I bet that you could find that out pretty easy.

I'm so confident about this, I didn't even need to look it up. I'm not going to waste a finger motion. So they found cats in burial sites on Cyprus, which is an island, which means people brought them there. Cats didn't swim to Cyprus. Cats hate swimming. For the most part, yes. And then as you said, that symbiotic relationship was carried on all the way into the new world,

because nothing much happened from the time of the Fertile Crescent until the new world. Yeah, like nothing. But the cats made their way over apparently as early as Columbus' voyages to the Americas or the Caribbean, I should say. Supposedly, the kitties rode on the Mayflower and settled at Jamestown. And there's a false, remember we did a show on Isaac Newton, there's a false legend that he created the kitty door. Oh, that's not true, huh?

It's not true, because it was actually written about in the Canterbury Tales, specifically in the Miller's Tale. And there are actual images of 15th century doors in France with what they called cat holes. It makes sense. I mean, just cut a hole in that door so the cat can go in and out. And the reason why they thought about this so early when they started building doors, I'm guessing that they started building cat doors in those doors pretty quickly after that.

Because the idea of keeping a cat indoors only is extremely new. We're talking like the last 60, 70 years maybe. Prior to that, you had a cat that wandered freely inside or outside the house or just stayed outside altogether. And it took the invention of clay kitty litter, refrigeration so you could refrigerate meat more easily so you have more surplus of meat that you could share with an indoor cat. And then spaying and neutering, apparently, were the three advancements that allowed cats to be kept indoors.

That's right. Cats, believe it or not, worked for the United States Postal Service as late as the early 20th century. They were used as mausers, of course. Mausers? Mausers? Neither one. Mausers.

Lieutenant Mausers. And then at one point, they said, you know what, we're going to actually hire cats in the form of giving these postal offices an allotment for food. Right. And the cats immediately went on strike after union. Ooh, teaser for the next episode. But they were actually used by the USPS and technically paid in food. That's great.

Yeah. In their warehouses, I guess, in their postal warehouses. So you mentioned the kitty litter being a big invention. It was invented by a man named Ed Lowe. I think he was a Minnesotan, but ended up in Michigan. Okay. And in 1947, his neighbor, you know, people used things like ashes and sand. Sawdust was big.

Yeah, sawdust. Old newspapers. Yeah, if you wanted to keep your cat inside. And his neighbor came by in 1947 and said, hey, my sand is frozen because I'm in Michigan. And how cold it has to be for your sand to freeze? Pretty cold, I guess. So he said, you know what? I got this Fuller's Earth clay.

Why don't you use that? And it worked so well. He packaged it and sold it as a kitty litter. That was the name brand kitty litter. Right. Originally it was kitty litter, right? Yeah. And it was just kiln dried clay.

That's it, right? Broken into small pieces. I think so. I mean, yeah. Fuller's Earth style. Okay. So he started giving it away at first and he had to really educate the populace at this point.

And not just the populace. The pet owner or pet store owner. Yeah. No one wants this. And he apparently told one pet's owner, just give it away. When somebody comes in and they want kitty litter, give them this for free. And apparently that little marketing technique worked very well. Same with the slinky.

Oh, yeah. What did they give it? Give them away for free. No, there was some other like the inventor himself demonstrated them. That's what it was. Right. At F.A.O. Schwartz.

Which is what Edlo did. And pet store owner said, wait, you're saying I should keep my cat indoors where it can poop and pee? Yeah. In a box. Put it in this box. But apparently they were already doing that somewhat because people were using sawdust and stuff or frozen sand.

But it wasn't the norm, like you said. Right. And then spaying and neutering, of course, is what you mentioned. If you've ever had a cat that goes into heat because you did not spay or neuter and that cat is an indoor cat, you're in for trouble. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. Your drapes are toast?

Well, I mean, there's going to be spraying, which we'll get to later. When I was in, I have a story I wish I could tell in full for my college days, but I can't. But needless to say, I was a young, dumb college student and didn't, I wasn't educated on spaying and neutering. I had a cat go into heat and it's no fun. Okay. They act crazy and they're loud and they want nothing more than to get outside and have the sex.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we'll just stop the story there. Okay. But boy, is it a good one. Do you know how many people are going to write in asking, like, just tell me, just me. Right. I'm special.

I won't judge you. So that is the long-storied history of cats. Yes, and I talked to Holly from Stuff You Missed in History class. She's a good source for this. Self-proclaimed crazy cat lady. Yeah. She and Tracy are very much both in the cats and they did a show on the history of cats. Oh, nice.

Which I bet is very much more in depth than what we discovered. So I would certainly hope so. Go check that out. They did an 11-minute show on cats on the history of cats. I'm sure it was very detailed. So I would suggest listening to that for even more insight. So let's talk cat anatomy, right? When you look at a cat, you usually think, well, it's basically the same thing as a dog.

No, that's not true. There's a lot of differences between cats and dogs. Cats, for example, have about 244 bones. A lot of bones. 27 of them are in their tail, which is very lucky, because cats use their tail to do amazing things like balance and to turn over when they're falling, which is part of it. Which is a legend that a cat always lands on its feet, supposedly which gave rise to the idea that a cat has nine lives.

But cats can also not land on their feet sometimes. Yeah, they, how about we'll say this, cats really, really want to land on their feet and try their hardest to. And do most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Which is good. The tail also helps them get in and out of tight spaces.

And the cat is notable for not having a collar bone. It's a detached clavicle. So when you see a cat walk, whether it's a puma or a kitty cat, you see there those, you know, the shoulder blades moving and rhythm with the legs. And that's, I think one of my favorite things about cats is that a jaguar looks like your house cat. Yeah. Like same behaviors, same, they do the same things.

Well, if you go and look at an African wildcat, what all cat, the last common ancestor of all house cats, all domestic cats, they look like a large tabby cat. Same kind of coloring, same features, same everything. So they clearly haven't diverged that much from their lineage, you know? Yeah. And also would probably be in big trouble on a safari because when I look at those big cats, I think, man, if they would just let me in there to get, you know, get them around the mouth and get a little scratch going, like they would just, they'd love me.

They're the kind of guy that they find like dead and mauled in a zoo enclosure in the morning when they open up. I just wanted to pet it. It happens sometimes. What people want to pet the animals so they go in? Yeah. Or get, yeah. Take drugs or get wasted and go hang out in zoos after hours.

Like the guy who was killed by Tillicombe, the orca, one of the guys who was killed by Tillicombe, he like took off his clothes and tried to ride Tillicombe and that did not work out well. Tillicombe said, get off me. With great force. He said, come here you. Who thought we were going to talk about a killer whale in the cat episode? I don't know.

You never know. So back to cat anatomy, Chuckers, let's talk cat hair. Yes. Cats have four kinds of hair. Yeah. Most people probably thought you were going to say three. Or maybe even one or two. That's true.

Down hair on AWN hair, guard hair in the brisee, aka whiskers, which are kind of hair. Yeah. So the down hair is the closest to their body and it keeps them warm. And then next you have on, which is the middle coat and it's kind of an insulating coat. Then you have the guard hair, which is what you think everything is on a cat, it's what you see. Yeah. And it protects the lower coats.

It keeps it dry and all that stuff. And the brisee, those are the whiskers and they're actually just amazing feats of biology. The brisee cat whiskers are. Cats use them to sense movement and everything from like the ground or a door jam or even changes in air pressure around them. They're extremely sensitive touch appendages basically. Yeah. So you mentioned the air pressure.

That helps them navigate at night. So a cat can be running through your living room and come upon your couch and literally sense the air coming around the couch and no, don't run into the couch like the dumb dog does every day. Yeah. Because the dog has whiskers too, but they're not feeding them the same information that the cat's whiskers are. No.

The whiskers do fall out and are replaced. You should never, ever, ever trim or cut or pull whiskers. No, and you should spank a child that does and what let the cat watch or maybe a time out. Okay. They also indicate mood. If the cat's whiskers are pulled back, it probably means they're upset or angry or they want to scrap.

If they're just puffed out normally, that means they're pretty happy and they're roughly the width of the cat's body. So the cats will use these, if you've ever seen a cat like, let's say there's a cat hole in your door or they want to go behind the couch, they'll stick their head in first and say, can I get through this with my big fat body or my whiskers tingling? And the way that their fat bodies can get through though too is because of that detached, the detached shoulders that you mentioned earlier too. That's right.

They can basically go from horizontal to, no, that's when they angle them, almost at a 90 degree angle to where they were standing or where their head is, they can go through some pretty tight spots. They can. And they can also get caught and wedged and trapped in tight spots sometimes. Which is no good. The wizard got out one time and got in the attic and we couldn't find him and it was very scary and I went up, we finally looked in the attic and it was in the summer and

he was kind of trapped and wedged in between like this wood and the wall and he was like panting. I'll bet. And the attic in the summer in Georgia is not a place you want to be when you're trapped. How long has he gone for? Not that long. I mean. Wait, don't answer.

That's a cliffhanger. We'll answer that right after these messages. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best

decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the

nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking.

You might not smoke, but you're going to get second-hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop? But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down.

Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, how long was the wizard gone for? Seven days and seven nights.

That's a long time. No. I think, but it was so hot that it was, yeah, we felt like very bad parents. Yeah. I mean, he got into mischief. Well, yeah. He got himself up there. He took tape him to the fridge.

Curiosity almost killed my cat. Jerry laughed at that. She's listening. Cats paws, we're not done with anatomy, because cats paws are pretty remarkable. They, unlike dogs, they can turn their paws, they can make little fists and flex. Right. Yeah. More than a dog can.

And they are obviously great for climbing things. And for self grooming, heat detection, temperature regulation, killing mice and moles and chipmunks and bringing them to the doorstep, saying, look what I did. Yeah. Check this out. I'm a good kitty. I strangled it with my paws that are bendable. And the claws are obviously not always out, they're retracted back in and they use them

as needed. So you found some really interesting article from the Humane Society of the US on cat claws that I could almost not make it through. Oh, really? I was cringing so much. Yeah. It was really rough, man. So you said that a cat, a cat's claws are retractable, right?

So the claws go back into the skin sheath and they come out when they're ready for some action. And to de-claw a cat is not to just clip the claws because just like a human's fingernails, they grow. Sure. Which is one reason why cats scratch, which is to basically file down what amounts of their fingernails, their claws. And the fact that they do this on the couch is what leads some people to get them de-clawed.

So you can see this vicious cycle coming up, right? Yeah. So de-clawing a cat is way more than clipping its toenails. It's nothing like that. It's more akin to, as this article puts it, cutting off a human's fingers at the first knuckle. Yeah. At the last knuckle.

The one, the knuckle closest to the end of the finger. Yeah. We try not to get too opinionated, but I've always preached don't de-claw. It's, I think it's cruel. The cats need their claws for a variety of reasons. There's no medical benefit to de-clawing a cat. It is purely for humans who don't want to take the time to train their cat to not scratch their couch.

Yeah. And the human society makes the point that the average person can easily train their cat to scratch different places. They suggest things like make sure your cat has a number of different scratching posts from different types of materials in different positions, like vertical and horizontal. And put them near the things that they scratch, like if they scratch the arm of the couch, put a post near there and cats respond to no and just like dogs do. You tell a cat no and then you rub some catnip on the scratching post and they'll say, well,

that's wonderful. Sure. That's what they say. They have this stuff called. I think instead the cat's not saying, well, that's wonderful. They're saying you win this round and they're biding their time is what they're really doing. So one of these clear sticky tapes you can put on your furniture that they don't like

and my experience has been you don't have to leave that stuff there forever. Once they realize, ooh, I don't like the feel of that on the couch, I'll just move on and to the scratching post and then you can eventually peel that stuff off. Sure. It does look kind of gross after a little while. I can imagine especially with a cat in the house, you can also hide behind your drapes with an air horn and wait for your cat to come scratch and they'll pick up on that real quick.

You want to start young, both trimming your cat's nails and with the trying to get them to not claw at stuff that earlier you start, the better they're going to be and it really doesn't take that much effort. If a cat doesn't have its claws, it can lead to a lot of problems. One can make their paws swell and stay swollen. It takes away their ability to jump on something so they could try and jump up on something and not be able to grab and then fall back down. Yeah, and they may also turn into biters because they don't have the ability to claw anymore

so they may be like, well, I use my teeth instead which is way worse. And supposedly also a lot of reason that some people have their cats declawed is not just for their furniture sake but because they're worried about things like cat's scratch fever. His Ted Nugent preached against, right? But the idea that you can catch an infection from a cat's scratch is far less likely than a cat's bite dealing with cat's feces or getting bitten by a flea that isn't infected that is near your cat. So being scratched by a cat, declawing a cat to prevent infection is actually a terrible

idea as well. Yeah, and if you have indoor-outdoor cats and you declaw them, that's just like the worst possible scenario because then they literally have no defense in the outside world. They're toast. So are we clear enough? Don't declaw your cats. In fact, many countries abandoned it. It's such a bad thing to do.

I'm not judging you. Some people don't know. Well, yeah. So we're trying to educate you. So you brought up indoor and outdoor cats. Here's another soapbox for you to stand on, Chuck. I'll just slide it over. There is a great debate on whether cats should be indoor cats or outdoor cats.

Like we said, for almost all of domestic house cats history, they were not indeed house cats. They were not strictly indoor cats. Just didn't really exist very much, and they were allowed to come in and out, or they were strictly outdoor cats. It's a fairly recent change, but there's a lot of the animal rights groups say, no, you should keep your cats indoors. It's the safest place for your cat. The American Bird Conservancy says that you would be also saving the lives of countless

small animals. The American Bird Conservancy estimates that in the U.S. alone, cats kill hundreds of millions of birds and more than a billion small mammals like rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks every year. I know. Isn't that crazy? That's like well beyond the circle of life. So there's a lot of people who say, yes, you should keep your cat indoors.

And the other side says, don't be stupid. These are outdoor animals. You should not confine them indoors. It's unnatural. Well, yeah. The thing I most often hear is my cat loves it outside, which is true. Your cat does love it outside, but for me, it's, you know, you're the owner. It's up to you.

Like an indoor cat can live 15, 17, 20 years. If you have a strictly outdoor cat, they say the life expectancy is can be as little as, you know, two to five years. It's definitely like a live-fast, die-young scenario for the outdoor cats. Sure. They can get a, well, I mean, how many times have you walked down the street or driven down the road and seen a squash cat that was somebody's house cat? Far less than a squash dog or even a deer.

Really? Yeah. Like I said, I very rarely have seen a dead cat on the side of the road. Well, how about this? How many times have you seen a cat cross a road successfully? Probably a lot, because cats are pretty smart. They're not like squirrels. Right.

Like a squirrel running to the middle of the road, it'll be a 90% across the road and then it'll turn back. Double back. Double back. Oh, the tire missed me. Let me go make it easier for you. Cats are pretty good at it, but your cat shouldn't have to be good at crossing a street with cars.

Well, then you get into the idea of like humans fragmenting natural habitats and all that kind of stuff, because if you really look at it, Chuck, especially with cats, if you consider the idea that they are not fully domesticated animals and that we have basically shuffled them around the world, we basically take an African wild cat and be like, hey, come with us. We're going to the new world. Hey, come with us. We're going to go found Rome.

Hey, come with us. We want you to be one of our deities here in ancient Egypt. When the cats went along with it, but didn't actually evolve to become a domesticated species, then we have just taken wildlife and shuffled it into our own human life. And so I don't know. I kind of see like the indoor-outdoor people. I see their argument. Yeah.

Well, if you do the indoor-outdoor thing, bring them in at night. Don't have them de-clawed, like I said, because you're just throwing them into a gunfight without a gun. But you shouldn't have any cat de-clawed as the humane society's position. I don't think you should, personally. And I don't think you should have cats outdoors, but I'm not going to get all up in arms about that, because I get it. Cats do love being outside.

One thing you can do, though, if you do have an indoor cat, is build some sort of enclosure for them that is outside, or let them hang out on a screened-in porch, or someplace they're not going to get actually outside of your house in, but they're still able to enjoy the outdoors. Yeah. We go out on my deck, and they love it. Uh-huh. They don't want to come in.

And I know we'll hear from people that say, I had an outdoor cat that lived to be 17. You got super lucky. You know? I mean, that's great. Yeah. There's probably folk songs about that cat among cats. They recommend, if you do want to keep your cat indoors, start them young, because once that cat gets the taste for the outside, it's really hard to get them to be indoor cats

for sure after that. Yeah. Um, I hope I'm not too judgy in this. I don't think so. I just think, you know, if your cat is going to live many, many years longer inside, then keep them inside. So but if you are going to keep your cat inside, there are some things that you want to do for your cat.

But for one, an indoor cat's life is extraordinarily sedentary, especially compared to an outdoor cat's life. Right? Oh, it's great. Um, they just lay around and they get fat and happy. But the problem is, is they can get like really, really fat. Sure. And that can lead to all sorts of problems, the same kind of problems that humans get

when they overeat. Yeah. So one of the first things you want to make sure you do when you have a strictly indoor cat is to feed it a proper diet. When cats, unlike dogs, did not really evolve to become omnivores, instead they are straight up meat eaters still. So you want to feed them like a high protein diet and, um, you don't want to leave that food out all day because that cat will be like, I'll just eat and eat and eat because

I'm bored. Yeah. That depends on the cat too. We leave our food out, the dry food and they get their, uh, called the good stuff, the wet food. Right. Although the thinking now is they should eat more wet food than dry food. Yeah, supposedly that's what, that's what I found.

Yeah. But, um, I mean, my cats are 13 and we've, I guess we've been doing it wrong all these years, but the, they can't jump up on the counter now where the food is. Because it's too fat? No, cause they're 13. No, that's sad. And, uh, so you left them up there? Well, that's what we call it.

They ask for a ride. You know, you walk through the kitchen and they'll go, so I'll give them a ride up there and they'll eat them. Do they point to where they want to go? They might as well. That's funny. They might get, like Laurent, especially he's a Maine Coon and he will, he will literally like talk to you.

You can, you yell Laurent and he'll meow at you and you say, what are you doing? He'll go meow. You have a good day. He'll go meow. That's awesome. Whereas wizard is not super chatty. He's a tab short haired tabby and he's, he's not as nearly as chatty and both I found on the streets of Los Angeles, uh, wizard was, one was a blood and one was a crypt and you

brought them together. Wizard was in Emily's neighborhood when we were just dating. I went over to Emily's house and there was, uh, this couple, good natured, I think, but they had this kitten. They were trying to like force it in a shoebox and it was just screaming. I was like, what are you doing? They were like, this cat's been hanging out here for a couple of weeks. So we're trying to get it in this box so we can bring it inside.

Now I was like, give me, give me the cat. And then you ran off with the cat. I did. I ran into Emily's house and said, we got a cat. Awesome. Um, and I was that that's the wizard. And he was first. Um, no, Loran was actually first.

Uh, Loran lived, uh, this is kind of a neat story. I came home from a night shoot as a PA at seven AM exhausted, laid down to sleep and I heard this incessant mewing of a kitten outside. It was like, all right, I gotta go check this out. Uh, in my dumpster was a four week old kitten that looked like it had been shaved on the back, but I guess it was just maybe that top coat had fallen off cause he was black, but the undercoat was this weird short gray and he looked terrible. So I was like, I guess I got a cat, uh, took him to the vet, got him cleaned up.

And as I was checking out, Tim Curry, a Rocky horror picture show, was at the vet. Did not expect him to make an appearance in this. No. Well, that's what kind of the fun thing about LA is you see celebrities at weird, just normal places like the vet. So he was checking out, I went to go write a check and needed both hands and said, Mr. Curry, would you hold my cat? Would you sign my cat?

Um, he probably would have. I'm sure. But, uh, he held him and he asked what his name was. I said, LaRon. And, uh, because he looks so weird and had that silver back and he went, LaRon, you look like a baboon. And he like said that to the cat and said he had very, uh, dramatic ears. And then he gave me LaRon back and it was a wonderful experience.

I'm sure he was blessed by Tim Curry. And eventually LaRon's hair grew out normal and he was just a big black Maine Coon. Nice. And they've been my buddies ever since. They didn't get along though and they still don't, which is weird with cats. I guess people can have different, different experiences with grown cats, but my experience has been once there of a certain age, it's hard to throw them in the same house together and have them be best buddies.

Sure. Like they, they still. They coexist. They coexist. They have their own areas. They do kind of fight every now and then we'll hear them like, you know, going at it. But when food time comes, they eat like, you know, inches from each other or if there's a sunspot in the dining room, they'll lay next to each other.

Oh, well, yeah. They've worked it out over the years, but, um, yeah, it's pretty interesting. They're not like dogs. Dogs either like, I think they get along right away unless you have a dog that's aggressive. Right. You know? Yeah. It's fascinating.

Yeah. There's nowhere to go but down after that story. So let's take a break. Huh. Agreed. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

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I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second-hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So, I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast.

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So Chuck, one of the things that cats are most famous for is their behavior, right? Like there's just certain things cats do that no other animal does. They're quirky. So for example, what's called making biscuits or kneading dough? It's the best. So what is that? Well, if maybe you're laying on your couch and your cat jumps up on your belly and then just starts flexing its paws, pushing their paws in and out, left, right, left, right,

as if they're kneading dough or making biscuits. Sometimes they keep their claws in for this. Sometimes they flex them into your skin a little bit, which to me doesn't hurt. I think it feels quite nice. And there are a bunch of theories on why they do this, but I think the leading one is that when you see little kittens, they kind of need on mama's belly to get more theoretically to prime the pump a little bit. To get more milk flow.

Yeah. Yeah. But you should not feed cats milk, we should mention. No, because you're feeding a cat cow's milk and they are not capable of digesting cow's milk. It's actually really bad for them. I wonder where that came from. I don't know.

A little saucer of milk. Tom and Jerry definitely did not help any cats, you know, because Tom was crazy for that stuff. Yeah. In a variety of ways that didn't help cats. Sure. That cartoon. But yeah, that's the predominant theory that they're basically harkening back to a happy

childhood. Yeah. And they're also releasing, they have scent glands in their paws. So when they're scratching or kneading, making biscuits, they're releasing that scent as they're like kind of claiming their territory. Right. And whatever that is, whether it's their human's belly, there's a really cute video in an article you sent me that has like a cat kneading a dog.

Oh. Sleep on its side and the cats just sitting there like kneading its shoulders and neck. It's pretty good stuff. So the cat's saying, this dog, this is my dog. Yeah. That's my dog. Yeah. And there's other ways that cats also mark their territory, their people, using scent

glands too. It's not just in their claws. They're also on their faces, which is one reason why cats kind of bump faces with you. Yeah. We call it the headbutt, you know, a cat, Loran headbutts a lot. Wizard doesn't headbutt as much. But if you're scratching a cat with your finger, a lot of times they'll make sure that finger gets at the corner of their mouth.

You have scent glands there in the paws and they just, they eat that stuff up. They love it. They're, they're marking you and then they're also taking in any weird scent you may have gotten too, which is why some people will be like your cat knows when you've been holding another cat and they're not happy about it because they can smell that other cat because that cat was like, here you go, sucker. I just marked you. It's going to take your cat off.

Yeah. This is my person now. Cats can also spray. It is very pungent. It's not just urine, although it can be, but most of the time it's urine mixed with a fatty material, viscous fatty material that's really musky and stinky. If you get your cat fixed, which you should, spay a neuter as early as possible, but that will take care about 90% of spray issues.

If you don't fix your cat, you're just asking for it. They will pay you back in spray, not in spades, but in spray. What they'll do is, if it's a horizontal surface, they kind of just pee. If it's a vertical surface, they'll spray and they'll back that thing up and you'll see the tail quiver. And then kaboom. Kaboom is right. But Loran and other cats, I think even after you've had them fixed, will mimic the spray.

He'll go by the couch and back up to it and quiver his tail, but nothing comes out. Oh, he's just psyching you out? You're like, no, no. He's like, I'm just kidding. He settled down. He settled down. And a lot of times it's a stress. A lot of times it is to mark their territory.

And sometimes it's a male saying like, hey, smell this, check me out, get a load of this. And sometimes it's in revenge. Like if your cat's not happy, if the litter box said like, remember my story when I didn't put litter in there? Oh, yeah. Loran started peeing everywhere. And just goes off like a paint bomb and a bag of bank robbery money. Cats can drool.

I had one very drooly cat as a kid. Yeah. But supposedly that's like a really bad sign if your cat drools a lot. Well, it can signify a medical issue. Right. So if your cat does normally drool and starts drooling, you should get it checked out. But if you're, you can just have a drooly cat as well, if you're working that scent gland, they'll, you know, this cat's scooter I had it was along here.

And Loran drools a little bit, which is drool like crazy. Really? Yeah. So if it is a problem, it usually indicates something like some sort of oral disease. Or they're having trouble swallowing, which is not good. Or they might have motion sickness. Oh, interesting. And panting is not good in your cat.

Like if you see a dog panting. Yeah. It's not your dog's panting. But if a cat's doing it, it is really stressed out. Yeah. That's like when Wizard was panting in the attic because it's disturbing to see a cat pant. Right.

Uh, funny enough, that cat's scooter ran away from my house. We had outdoor cats growing up. I didn't, man, we didn't do the right thing when I was a kid, my family. No. No. We didn't go to the vet much. It was kind of like, kind of like country style. Sure.

Like you just had animals. They got sick and died. They got sick and died. Right. But I was, I was very much educated as I got older on like proper pet care. Right. And like you take your cat to the vet once or twice a year to get checkups. Yeah, exactly.

Uh, just like you do a dog. But scooter ran away from home and I found that cat like three years later, five miles away from my house. Really? Living at someone else's house. Is he wearing like a necklace made of chipmunks skulls? Yeah. Right.

You know? He had this wild look in his eye. No, he was still, he just lived with someone else. I don't know how he got there. I mean, it was a long way. Oh, so he hadn't gone feral. He just moved in with another family. Oh yeah.

He was in this driveway just hanging out and ran up to the door. Did he pretend like he didn't know you? But he had his tag. He ran right up to me. Wow. And I didn't take him. I was like, I guess you're happier here. How old were you?

I was probably like 12. Wow. Chuck, that was a very adult decision to leave the cat. Yeah. Good for you. Well, I think it was on my bike too. It was just, it didn't make logistical sense. Like, how am I going to get this cat back?

You know? How am I going to have him stand on your pegs? And I think I probably went back home and was like, I saw a scooter and my parents were like, who? We told you never to talk of him again. The one that left? That's so funny. If you want to get a cat, as with all pets, just think about it if you have the time to

take care of a cat. They don't need the kind of training a dog a puppy does. No. But they still need to be trained as kittens. If you're going to take them outside sometimes, if they're an indoor cat and you're like, I really want my cat to be able to enjoy the outdoors, I strongly recommend that you train them to walk around on a leash. I've seen it.

I have too. There's a guy in Mine and Yumi's place that has a cat that walks on a leash. Yeah. It's pretty crazy and cute. It's hilarious. Yeah. You're like, that cat should be wearing a stovetop hat or something. That's what it looks like.

It looks like some sort of trick is about to happen when you see a cat on a leash. Oh, right. Yeah. That's clearly a performer. Right. It's hilarious. You should always adopt cats. Even if you want a specific breed, check with your local shelters because they probably

have something that strikes your cat fancy. There are 70, was it 70 million or 7 million? 70. 70 million stray cats in the United States? It's growing every day. Yeah. If this cat is feral and obviously not spayed or neutered, that can lead to hundreds of cats.

Oh, very quickly. If they have a litter or two or three, then those kittens have litters and always, always spay a new year cat and adopt, don't shop because there are tons and tons of great kittens and kitties. Sure. Just walk into a shelter and I guarantee you will find at least one that you want to keep. Or you can walk around Los Angeles and look for somebody who's trying to adopt a kitten

and wrestle it away from them. Yeah. Give me that cat. You know, we got Buckley, our dog from an actual shelter, but all of the rest of our animals have literally just been pulled off the street because they kind of pulled off. Yeah. It sounds like you kidnapped them. We did from the wild.

The wilds of L.A., except for our youngest dog, which was the only Georgia animal we have. Yeah. Charlie, we had to trap her in a cage. Yeah. She was a wild dog. Well, yeah. You can tell.

She's like, you stay over there. I'm cool over here. Yeah. She can move too. All these years later, Charlie still won't like, she'll bark at anyone that comes in our house. Hey, that's who she is. I know.

Part of the breed too. Oh yeah. She's a shelter, right? Yeah. Shelty mix of some sort. So they're big on like, hey, there's a fox over there kind of thing. Yeah. They'll like, she literally, it's her job.

She sits in the front sunroom and just stares and waits for people to walk by so she can bark. It's hilarious. It's maddening is what it is, especially when you have a sleeping baby. I think one of the funniest things ever is when you're walking past the house and there's a dog in the window. Oh yeah. And it just watches you.

It doesn't bark. Yeah. It just watches you as you go past. Keep walking, pal. Yeah. It's a little distressing. I think it's hilarious to see. Speaking of babies and kids and cats, we're already having to manage that stuff, you know,

because babies, once they start moving. She's got that Palmer grass reflex. Yeah. They don't know. They'll jump on an animal. They'll pull tails and pull hair. And you just have to be really vigilant and as they grow older, teach them, you know, how to pat pat and how to be gentle.

Well yeah. And you should teach your kid using words like gentle and soft. Yeah. And they say, oh, you're not supposed to see the 90% of the cats' eyeballs when you pet the head, you know. Yeah. Wizard already popped her once in the face. Oh yeah.

Claws in. How'd she take that? She didn't like it. No. She cried. Poor kid. And we were like, wizard, you're a jerk. He's like, I'm 13.

I know. He was like, it was claws in. It was a warning shot. Right. But that was our fault. You know, we thought, you know, we weren't managing it like we should. It's up to you. Oh, sure.

Parent. You also want to be careful with kitty litter. Apparently, toxoplasmosis gondi has completely ruined our world. So this whole advent of keeping cats indoors has changed humanity in ways that we're only beginning now to understand. Yeah. Did we do a whole show on that? Yeah, we did.

Okay. Some years back. It was a pretty good one too. It's like has toxoplasmosis turned us all into zombies or something like that. But there was a very recent study that came out of the University of Chicago. And they examined, I think, 358 adults and identified some people that suffered from intermittent explosive disorder where just something just sets you off and it's totally unreasonable and a really good example of it is road rage.

Right? Yeah. And they found that half of the people with IED had toxoplasmosis infections, which you would have gotten from a cat. I'd most certainly have it. Yeah. So supposedly one in three people in the world have it because of cat domestication. Wow.

And it's bad if you're a pregnant lady. So if you're pregnant, they say it's time to switch duties if that's how it goes in your house and your husband is on cat litter duty. Right. Because you have that baby. Because of toxoplasmosis, it can cause birth defects as well in children, unborn children. Yeah, it's bad news. Great idea to keep a cat indoors.

Oh, you know, one of the other reasons we didn't mention for doing that is you're much more likely to spot a sickness in your cat if they're always indoors. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah. Like you're more in tune with what's going on with your cat basically. Yeah, for sure. We should talk before we leave about purring and catnip. Yeah. Purring.

All cats. Oh, not all cats. Some wildcats do purr, all domestic cats purr, and even raccoons purr, which I didn't know. I didn't know anything. Pretty interesting. Have you ever seen foxes? They don't purr, they go, it's the best. It's pretty great.

Wiggle that tail. Yeah. Fox to me is like a dog cat. It's like the ultimate combination. It is, isn't it? Sort of. Oh, by the way, we saw our neighborhood peacock the other day and I thought of you. Oh, man.

Help! Someone sent one. Yeah. This dude has, he's a crazy bird guy because he has this huge, oh dude, he's got like six peacocks. That's gotta be illegal. I don't know, maybe. I would think so.

You're only allowed to have six cats in Atlanta. That's cats. Really? Yeah. Should we turn Holly in? No, she didn't have more than six. I'd be surprised if she doesn't. But Holly has a separate litter box for each one of her cats, which proves that she's a

crazy cat lady. Right? Yeah. She'll tell you, man. Sorry, you were talking about purring. No, we were talking about peacocks. Oh, yeah, yeah. So this guy has, I think four or five, which is the male and female, which one has the

big plume? I think that's the male. So I guess he has four or five females and then this one, huge male peacock. Right. That will literally sometimes be on the apex of its roof screaming. Yeah, they get up on the roof. It's like where they like to go, apparently. It's nuts.

Yeah. But he's a bird guy because I've seen his on his back deck. He's got this like aviary with parrots and cockatoos and all sorts of stuff. Birdland. Yeah. Bird people are weird. Purring. So they purr and most of the time, it means they're very happy, but they can also purr

if they're upset or startled or injured. They might purr and they're direct wiring from the brain to the muscles in the voice box. And so they vibrate the muscles and they act as a valve for the air. So it sounds like one continuous purr, but if you listen closely, it is an inhale and an exhale purr going on. Right. And it's, of course, if you're a cat lover, it's a wonderful thing.

If you're a cat to purr, it's very soothing. Put you right to sleep. And I guess, what else? Cat nap? Well, yeah. Cat nap is pretty awesome. It is a, it is legitimately a drug that cats do. Cats do drugs in the form of cat nap.

All right. And you can do it two different ways. One, you can inhale it. You can cook it in a spoon and shoot it. Right. Through your nose. Uh-huh. Through the cat's nose.

If you're a cat, you do it through your nose. Sure. And that sends them into like ecstasy. Oh, it's, yeah. It's pretty awesome. And they can also eat it, and that usually makes it, makes the cat mellow. And it depends on the cat. Only I think about half cats are actually sensitive to cat nips, wiles.

It's charms. Yeah. Right. But the ones that are, they, they go nuts for this stuff. Yeah. Both of my cats do. And you can get it either, you know, dried out like a, it looks like a Regano. Yeah.

And that's what I said. You could put in your scratching pads to attract them to that. Right. So I'll put that stuff down. And man, they roll around in it. Right. And it's, it's pretty great. Or you can, my mom gives me, she grows it fresh.

Yeah. Because it's a member of the mint family. It grows pretty, pretty easily. Yeah. It looks like a little mint leaf. Yeah. And they're more prone to eat the fresh stuff. Oh, really?

And roll around in the, the dried out stuff. Huh. I would have guessed the opposite. Yeah. I don't know. It's pretty fun though. I think it's hilarious that there's a drug for cats. Dogs don't have a drug.

Sure. It's called human kindness. Yeah. They get off on that. They do. Uh, if you want to know more about cats, there's a lot, I mean, we didn't even get into the breeds and cat shows and cat fanciers. There's a lot more out there.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Cat Fancy Magazine. You've been to Roe, Italy? Yeah. Cats everywhere. Oh yeah. There are a lot of cats there, aren't there?

Yeah. And there's a history to that. Mm hmm. In Amsterdam, I think there's that cat boat in the canal. Sure. There's a boat with a hundred cats on it. I have not heard of that. Yeah.

Huh. There's a lot more out there. Yeah, sure. There's a lot to cats. But we're done with cats, if you ask me. Agreed. If you want to know more about cats, travel to Rome or Amsterdam, you can also save some time and money by just typing the word cats into the search part, howstuffworks.com, and

that's the search part. It's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this, uh, You Were Right About Math, Chuck, sort of. Hey guys. I'm a huge fan of the show. Just started listening a couple of months ago after a friend recommended it, and I've been hooked ever since. I want to make a quick comment about math majors and ambiguity in response to the continent

naming episode. I majored in math in college and definitely have an aversion to ambiguity. I really absolutely hate movies where unresolved endings with unresolved endings, so perhaps you guys are onto something here. However, it should be noted that higher level mathematics, especially pure mathematics, can be incredibly ambiguous, which is why some mathematicians, most mathematicians, spend their entire careers attempting to solve problems or understand or prove theorems without ever solving anything.

Man, I can't imagine that. Have you ever seen, uh, proof, the movie, or the play? Really good. Even if you hate math. I can see that. Jake Gyllenhaal's in it. Oh yeah. And Gwyneth Paltrow.

Oh wait, isn't it? But depending how you feel about them. Isn't it like Albert Einstein, a matchmaker or something in that one? No. That was... You're thinking of a different one? Tim Robbins and Meg Ryan. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Different movie. Alright. Uh, finishing out from Kim, she says the uncertainty was maddening, which is why she chose to go to medical school instead. So Kim's no dummy. Thanks for the podcast and that is from Kim Who.

She is at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Oh hey, that's where our, uh, toxoplasmosis study came from. Actually, it's not true that it came from the University of Chicago. But right next door. Yeah. I'm sure they're friends. Probably. Or bitter rivals.

Maybe so. Well, thanks a lot, Kim. We appreciate the email. If you want to get in touch with us and clarify some random thing we tossed out there, we love that kind of stuff. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our luxurious

home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas

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