why are these animals weird?

@emythos is she in a pizza box in that pic?

 

is a shoe box, actually :D

 

My parents live on an island in Washington State, up in the woods, and so there are tons of birds around, which they feed. My mom also has a "garden" on the deck, all in pots, 'cause the deer will eat pretty much anything you plant if they can get to it. The juncos in the area like to bury the sunflower seeds from the bird feeders in the pots. Then they get tons of volunteer sunflowers growing when the juncos forget where they buried the seeds.

Spoiler: Birb

 

Our birbs just throw sunflower seeds on the ground without the extra step of burying them. Lots of volunteer sunflowers right under the birdfeeder. :::PPP

 

mockingbirds in our neighborhood are really good at letting us know when my brother in law needs a haircut. they do this by swooping down on him and trying to take his hair to use as a nesting material

at our old house, we'd groom our v long haired dogs out on the front lawn, and any hair we brushed off of them was v quickly taken by birds for their nests

 

also, I think my cat is broken

 

It's a floof-overload shutdown. *serious nod*

 

what a floof
so floof

 

My grandma used to have cattle, and there was this one MASSIVE half-beefalo named Martin who was pretty much the most intimidating bull I've ever seen in my life--and he loved to be petted. He was like a big dog, he'd follow you around the field and gently nudge your hand or nuzzle your hair until you gave him some love. He'd come greet you at the fence and eat out of your hand and everything, I loved him.

 

Your cat is too pretty! Too floofy! I love cat.

 

My mom lived at a group house in college that had a cat that would apparently eat literally anything if you put brewer's yeast on it.

More recently, @Void's dog just pissed in his own food and water dish. Like, deliberately. ????

 

I've been working on leash-training my cats. One has just discovered that Outside is FASCINATING AND FULL OF NEAT SMELLS. Now, I am covered in mosquito bites because SOME PEOPLE wanted to take two steps, stare around wildly, take two steps, stare around wildly. For like forty minutes, before I carried him bodily indoors against his will, because I wanted to go to bed.

Now he's begging to go outside constantly. I have created a monster.

 

My partner's parents' cats were indoor cats for most of their lives, but a few years ago they started letting them out in their huge backyard (with supervision). Their first outside experiences were similar to your cat's. Lots of slinking around, staring with wide eyes, creeping under the bushes, and dashing back inside suddenly when it became too much.

Now they're old hands at being outside, but the weird thing is that they LOVE this one flowering bush (not remembering the name of it at the moment, but it's not poisonous or dangerous, we checked with the vet and the internet). They lie under it, they rub against it, they chew on the flowers, they roll on their backs and stare up into the branches lovingly. Why do you love the bush so much, cats? (What does it have that I don't????)

 

@Saro Oh my god, I feel this. Luna has this bizarre obsession with nasturtiums. She literally killed the plant, even though it was hanging well above her head, because she'd grab vines with her "hands" and yank them down so she could eat the leaves. She ate every single leaf off that plant.

 

My cat Ginger Joe loves to go outside at night. Even when its storming or literally below freezing, he'll claw at the door until we let him outside. I'm never too worried about him getting hurt, because we have a big covered and gated porch that he can get on if anything tries to kill him or if the weather gets too bad, and he's a great tree-climber. Also, you know how most cats wake up if you even barely touch them? Not Ginger Joe. You have to literally shake him before he wakes up. He was asleep at the top of the stairs once, and i literally stepped on him and he just went "mrrr?" and went back to sleep. He's the most laid-back cat I've ever seen.

It's actually a pretty cool story how we got him; we live in the middle of nowhere, like, there's maybe 20 houses in a 5 mile radius of us, and he just wandered out of the woods with matted fur and honest-to-god flung himself across my feet and meowed at me until i rubbed his belly, then never left. Just "oh look a human, better make good use of this" and claimed us as his new family immediately.

 

Weird animal fact: one of my roommate's cats seems to think the back corner under my bed is the Promised Land, and will take any possible opportunity to try to sneak into my room. I have absolutely no idea why this is.

 

@LadyNighteyes kitty Narnia

 

my dog fucking loves lettuce, and when she's sick of sitting on my bed she whines pathetically until i help her (despite being pERFECTLY CAPABLE OF GETTING OFF SIMILAR SURFACES)

i actually have to shoo my rabbit freya around to get her to move. she doesn't hop, she puts her front feet as far forward as she can and kinda waddles back up to meet them like a slinky made of grumpy rabbit. wash, rinse, and repeat. (also she growls and punches my hand when i try to feed her/clean her crate)

kipper the rabbit has flung his food dish at me like a god damn frisbee and hit me in the fucking leg with it because i was being slow about feeding him. when he was a baby, he used to lick me like a dog.

i used to have a chicken who would try to fight ceiling fans. her name was ananda and she was awesome.

my roo only fucks blonde hens.

 

oh! i have more.

back when i used to ride, one of the lesson horses, an ottb named moody, tried to eat my phone. i didn't ride with my phone in my pocket, mind, and i didn't have it out- while i was walking by his stall (where i'd hung my grooming bag, phone inside) he just casually swung his head over and bit the bag. right where the phone was. there was a rather impressive crunching sound. my screen was completely splintered, chips of glass would come off in my pocket all the damn time. i had masking tape all over the poor thing and it took a full year to die.

i also knew a draft mare (percheron cross???) who was so fat that she had to be put on this (apparently disgusting) diet feed. in order to get her to eat it, her owner had to dump applesauce and sugar and all manner of sweet, unhealthy shit into it, which kinda defeated the point tbh.

another lesson horse at my barn was this one eyed pinto pony named -get this- patches. (we called him patchy the pirate, because of course we did) he was so incredibly chill that you could flop a towel over his face and he wouldn't even care, a far cry from some of the higher-strung imported warmbloods at the barn. one year we dressed him up as a bee for halloween. there was an impressively large tutu involved.

 

fainting goats