21 Weird Cat Behaviors That Owners Have Learned To Live With

If someone were to ask you, “What’s the weirdest thing your cat does?” what would you say? I’ve been racking my brain to try and think what the strangest thing Thelma and/or Louis does, and I’m a little surprised how hard it was to narrow down. But here’s my list so far:

1. Thelma and Louis have one toy they constantly try to drown. It’s a braided piece of fabric with a feather on one side, and we will constantly find it submerged in one of their water fountains or bowls. Speaking of water bowls…
2. Thelma used to drink out of one of the two expensive water fountains we have, but she will now only drink water from a plastic fish bowl we bought that has a floating plastic yellow turtle in it.

The beauty of sharing the weirdest things our cats do with each other is not only to laugh out loud and marvel at just how weird our furry little friends can be, but because, well, those are actually the two best reasons. LOL. So we went hunting for the weirdest cat stories we could find, and thankfully there’s a whole Reddit thread dedicated to it!

We’ve compiled our favorite ones, below. But first we have to point out which one was the most upvoted answer in the entire thread. Once you read it, you’ll understand why:

[Our one cat] enters the bathroom every time it’s used and loudly demands to be covered by a towel, then wants hair ties stacked on her head, then wants about 8 pieces of dry cat food delivered one at a time. Happens several times every day. I may have unintentionally normalized some of this behavior.

— via Reddit.com

“I may have unintentionally normalized some of this behavior” might be the truest sentence ever written about living with a cat. Also, the hair ties got me. In our apartment, hair ties are treated like a controlled substance because we’re terrified of a cat swallowing one, and this person’s cat is over here wearing them as a hat. (I’m sure in a very supervised way.)

Once you go through this list please tell us in the comments the weirdest thing your cat does. We’ll add the funniest ones to this list!

1. The second microwave

There’s a whole genre of cat owner who ends up buying a duplicate of something so the cat can keep the original. This is the best example I’ve seen anywhere:

Having his own microwave to sleep in regardless of the beds/towers there are available. If it was closed he’d sit in front of it meowing demandingly until it was opened. Had to modify the door to stay permanently open for his majesty’s desires and buy a 2nd one for us peasant hoomans. 🙄😅

— via Reddit.com

Before you worry: they confirmed further down the thread that the cat’s microwave no longer stays plugged in, and that it’s now referred to as “counter art.”

2. One specific coffee table leg

The best part of this one is the last line:

He is obsessed with the left front leg of our coffee table. It is his favorite toy to play fight with, and he also rubs on it to scent mark it pretty much daily.

He has no interest in any of the other three table legs.

— via Reddit.com

Someone asked the obvious follow-up question, which is whether the cat would track his chosen leg if they rotated the table. As of my reading, the owner was under considerable community pressure to run the experiment and report back.

3. Bedtime is at 12:34, exactly

If I am not in bed by 12:34 AM, she bites me on the elbow and chides me with a “mrrrrrrp!”

— via Reddit.com

Louis does something similar to me in the morning. Louis’s food timer goes off at five in the morning, and he spends the stretch afterward rotating between my chest and Cory’s chest before settling onto his blanket between us, every single day. If I don’t pet him enough during that time period, he will nibble my elbow. Cat clocks are real.

4. The snooze button

Speaking of cat clocks:

Years ago, my first cat on my own was an alarm clock. He woke me up too early one day so I told him to come back in ten minutes. He went ‘mrrrt’ and ran out of the room.

And came back in ten minutes. Cat had a snooze button!

— via Reddit.com

I choose to believe every word of this one with my whole heart.

5. The fish-breath alarm

This cat has rules about falling asleep on the couch:

Ahhh if I fall asleep on the couch or in bed with my light still on, my cat will wake me up by breathing in my face with her fish breath. Or if I’m on the couch she will open the cupboard door like an inch and let it bang shut repeatedly to wake me up. They’re so funny.

— via Reddit.com

The cupboard-banging technique came up more than once in the thread, and one commenter asked the question we’re all asking: who taught them to do that, and why is it so effective?

6. Every toy ends up in the water

One of mine has decided its fun dipping her toys into their water bowls and then running around with a soaked toy causing a wet mess everywhere

— via Reddit.com

The replies were full of people whose cats do the same thing, including one whose cat brings the soaked toy back for fetch, gets it squeezed out, and immediately re-dunks it. The going theory in the thread is that cats sometimes drown their prey, so the toys are getting the standard treatment. This is exactly what Thelma and Louis do! RIP all of these toys.

7. The sock hunter

This cat sounds like he just likes helping out around the house!

My cat catches “socks.” Dives deep into the laundry pile, pulls out individual socks, and brings them one by one to leave in a pile beside my bed.

— via Reddit.com

There were several sock hunters in the thread, including one who patrols the house at night and announces each catch with a loud, proud meow, sock still in mouth.

8. The toy babies

My girl has 2 specific mice toys that I call her babies. She brings them up to the bedroom each night, howling loudly with one in her mouth. When I ask her about the baby she drops it and runs over for pets. It’s just….her thing?

— via Reddit.com

Thelma and Louis will also drop their “prey” near us and loudly meow. I think it’s sweet when they bring gifts to us!

9. Piggyback rides

My cat makes me give him piggyback rides. I pick him up onto my shoulders just like a little kid and hold his front paws on top of my head and walk around the house looking out all the windows.

— via Reddit.com

I sort of wish our cats let us do this!

10. The football carry

Likes to be held like a football, head facing behind me when I pick her up to bring her in a different room with me.

— via Reddit.com

Every cat has exactly one legal hold, and it’s the owner’s job to discover it through trial and error. Louis’s legal hold is none, for the record. He doesn’t love being carried, despite all my attempts over the years.

11. The butt pats

This one could have been written about our apartment:

Want his bottom patted multiple times a day. He’s obsessed

— via Reddit.com

No judgment from our house on this one. Thelma and Louis are butt-tap cats too — we call them squeamies, and yes, there are different squeamie songs depending on the time of day. This cat would fit right in here.

12. The spinach thief

Climbs into the fridge to guts down the baby spinach as quickly as she can before she gets caught.

— via Reddit.com

I assumed this was a one-cat situation until the replies filled up with produce cats: another spinach eater whose family has to guard their salads, and a cat who hates tuna but loves raspberries.

13. The peony mug

My girl cat will ONLY drink her water from a specific mug, with peony flowers all over it.

We’ve tried other mugs but she screams until we put out her peony one.

— via Reddit.com

This is the one I felt in my soul, because of Thelma’s fish bowl. And it goes further than owning the bowl: the one time we put it through the dishwasher, Thelma boycotted it for days. It gets hand-washed now, because…cats.

14. The silent meow

My mom’s cat silent meows to beg for food. Like dude, you’d get better results if you made a noise!

— via Reddit.com

The silent meow turned out to be surprisingly common in the thread. One person’s cat “talks” with her whole mouth and no sound at all, and they can actually prompt her to do it by doing it at her first. Another cat did nothing but tiny silent squeaks for years and then, at 19, discovered her full volume and now screams for her daily meds.

15. The wall has a plot

My cat stares at the wall like there’s a plot twist coming

— via Reddit.com

Reddit has a name for whatever cats see when they do this: greebles. The practical commenters pointed out that cats can hear things moving behind a wall, which is almost certainly the real answer, and also much less fun than the plot twist. (If you’d rather decode what your cat is actually doing, I wrote a whole guide to reading your cat’s body language.)

Louis does this…a lot. We’ll wake up in the middle of the night to see him staring at the wall. It creeps us out. Is he seeing a ghost that we’re not?

16. Sin biscuits

Quick translation for anyone who needs it: kneading is “making biscuits,” and when a cat kneads a little too passionately, the internet calls it “sin biscuits.”

When anyone in the room sings, one of ours instantly yowls and jumps on the singer to make sin biscuits. None of our other cats do this so we just assume singing prolly makes him somehow “incredibly happy”?? When we want to sing, we just make sure to let him out of the room so he doesn’t get too “worked up” 😂😂

— via Reddit.com

I sing to our cats constantly. My singing voice is terrible, they don’t seem to mind, and neither of them has ever once reacted like this. “Sin biscuits” is now permanently in my vocabulary, though.

17. The 20-minute tuck-in

The longest ritual in the thread, and worth every step. To picture it: the human is adding blankets to the bed one layer at a time, and the cat is on the bed getting deliberately covered up by each new layer as it goes on:

My big grey boy tucks me in every night when I go to bed. It’s a whole process – for each blanket layer (there are 4) – he has to help smooth it out and then waits for the next layer to cover him up. Then I have to check that layer for monsters by patting all around until I find him and pet him through the blanket – sometimes he run rights out for the next blanket, some times he rolls over and becomes the monster, and sometimes he just stays under the blanket and purrs.

Once all the blankets are on the bed – then I have to put my hands under the blankets and he hunts and attacks them.

He ends that game by flopping over so I can rub his tummy. This lasts as long as I want it to – then I try to maneuver myself into bed around him – the 15lb beast in the middle of my bed. As soon as I am settled in and laying quietly – he’ll jump up and run away. The whole process takes at least 20 minutes.

— via Reddit.com

He does the entire 20-minute production and then leaves, which of course he does, because the tuck-in was never about the sleeping.

18. Touch the food first

My cat insists I touch the food in his gravity feeder before he eats it. He pulls it down if it gets stuck, and he will eat it if I’m not around. But if I’m there, he comes to get me to touch his food before he eats it. Just a touch. I can even tell him “I just touched it” now and he’s okay with that as long as he knows I have been in that room recently. If not, he looks at me with That Look.

Now, I touch it when I go by and tell him I’m touching it. Sometimes he’ll go have a bite or two right then. But then, when it’s actually dinner time, he’ll still come to get me to touch the food. It’s ritual and must be done if at all possible. I’m retired, so it’s mostly possible.

— via Reddit.com

I’ve read this one four times and I still can’t decide what the touch accomplishes. Quality control? A blessing? Whatever it is, it’s hilariously weird.

19. The flush inspector

One of my cats NEEDS to watch when the toilet gets flushed. Will sit and wait for you to stand up, put front paws on the seat and peer into the bowl as you flush. I don’t let her look, and I always put the lid down. It doesn’t make a difference. She tries every single time

— via Reddit.com

Bathroom supervision was maybe a third of the entire thread. Cats supervising showers, baths, sinks, and in one case biting the flush handle himself, leaving actual chew marks in the metal.

20. The armadillo

I had to read this one twice to picture it, and it was worth it:

She “armadillos”. While she is trying to clean the back bunny feet, said feet begin to attack back. She rolls up in a ball like an armadillo while she is attacking herself and “pops” up like she is doing gymnastics.

— via Reddit.com

The gymnastics finish is what sells it for me. Somewhere in that ball, a cat is losing a fight with her own back feet and refusing to admit it.

21. The car wash

Every. Single. Time. that I’m done in the shower, my younger cat expects me to stand on the bath mat and scruff her fur while she repeatedly walks between my legs and I have to sing “she’s going through the car wash, yeah”. It’s my own fault for doing it once.

— via Reddit.com

“It’s my own fault for doing it once” is the whole thread in one sentence. Every behavior on this list started as something that happened one time, a cat noticed, enjoyed, and decided “hey, let’s do this every. single. day. now”. And guess what? You don’t get a vote. It might mean you now have two microwaves, or have to sing a car wash song, or put a towel on a cat’s head, you’re doing it. And chances are you (and the cat) will love it.