I found it amusing to watch Twiggy chase after this strange dog-toy. He was a bit funny. Every bit as funny as my other daughter's cats that live in Buffalo, NY! Little did I know that cats enjoy making us laugh. According to "Do Cats Have a Sense of Humor?" from the Petcentric files, cats sometimes do seem to be playful on purpose. The article says, "Cat owners can swap stories about the antics of the kitties and get nearly the same joy and amusement out of them as if they were witnessing the antics first hand."
Well, I don't need a scientist or pet behaviorist to tell me that, do you? More interesting is this, "Author Sarah Hartwell, who works for Cats Protection in the UK, writes, 'After spending hours watching my own cats, it seems that they have a sense of humor, though no where near as sophisticated as a human sense of humor. On second thought, having witnessed my cats' laughing at me, their sense of humor is probably so sophisticated that us humans can't understand the jokes."
Wabby, resident prankster in our house, doesn't laugh at us. She merely stares in disbelief at us - hiding that Chesire cat grin, thinking we don't know when she's fooling us. Oh yeah, she's got it down pat.
Like this cat, described in the article in mention, "Cats are known to play tricks on other species as well. In the same book (The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats by Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason), the author tells of a cat who plays a sophomoric prank on a poodle. (well, a poodle... why not? no offense to poodle owners - love'em, they're great, but...easy to fool, admit it!) The cat baited the dog to chase him, and the dog complied. The cat ran with purpose, coming to an abrupt stop, causing the poor pup to fall down a steep embankment. The dog was unharmed, and the cat, as if to show he was only kidding, climbed down the embankment and licked the pooch."
Oh really..."as if to show he was only kidding..." He wasn't kidding. He was serious. That's why it's funny! At least to the cat.
I like the way the article ends, "We've always known that cats are very smart creatures, with distinct personalities. It only makes sense that if they have personalities that show up in varying levels of playfulness, aloofness, sweetness, affection and sneakiness, it would follow that they have some level of a sense of humor, sometimes a delightfully devious one."
Oh yeah!
