Catnip

[thelmalu99]

I'm curious to know how everyone's cats react to catnip.
My two year old cat Elvis loves the stuff. He's a real niphead. Danny, my 7 month old baby, usually can't be bothered. He'll smell it and just walk away. Last night, I got Danny to try a little bit, but he doesn't go crazy for it like Elvis does.
...but then again, Danny is a strange one...he doesn't eat tuna.

[C.C.'s Mom]

My 2 cats LOVE catnip. They start to roll over, look with crossed eyes, drool, and are totally out of space. They also like to lick the little catnip bag till it's soaking wet.
But, as soon as the dog has been playing with it, they pretend to have lost all interest in catnip, until I come home with a new little bag for them.
My old cat that passed away, used to sleep with her head on a little catnip pillow.

[purrley]

Three of my cats love it. The other one (Panda) my jungle cat tries to cover it up like a piece of poo.

[AngieS]

Kitti loves her catnip. The first few times we gave her catnip she would stick her head in the bag to get a little before i pured it out. She doesn't seem to do it much any more. I guess now she knows she will get it poured out for her.It is funny to watch. But we usually pour a little on the floor because she likes to roll around in it. When Olli was a puppy he was afraid to go near her when she had catnip out on the floor because she wouldn't let him get near it.lol. She doesn't care much for catnip stuffed toys though.

Angie
Olli 9mo.old,fawn boxer,natural ears,docked tail
Kitti 1yr.old,white wtih grey and black stripes

[ October 04, 2001: Message edited by: AngieS ]

[cr7clark]

Hi Farruska,
Catnip is the common name for an herbal plant of the mint family that grows wild here in the US. It got it's name because cats seem to go crazy over it, somehow it has a smell and taste that they just can't get enough of. My Bo will eat the dried leaves. She also literally chews to pieces anything that has catnip rubbed on it (such as her furry mice).
Not all cats like it, however. Our first cat, an orange tabby named Valentine, couldn't have cared less about the stuff. He was a bit unusual in other ways, too....didn't care for any kind of seafood, just preferred beef and roast fowl.
You might try to do an Internet search using the term "catnip" just to see what comes up.

[tuxluvr]

Ritz treats catnip toys like "poo" too, sniffing once and walking past it, then pretending to "cover it up"....mom got the picture. I often wonder if I got some natural catnip, freshly grown, if it would be different.

Thanks for the info Spencer! I always wondered if it could be male/female related

[tuxluvr]

which brings up another question I've always had...why are there no (or very few) male calico cats? This puzzle of kitty genetics has always fascinated me.

[Karen]

You asked - here is the answer from the NYTimes learning site:

Strictly speaking, a calico cat is a tortoiseshell, or orange and black, cat with the addition of white spots, explains "The Cornell Book of Cats" (Villard Books). Several different genes on several different chromosome locations go into creating such a cat, and one of them, for orange color, is sex-linked, carried only on the X chromosome. The combination that produces black and orange coloring is not ordinarily inherited by male cats. (A cat with two X chromosomes is female, a cat with an X and a Y is male.)

The orange color gene has two forms, or alleles, designated by feline geneticists as O (for orange) and o (for nonorange). Each X chromosome that a cat inherits has either an O or an o.

Another gene determines what other color the cat will be besides or instead of orange; in tortoiseshell cats, it is black, designated B. For a male cat to be orange, it needs to inherit only one allele, on its single X chromosome. A female cat must have two O alleles to be orange; if it inherits one O and one o, plus B, it is a tortoiseshell.

Male tortoiseshells also inherit an O and an o, but one comes on an extra X chromosome, which it gets because of an error in chromosome separation. With two X's and a Y, such a cat has chromosomes that are mismatched when it comes to mating, and is almost always sterile.

Another gene has two alleles, designated S for white spotting and s for no spotting. A calico cat would carry O and o alleles, plus B, plus S. Calico males, which are very rare, are also almost invariably sterile.

[yorkster]

Originally posted by thelmalu99:
<STRONG>I'm curious to know how everyone's cats react to catnip.
My two year old cat Elvis loves the stuff. He's a real niphead. Danny, my 7 month old baby, usually can't be bothered. He'll smell it and just walk away. Last night, I got Danny to try a little bit, but he doesn't go crazy for it like Elvis does.
...but then again, Danny is a strange one...he doesn't eat tuna. </STRONG>

A cat that does not like tuna??? I have never heard of such a thing!

About catnip though: My 10 month old kitten has NO interest in it (maybe a kitten thing?) My 7 yr. old cat LOVES it, but he did not like it until he was about 3 or so, and now he can't get enough. My former kitty (Liza, R.bow bridge) went totally nuts for the stuff from day one, even as a kitten. You just never know about cats!

[tuxluvr]

Karen, cool biology lesson! I have read about the s gene, in reading about the peculiarity of the black and white (or techincally white with black spots) that turn out my all time favorite tuxedo markings...


Thanks

[DNova]

I spent a few months growing and drying catnip for my neighbor's cat who is mainly an outdoors cat and usually visits me when he hears my in the backyard (this was before I moved to florida). When I offered him some of the catnip, he had absolutely no interest in it He's about 4 years old orange and white tabby. I thought maybe my catnip was "defective" or something but the cat of another one of my friends went insane for it! so I gave them the plant.

[ November 04, 2001: Message edited by: DNova ]

[thelmalu99]

Originally posted by yorkster:
<STRONG>
A cat that does not like tuna??? I have never heard of such a thing!
</STRONG>

I know...it's the strangest thing. He doesn't like wet food, but that's not so strange. You can open a fresh can of tuna and put it right in front of him and he will just sniff it and walk away. Elvis, on the other hand, will eat enough for both of them!
I feed wet food as a treat every few days. Normally, they eat Nutro. I have been trying so hard to find something that I can feed Danny as a treat, since he won't eat the canned stuff. I finally found something he will eat - Tender Vittles! It has the same texture as the Whisker Lickins treats he likes.
I just like to have a "treat food" (junk food) to give them now and again to break up to monotony, since I don't feed them scraps. Because everyone needs a Big Mac once in a while!

[AmberLee]

Cats that don't like TUNA:

Sorry to say it, but neither Cassy or his Rainbow Bridge brother Sassy like tuna, either. Not even in their kitten "little furry piranha" mode inhale-the-food-before-the-dish-hits-the-floor days would they eat it. Being stubborn and rather dense, I kept trying different brands /flavor combos in the hopes I'd find a taste treat for them. [The local cat rescue group benefited from my stubborn-ness, if no one else.]

I have no idea if Livvy likes tuna or not. Having finally gotten discouraged from buying it, she's never had a chance since she came to live with us. [Hope she isn't parading with a picket sign when I get home tonight protesting "pud-tat deprevation" !]

Oops -- regarding the main point of this thread, all three of my furbabies ADORE catnip. Cassy began responding to it about 6 months, Sassy about 8 months, and Livvy sometime between 12 and 24 months.

[ November 05, 2001: Message edited by: AmberLee ]

[Former User]

Are we bad humans now, we haven't tried catnip out???