Thread by @shaunjlawson

My favourite things about cats:

1. Headbutts. The best thing EVER. 🥰🥰🥰

2. That in many cases, they choose us. We do not choose them.

3. Their ability to send us to the doghouse for hours on end if we've done something they're not happy about.

theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2…

4. Their relentless obsession with hygiene.

5. When they come to us and roll onto their backs, then their fronts, to show that they trust us.

6. Their apparent Zen-like calm for hours on end.

7. That I can tell when my parents' cat wants water. Just by how she looks at me.

(By 'water', I mean: "Oi! Take me upstairs to the bathtub and turn the tap on. I shall then carefully test the heat with my paw to check that it's cold").

8. If we're depressed or ill, they have our backs. They do, you know.

9. Their rebelliousness, especially when scratching the furniture/sharpening their claws.

10. Their ability to climb practically anything. Including tall cupboards or cabinets. You walk in, they're above you and you think "HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!"

11. Their elasticity. Invariably falling on their feet. It's like a genetic, evolutionary miracle of reflexes.

12. Their resourcefulness and ability to look after themselves whenever they need to.

13. What they teach us about empathy. You have to have it to understand a cat.

14. My parents' cat always performing the same routine of walking in, hiding under a chair... but then coming to me when I pat the space next to me.

15. The way they purr and go crazy with happiness if you groom them with a comb.

16. My old cat's ability to befriend and manipulate EVERYONE.

17. His running away from his original owners because they'd put him on special diet food. 🤣

18. The way they keep watch and protect us.

19. Finding a warm spot on our beds to sleep.

20. Their capacity to tell us to eff off whenever they want.

21. At 11 in the morning, while I was still asleep, my parents' cat jumping onto my bed and waking me up by loudly miaowing right in my face - because she'd not been fed yet and had had enough. 🤣🥰

22. That little stretch they do of all four paws when they wake up and are about to start walking.

23. Their look of mortified embarrassment if something goes wrong. "You didn't see that, OK? It didn't happen".

24. Their capacity for magic. Example as follows.

My old cat had moved in with me while I was at Oxford. My college was NOT HAPPY and insisted I ignore him. So I tried. Well, sort of.

He responded by following me around everywhere, all over the complex. And then - how in the world did he know this?! - wow, just wow! 😮😮😮

Every summer, we moved rooms. So he went and sat outside the exact room I was moving into a couple of weeks later. I'd never shown him it; I have no idea how he knew. But he did.

Sure enough, the day I moved in with all my stuff all over the floor, he jumped in and looked at me

"What about me? Where's my space?"

Naturally, I immediately obeyed my Lord and master, and we lived a very happy year together. The college could do NOTHING about it.

Cats are THE BEST. If only they weren't tiny serial killers who torture and kill for pleasure, that is.

But you know why they bring 'presents' to us? I'm pretty sure it's to show humans how to hunt. Remarkable, but true.

25. Last one - if they've been outside, when they come back in and tell us about their day. Not by miaowing, but by mumbling and grumbling at us.

"Oooh did you? Oooh blimey! And then what happened?"

Not dissimilar to this actually (2:40 here):