What do cats do when they’re home alone? The folks at Nestle Purina PetCare’s Friskies division installed cat-cams on 50 cats in order to find out, and they’ve now announced the results:
Based on the photos, about 22 percent of the cats’ time was spent looking out of windows, 12 percent was used to interact with other family pets and 8 percent was spent climbing on chairs or kitty condos. Just 6 percent of their hours were spent sleeping.
Uh huh. Look: I work at home. So I know exactly what my critters do between the hours of nine and five: they sleep. I’d peg it at about 80% of the time. The Purina folks clearly have some serious methodological issues here. Perhaps it’s a Heisenberg kind of thing: the existence of the cat-cams affects the behavior of the cats being observed. They’d have to be pretty small cats, though. Alternatively, someone just screwed up.
Anyway, photographic proof is right here. These pictures were taken just moments ago. Earlier this morning Domino woke up just long enough to hop up on my desk and stare at me until I vacated my chair (no worries, I’ve got a spare for just these occasions), and then fell fast asleep. Inkblot didn’t even open his eyes that long. He’s been curled up on the red blanket upstairs ever since he finished his breakfast. Six percent my ass.
UPDATE: More detail than you ever imagined possible about the cat-cam study here.
