The Strangest, Creepiest Things People Have Seen Their Cats Do

Picture this: You’re out on a date with that cutie you’ve been trying to chat up for a while. You’ve left your strong, independent kitty at home (thank god you weren’t swayed into buying a needy dog) while you romance over candlelight and champagne. You have a great evening and come back home to discover that it wasn’t just your evening that was lit. Your kitchen is, too! 

You instantly worry for your cat, who you thought was pleasantly feasting on canned tuna while you were amusing your date with a cat meme. Turns out, your cat has emerged from the flames unscathed and is now wondering why you’re so worked up. You somehow retrieve the CCTV footage and brace yourself for the shock of your life. You realise, once again, how the victim, in this case, is actually the perpetrator. Your cat is the arsonist.

If you think this is just too dystopian, the Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Department has a message for you. Last month, they issued a statement revealing that the city’s seemingly innocuous felines caused a total of 107 house fires between January 2019 and November 2020. They did this by “accidentally” switching on induction stove knobs, overheating the pots and pans, and even darting their wet paws into open switchboards. In the United States, too, the frisky felines are behind a majority of pet-induced house fires. According to estimates, around 1,000 house fires in the U.S. each year are started by pets. 

Cats and humans have always had a complicated and nurturing relationship with each other. In the book Cat People released earlier this month by Simon & Schuster, author Devapriya Roy recounts how she once met a woman who had named her cat Sureeli (“melodious” in Hindi) because she “sings” along with the radio. Another friend had populated her house with cats to combat the pandemic-induced loneliness. In a heartwarming story, Roy writes how injured cats make a beeline for her friend’s house because it was common knowledge that she healed and adopted kitties in distress. 

But cats can be terribly manipulative, too, and cat parents will be the first to attest to that. In a study conducted by the University of Sussex, it was discovered that “cats control humans” through specific, high-pitched purring (among other things). More recently, a team of researchers at the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University in the UK devised a survey for cat owners to find out if the hellions living with them are actually psychopaths. And just last week, President Biden welcomed a cat named Willow, the first White House feline in over a decade. The manipulation, as it were, seems to have reached the most powerful office in the world. 

To know more about how cats double up as master manipulators, we asked cat people to share some stories of their pets’ inexplicable, strange and occasionally evil behaviours. 

I have two cats – one black, called Voodoo, and a ginger, Cheeto. Both are adopted. Considering that black cats are considered inauspicious in India, my neighbours were not the happiest when I got him home. But it is Cheeto who actually has an evil, even murderous, streak. He demands to be fed ritually every morning at 7. 

In Delhi’s harsh winters, it’s sometimes difficult to get up early. The first time I didn’t wake up on time, he made it abundantly clear that this was not going to fly. He mauled and killed a pigeon that day, and ripped out its entrails, as if to tell me, “If you can’t give me my food on time, I’ll feed myself.”

This happened almost four times over the last few years. I still don’t know how he manages to find those poor pigeons to kill. But this much is clear: If I don’t feed my cat at 7AM, there will be a dead, mauled pigeon waiting for me on the terrace.

He also lives parallel lives. Almost like a white man from a rom-com, Cheeto has a second family which I discovered only later, much to my heartbreak. Once, he didn’t return home for nearly a week and I was worried sick. My cook informed me that she had seen him at a neighbour’s place, just chilling. They even have a litter box for him. Turns out, he had a second family all along. – Saumyaa Vohra

I live alone with my 12 cats. During winters, Jammu (in northern India) becomes unbearably cold. On one such particularly freezing day, I decided to keep them locked in a room with a heater nearby because a hot air blower wasn’t going to cut it. I’m a university professor, so I usually have no option but to lock them in the house when I’m away. 

When I came home in the evening, I had the shock of my life. I still don’t know how, but the cats had somehow managed to push the heater to a spot right under my home aquarium, which was now up in flames! The plastic and styrofoam sheets under it had caught fire. It was almost like the fish were getting roasted in a large utensil on a stove. Some of them were expensive fish, and all of them were nearly burnt to a crisp. And the cats? Well, all of them looked at me as if nothing had happened. The evening set on their stoic, indifferent faces.

I also have herpetophobia, which is a fear of reptiles. Maybe my cats know this because why else would they find the creepiest reptiles, bash their skulls in, and hide their little corpses under my pillow? I sleep on a double bed and all 12 of them sleep around me. Some days, I’ll find a dead chameleon with its head bashed in. Or a squirrel’s entrails all ripped out on my blood-splattered sheet. – Salil Seth 

My cat came as a kitten, a beautiful white Persian who needed a home. But she believed she was the daughter of my very old Cocker Spaniel, who was himself in love with my Golden Retriever. 

She hits and slaps everyone except the three dogs. She also sexually harasses the Retriever – ogling at her longingly, following her everywhere. What is wonderful is that all the dogs love her and she loves them. However, I also believe she has a toxic relationship with my mother. She will quite literally slap my mum each and every time they are physically together, but gets super depressed when my mum isn’t home. 

We can’t get her neutered because she won’t let anyone touch her for post-op care. We all have wounds on our bodies. When guests come home, she will welcome them in peace and once they have settled in comfortably, proceed to slap them, too, should they try to touch her. 

My other cat had a weird thing for bras until he was 2. He’d walk into a room full of guests with a bra in his mouth, dragging it across the floor. He has always been strange that way. Every midnight, he stands in a specific corner of the house and lets out a painful, super loud howl. This is some hereditary craziness because his father would do the same. – Noor Enayat, Delhi.

Before getting a cat, you must understand that you are raising a natural-born predator. My two cats have taught me humility. They have gone out of their ways to assert their control and sheer dominance over our lives. For instance, if it’s a particularly hot summer day and they know we need the air conditioner, they will perch themselves on it. So, there is no way we can use electrical equipment with them sitting on it. If we want to watch the TV, they will sit on it too, while we collectively hold our breath, worried that they will topple it over. Lodged on high elevations, they want to drive home a simple point – that they are superior to us.

If one is a meticulous planner, the other rushes into adventures that involve us defying the lockdown and walking in the street in the middle of the night, calling out plaintively. I even wanted to name them Marie and Kondo as they have proceeded to demolish all that sparked joy in my life: crockery, curtains, sofas, books, newspapers, treats. I was just as helpless when they broke a copper attardaan (perfume holder) that had survived the 1947 India-Pakistan partition. 

They waste no time in making you realise that you truly are just a speck in the universe. There is a higher power than you, and it resides in these feline gods and goddesses. I’ve been brought to tears by my cats. How many lessons will I have to learn? Every day in Delhi, the city of Nizamuddin Auliya (a Sufi saint), they push me closer to living a life of detachment from self, ego, and material possessions. – Aneela Babar, Rawalpindi and Delhi 

When I was studying in Oxford two years back, I didn’t want to move to an apartment with flatmates for fear of the virus. Luckily, I found this beautiful Victorian house on the outskirts of the old city, inhabited by a single old day. She was willing to rent a room to me for a surprisingly low price but on one condition: I had to babysit her cat when she wasn’t home. This house was straight out of a period drama – Victorian, gothic and menacingly quiet. You could even hear the water running through the pipes in the dead of the night and the fog rolling around. Mostly, it would just be me and the cat alone in that majestic bungalow. 

On the first night, after I fed her some food, I woke up at exactly 3AM with a start. She’d climbed on one of my suitcases and was staring intently outside the window into the distance. This happened every single night I lived in that house. It definitely freaked me out. I even called my friend and told her this was happening. I found out later that if cats randomly stare in the distance, they have mostly spotted a spirit. The fact that the house was the way it was, definitely didn’t help. She’d wander around aimlessly at night, hissing at invisible things. The next day, I found a narrow road from this bungalow leading to a 13th-century graveyard. The neighbourhood told stories of a man who haunts the area, riding his bicycle and vanishing into the dark. 

That explained a lot of things. I eventually had to get used to her ritualistic staring at something outside the window. – Gurmehar Kaur, Oxford 

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