Does my cat know that I control the laser pointer? Do they know but just don't care because it's fun to "play the game"?
Yes. At least my female cat does (the older male cat couldn't give two-shits about the laser pointer, and the younger male only sometimes cares about it). How do I know this? Three ways:When I jingle the laser pointer, in contrast to the jingle of my keys, change or other jingly object, my cat comes running to me, not to the typical "staring point" where the mysterious red dot appears on the carpeting.When the "mysterious red dot that must be attacked at all costs" suddenly disappears, my little kitty doesn't look for it (like she does when she loses her 248,000 various mouse toys--where they go, I have no clue). No. She stops, looks at me and does this mixed purr-growl-chirp noise (that I find totally adorable). If I don't start again soon, she runs up to me making the same noise and doesn't stop until I start again.She knows that I keep the "maker of the mysterious red dot thingie" in a dish on a shelf. She knows this and frequently runs to that shelf, or sits on the kitchen table near that shelf making really cute purr-growl-chirp noises at it until I, or my boyfriend, give in and engage her for a few minutes until one of us gets bored (and, it's usually us).
Do cats eat rats or do they just kill them?
Cats can definitely eat rats and pretty much anything they catch and kill. We have a cat Tyler who is well fed but spends a lot of time outside during the day and evening exploring and hunting. He eats all sorts of small mammals and birds. I have seen him with chipmunks, mice, voles, moles, snakes, squirrels, and rabbits. He's medium to larger size cat and he pretty much eats everything. I have seen him get rabbits, rip the head off (and sometimes eat it). He pulls off the fur and guts it leaving the entrails. Eating everything including the bones. Pretty much the same for everything else. Rats would pose no problem for him. He stays away from skunks, opossums, and woodchucks. A neighbor cat Oscar managed to kill two opossums after altercations with them. He was injured so didn't eat them.Felines of all sizes are excellent hunters if they learned how to do it. Their hearing, eyesight, whiskers, fangs and protractable claws make them among the best predators on the planet. A rat doesn't have much of a chance against them and they make a tasty meaty meal for them.EDIT: Thanks for the suggested edits. One person suggested changing opossum to possum. The correct term for the animal in North America IS opossum. The possum found in Australia is different. We do use fangs like playing possum but it's different usage. Check the information on http://grammerly.com for more interesting information.
What is the weirdest thing you have ever seen an animal do?
I lived in Montana for 20 years. A common little animal there is what is locally called a gopher. It is actually a Columbian ground squirrel, a relative of the prairie dog. They are amusing little creatures to watch even though they can be pests. For a time, they were popular with the Japanese as an imported pet. My son, when he was a teen, would trap them and sell them to dealers.They hibernate during the winter for 7 months, emerging when the ground warms up, a sure sign of spring. They are frequent casualties of road kill, especially in early summer, when unwary young are crossing the road after their mothers. One morning, while on my way to work, I saw a mama gopher with three babies on the side of the road. Mama and two babies crossed in time, but the third one stopped in my lane. I was going too fast to stop and fully expected to squash the little one. At the last minute, it ran back to the middle of my lane, looked at the oncoming monster, and tucked his head under his paws. I passed over it and watched in the rear view mirror as it scampered safely across the road to it’s mother.I still chuckle to myself whenever I think of that gopher and the look in it’s eyes just before it ducked.Columbian ground squirrel
What is the best way to protect your hands while woodworking?
See this picture?:This is a wood piece that my friend was pushing with his hand along the table saw when his phone rang. He just twisted quickly his head not to answer the phone but to check who was calling. It was enough for the board to lose minimally its aligment to the fence and for the blade to kick off the board along with his fingers. Three of his fingers where damaged but none was cut off. Two of them were not too bad after several weeks, and the other one is not in good condition yet, he cannot bend it and he is facing a painful rehab. He also was hit by the board So hard that he had a bruise of a diameter of 10 inches, with the board side that hit him clearly marked.I went to his workshop after that as he continue to work and offered to help me as I do not have a table saw and guess what, he keeps pushing the boards with his hand.So, as others also responded, it is not only a question of knowing the safety rules. As we were told in the engineering school, “it is neccesary but not sufficient”. You also need to develop the habits from the very beginning and stick to them with no excuses to skip or not to follow them.
Which earth species has the best chance of surviving the apocalypse?
The aftermath of the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption gave us a microcosm view of how Earth must have been shortly after the End-Cretaceous event, and explained why the world was repopulated by the descendants of a few small reptile species, one or two surviving dinos (i.e. birds) and perhaps 6 species of shrew-like or possum-like mammal.The pyroclastic flow flattened & incinerated everything for square miles around but the following year flowers appeared - lupins grown from seeds beneath the ash, and living on those was a population of gophers whose burrows were far enough underground to escape the heat but not so far down to be inescapably buried beneath the ash.The creatures that survived the KT event were all small enough to find refuge, and with physical traits pre-adapting them to survive both the initial blast and subsequent freeze. They were either cold-blooded and able to survive by dormancy, or warm-blooded & well insulated by fur or feathers, and they all had some means of taking shelter in burrows, caves or water.Thanks to us there are a lot of creatures living that way now, because we ARE the apocalypse for large animals & plants, but have created many forms of artificial cave in which the cockroach, the brown rat & the rock dove have found new homes.
Do domestic cats ever catch squirrels? I saw a cat in my yard stalking a squirrel and it seemed like the squirrel had the situation completely under control. The cat didn't get close.
Duke (Marmaduke Gingerbits - he hated that name) was a killing machine.He wasn’t a big, heavy cat, he was long and rangey, a neutered tom never more than 5 kilos in weight.I had him from a small kitten, <8 weeks old. He grew up with two big sisters who came from a farm. He grew up with a cat flap, and he had access to the outdoors as soon as he had his inoculations (he had cat litter until he was a year old)Killer Chronicles:Duke’s first catch was a worm. It was alive when he brought it in, and the movement attracted himFrog. Frogs are fun - you prod them and they jump. Frogs became such a signature, that we used to find them, dehydrated, under the sofa. Hence the expression “There’s no fun in a dead frog”Mice. Duke was unusual in always eating the mice that he caught (I am currently fighting a mouse brought in by current alpha male cat - said mouse has been in the house 3 weeks. Hey! He cleaned the hob!) except for one paw and the green bit …Sparrow, Tit, Robin. Feathers are a problem, but Duke used to manage to get into the tasty bits without having to pull out all of the feathersPigeon. I have discovered, the hard way, that you can carpet a 3 bed house with the feathers from one pigeon.Seagull. That was special. I can’t work out how Duke and the seagull got in through the cat flap; I assume he backed in?Squirrel. Grey squirrels, which are alien pests. Duke hated them, they came into his garden, and they ran up Duke’s trees.Where to start? I once came home to find half a squirrel on the door mat. Go on, ask me which half?..It was the outside half. Yep, I cam home to an empty squirrel, on my doormat.The other significant squirrel is about one that Duke brought in while we were showing the house to prospective buyers. “This is the lounge. As you can see, it looks out onto the garden”, (cat flap flaps, Duke comes in), “Seller will put double glazing panel to replace the panel with the cat flap”, Duke suddenly interested in a cabinet, and - a squirrel erupts! Duke hurtles after squirrel as it careens around the lounge. I open the patio door, and they both vanish.As it happens, that couple loved the house, but not the cat flap.
I want to make a career switch to a job with more action, adrenaline. What job should I look into?
What commitments do you have? If you are single, no dependents then the world is open to you:Go to riggers school, and go to work on a drilling rig. Money is good and you can quickly build up a stake to do something else.Take an adventure holiday. Before you go, get some skill at at. E.g. Join your local canoe club, get half decent at canoeing, then do an adventure with Churchill River Outfitters or Black Feather. At the end of the trip, ask them for a job. Pay sucks.On Indeed or similar consolidating job boards, set up searches for ‘outdoor’ work.Get your wilderness first responder (first aid) certificate.Become a gopher for a movie company, or TV news company.Get a job at a horse stable.Prospect for gold in Alaska. Or diamonds.
Do you believe in Noah's Ark?
Do you believe in Noah's Ark?Which one? If any?Noah's Ark revealed: Scaled-down replica build by hand in IndiaThe replica ark and its original design was based on a coracle and the vessel (pictured) has been constructed according to exact instructions marked on clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq)Dr Irving Finkel, assistant keeper of the Middle East department at the British Museum, said the scaled-down version of the ark is just large enough to accommodate a few pairs of ‘well behaved animals’.Experts say the ‘real’ Ark would have been half the size of a football pitch in area and built with enough rope to stretch from Edinburgh to London.Dr Finkel concluded that the Ark could never have been built to that size, based on its structural integrity as well as the vast amount of materials needed.Historians specialising in Middle Eastern boat design, used computer models to test whether a full-size vessel could theoretically have sailed.Dr Finkel told MailOnline they found that ribs and planks large enough for the design couldn’t have been found anywhere in the natural world and concluded that the Babylonians didn’t have the technology to splice wood, making the full-size ark impossible to build.They would also have lacked the “Gopher-Steel” brackets, which Ken Ham used in his “replica” ark!Gilgamesh flood myth - WikipediaGilgamesh tablet XIFlood tablet in AkkadianThe tablet gives instructions, for building a coracle: a large, round vessel. Modern coracles built to traditional designs, look something like this:File:A Coracle man.JPGThe Gilgamesh story was most likely fiction or gross exaggeration, but there can be little doubt the handed-down Noah version, definitely lost the plot on the design features over the centuries when it was retold!Babylonians didn’t have the technology to splice wood, making the full-size ark impossible to build.They would also have lacked the “Gopher-Steel” brackets, which Ken Ham used in his “replica” ark!Ken Ham's ark to be built out of gopher steelGenesis 6:14 "Make yourself an ark of ( gopherwood X ) huge fir beams, fastened with steel plates and bolts; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with (pitch X) Behr Marquee Exterior Semi-Gloss Enamel"