Ol’Mec is a pretty reserved cat. She lies around a whole lot, doesn’t absolutely love to be petted like Keymaster, and doesn’t play a whole lot.
Every now and then, we’ll catch her knocking something around the apartment or chasing after Keymaster but it doesn’t happen very often.
Introduce catnip into the equation and it’s a pretty different story. She gets all nuts and her pupils get really huge and she just gets REALLY into whatever she’s doing.
When I brought that cardboard scratcher home, after rubbing herself on it for a good while, she then spent about 30 minute licking the exact same spot on it. She managed to put a pretty good dent into it from all the licking.
And yes, that’s Parappa the Rapper in the background!
So what is it about catnip that makes most cats go nuts? Well, here’s a Wikipedia article on Nepeta, the class of plants that is generally called catnip.
“nepeta pleasantly stimulates cats’ pheromonic receptors, typically resulting in temporary euphoria.”
“Catnip has nepetalactone, a terpene… the nepetalactone binds to one or more olfactory receptors where it probably mimics a cat pheromone”
January 15th, 2010 at 11:56 am
nam nam nam nam nam nam nam!