Why Are We All Obsessed with Cats? The World's Greatest Cat Daddy Reveals the Secrets!

You're listening to Pet Candy. This show is brought to you by Zoetis. Hello, hello, it's been a very long time since we've had a Bees and Queens episode, and some of you may not know the reason, the rock, the number one human being in my life, Clay Palmer. I mean, my debut into podcasting did come from an episode of Bees and Queens. I'm pretty sure. It was Deskwinch Confession. It was Deskwinch. But that's okay because now you're on Bees and Queens and you need to be everywhere. You need to be in front of more people. Let's make you a star. Now normally your guest on Bees and Queens is like, I don't know, somebody in the veterinary field, maybe someone like important or popular, someone who's a doctor or has a lot of followers on social media. And then sometimes it's you. Sometimes it's me, I guess. That's right. If y'all don't know, this is my husband Clay Palmer. He's my number one, my partnering crime, and the number one cat daddy in the world, right? Cat daddy. How does it feel to be the best cat daddy? You know what? It feels like a lot of scooping litter boxes. A lot of responsibility, isn't it? Yeah. There's a lot of poo involved. I feel like I'm the number one cat daddy, not because of particularly being quality wise number one, but because of the number of cats I have. I thought you were going to say the number of number ones, like talking about pee. Cats pee a lot. They do be pee. They do be pee. They do be pee. And they shouldn't pee a whole lot. Talk to your veterinarian if you feel like you're getting to know. If you feel like they're pee. Or not enough. Or not enough. That one's actually worse. Oh god. That's so horrible. So there's not really a kind way to segue into this clay. So I work at the veterinary office. You know, I'm the desk wentch on the receptionist. Clay works on the back end of pet care and pet after care. Yeah. You know, if you think something's going on with your cat, like get it checked out. Like come see me. Don't go see clay. Yeah, take your cat to the vet if you think there is something wrong with your cat. For sure. Most definitely. We kind of jumped right into talking about taking your cat to the vet. We were going to talk about more fun things. Yeah, we have more fun things to talk about for sure. But just general disclaimer. Now clay probably should have waited before we've been married for 15 years and been recording this podcast for several minutes at this point. But this is an important question that many people do take into account when choosing their mate, their spouse. Are you a dog person or a cat person? I like both dogs and cats. They feel different needs is what I'd say. I can see that. I'll pet a damn alligator if you give it to me. Yeah, I mean, like I love them. Like yes, cats are dogs. Yes. I'd love to pet an alligator. I know. They're so cool. I just can't really trust them too much to not kill me instantly. They might try. Yeah. They might try. I see the appeal to both dogs and cats. I do. And I have pet parents who are not supposed to admit it, but everyone has favorites. We do. But like I have a favorite dog and I have a favorite cat. And if I had to choose between the two, I just couldn't. You're allowed to have one from each column. Yeah. I think that's only fair. So do you have a favorite beard dragon? I do. So we have so many bearded dragons. Right. We have so many. We have many, many, many, I don't even know what a group of bearded dragons is big is what we have is called. A barber shop. A barber shop of dragons. A bearded dragon. Yes. Well, a squeeze is probably my favorite. Yeah. Of all the bearded dragons, and we certainly have more than one, squeeze would be the best. Yeah. Yeah. We have a, we have so many bearded dragons. It's obscene. It's obscure. But Clay, cats. I love cats. We're obsessed with cats. You may have note if you listen to obsessed with the Palmer's, this is our very first episode about cats. And we're revisiting that today. We made our podcast about like cryptids and mythological creatures. And the first episode you do is on cats. Okay, but cats kind of tie into it all. Okay. Yeah, maybe a little clay power. That's a discussion for that podcast. So here are the top 10 reasons why I am obsessed with cats. By the way, a person who's obsessed with cats is called an allurefile. An allurefile. So Clay, we're going to say it together. Okay. I can't. Yes. You might. Yes. I want. Mumbled speech pattern. No. It's like if I try to say rural. Hero.<|vi|> Roll dirt. Red leather yellow leather red leather yellow leather red leather yellow leather yellow leather. Why people have hard time doing that? Here's our top 10 reasons for why we love cats so much. Coming in at number 10 Clay. Why is this a watch moja? Yeah, it's a watch moja. There's a cat for everybody. And you hear that a lot people say I'm not a cat person. And it may just be that it's not the right cat. We think of cats as being very aloof, very standoff, but there's cats that are so loving and obnoxious with their love. I can't tell you how many times I've heard somebody, you know, we live down here in the south and cats have a certain reputation amongst typically the older men of our generation, of our of our location. And I've heard so many people say, oh, well, I didn't like cats until I met this cat. Right. Like that. That's a good cat. That's a good cat. Like that cat is somehow in the top 1% of cats. Sure. And it's just it's just a cat. Yeah, it's just a cat. Oh, cats are wonderful. All cats bring something to the table. But I agree. There's a cat for everyone. You know, my dad growing up wasn't too into cats, but we had cornbread who was an orange tabby. And dad loved cornbread. And dad's one of those people that'll say that was a good cat. I like that cat. I don't like cats, but that was a good cat. But it's funny because every time my parents come over, they love our cats. Yeah. They do, especially my mom. Yeah. Mom, if you're listening, we know we got your number. Yeah, we know you like cats. You like cats. You say you don't, but you do. The sequence out, we know. The sequence. And you know what? Kimari probably opened the door for that. He did. We have a beautiful fluffy Russian blueie cat that everyone loves. Right. Well, he's a great cat. He's the best cat. And that's not us being biased. That's just a fact. Yeah, it's just how it is. I don't know what to do. It's just a fact. So there's cats that are more aloof if you really just kind of want to recluse their roommate who poops in a box. You can have that. If you want. That's actually like the baseline for cats. Yeah, that's like the base model. No bells and whistles. That's your standard operating cat. Or if you want a big goofy goober, get you a big orange cat. Yeah, orange cats are kind of notably stupid. You know, this is a fun fact. Everybody and I'm going to give you this for completely free. All orange cats actually share one brain cell. Right. Only one cat can have it at the time at a time. And sometimes it's not the entire brain cell. They've got to split it. Split up. So if your cat's dirt been mad hard, it's just not their turn with the brain. It's just not their turn with the brain. So has there ever been a cat clay for you that you were like, I don't like this cat. And then you were like, I do like this cat. Well, remember when Jessica lived with you for a while. And her cat, whose name was Fez. Fez was an aggressive cat of. Fez was beautiful. That's beautiful. That's what I cat. Oh, God. That's gorgeous. But he was a butthole. And he would he would bite you and he would hiss at you. And all you would have done is sit down on the couch, but he would have been somewhere nearby and was upside about it before the end of that, you know, I mean, you know me and Fez became friends. And upset Jessica because even she couldn't do the things that I could do with Fez, like pick them up or scratch his belly. I love that. I don't think I've ever met a cat that I just didn't like. You know, I take that back. There was this one cat that used to board with this. There was this one cat. And I'm not going to say their name, but they used to board with us. And the it was one of those situations where the pet parent was so kind and so beautiful and wonderful. But this cat, this cat was possessed. It was so mean. And it was diabetic. So we had to give it insulin. And there was like, so you had to be more involved with the cat. I had to be a lot more involved with the cat than I wanted to be in more than the cat wanted to be involved with me. And you know, different different breeds are going to act different. You know, we were talking about how orange cats are derpy, happy babies. And then this is essentially, you know, animals are individuals, just like people, but yeah, you bring up cat breeds. A lot of people don't really know about cat breeds. There's not that many. Yeah, it's not like dogs where you'll have a multitude of breeds that'll even be extremely similar, but like slightly different like, oh, this one's like a Belgian, whatever cats are typically just broken down into domestic, short hair, medium hair, long hair, right? Right. At least where we are anyway. Right. Yeah, especially where we are. But you know, we talked about Fez. Fez was like a Syameasy kind of cat and Syameasy. Syameasy's, they do have reputation for being a little more vocal, towardies and callacos are typically more sassy. Black cats are perfect in every way. I see. Like what you're just saying, like tortoises and callacos is almost more of like a fur color pattern than it is like a different breed. Yeah, it's just a color. Right. You know, whereas like a different breed with a dog, we're like, yes, this one weighs five pounds and this one weighs 86. Right. Right. They're like just so close to being a lion without being a lion. Yeah. Number nine reason why people are so obsessed with cats is cats are ideal for people who need friends. Cats need us and we need cats. I can't believe you just called anyone who has cats a loser who has no friends. Well, look, look, look, look to your left and then look to your right. Yes, it's me and you and it's a bunch of cats. Well, you know, which is obviously not true, but when people think of like, you know, oh, man's best friend or whatever they think of dog, but cats, you know, honestly, can a bond very strongly with their owners. Absolutely. And they, we didn't domesticate them quite the same as we did. Yes. Yeah. Like how I said earlier about, you know, dogs and cats filling a different need, you know, for me personally, they also did that for humanity. You know, dogs were made to be these, well, watch dogs and hunters and cats weren't. Yeah. Cats were just kind of like, hey, cats were literally, we just wanted something to like hang around. Right. And cats do that. They do that really well. I love those means where it's like when your dog does something bad and they look just totally destroyed. Right. They look so upset. And then cats are just like, man, yeah, and it's like, well, if you didn't want me to knock over the priceless face, you shouldn't put it on a shelf. Why did you have a priceless face if I wanted you to have a priceless face? I would have brought you one. Just like I brought you that headless bird yesterday. Oh my gosh, I love when they do. Well, I don't love that they do that. But like it's, it's sweet when they do that because, you know, they do that because they think we're big, stupid, hairless cats. Yeah. I've never seen you kill and eat something. So I just assume you're going to starve to death. Right. Here, take this. And now that I now that I know it that way, like it still grows, but whenever I'm like, it's nice. They don't want you to starve. Right. It's kind. Exactly. It's kind. It's kind. Yeah. I mean, your your closest friend isn't going to want you to start death. That's the number one telegisine of a true friend. Right. I'll say my dogs never bring me in. No. In fact, they try to take my food. I think I think this is cat propaganda. I don't think this is a bee's in queen episode. I think this is written by cats. Yeah. Our overlords, the cats. We're definitely not being held I mean, they're said to be said for that too, because I mean, that's kind of how it was in ancient Egypt with cats. Yes. They were considered, you know, what, holy or sacred. We were effectively their servants. Yes. And we still we still are. Yeah. I mean, I've got to open the can to give them the gross smelling cat food. And then I have to scoot the litter box with the gross smelling cat food in it. That's true. And our cats, do your cats do this? Listeners, we have a bunch of litter boxes. You know, the role of thumb is the litter box per cat plus one. But we have a bunch of litter boxes and all of our cats. They have their favorite litter box. Yeah. And they refuse to any other use any other litter box. But you know what? People are the same too. Or at least I am, you know, when I'm on my on my route, there are certain places that I want to go to use the bathroom. Yeah, I've got special poop stops that I make. And that way we are very much like cats. Yeah, I'm like, no, that toilet I trust. Right. That's one I that's one I can go in. Reason number eight that we're so obsessed with cats. They're a very low effort pet. They're an introverts dream. You know, you don't have to take them to the park. You can just kind of chill at home all day, hang out on the couch. You don't even have to get up to go let them out to go to the potty. Right. You don't have to train a cat to use a litter box, which is cool. But you can train them to use the toilet. If you haven't seen a video of that, please go look up a video of a cat taking a dump at a toilet. I did that one time at work. I'll show in my coworker and she was new to vet med. And she was like, wow, okay, like she was grossed out by the cat. Oh, man, if she if she thought that was gross. And I forget sometimes that like not everyone looks at gross all day. Yeah. Well, I mean, working in the veterinary field, there's going to be some gross. That's true. It's going to be like, it's not as well as I'm saying, if she was grossed out by that, she probably needed to start looking for another job. No, she ended up being amazing. It was just I think I think it was just she was totally not expecting it. I was just like, hey, look at my phone person. I just met. Right. Do you really expect? I mean, I guess you probably do. But typical humans do not go, oh, this person wants to show me something on the phone. I bet it's a cat taking a dump at a toilet like a human being. But then I mean, like if you can treat and do that, then you don't even have to change the litter boxes, which is probably not good for your mental health because like, do you need to move around and stuff and dogs make you move? But also just sometime being in a vegetative state is good for your mental health. Now, see, now I do think it's cat propaganda because you're trying to spin it like that cleaning litter boxes is good. It's good and we should be thankful. Yeah, yeah, the cat overlords have a strong hold on you. They won't get me quite so easily. I do not like doing the litter boxes. And then another thing with cats, you know, they pretty much clean up themselves. They groom their relatively clean animals. You don't typically have to take them to the groomer. Yeah, if you've owned a poodle or they don't forbid it's popular. Now the new golden doodle, you'll find that they have to be groomed constantly. Right. And cats bathed. You don't typically have to bath the cat. You gotta go in there and like cut all the hair out of their ears and stuff because it all infected and tangled up. And yeah, cats, you don't have to do that for. And some cats don't have hair at all. And that's true. Yeah, you can get the things cats. If you're okay with the way they feel when you touch them, I'm very okay with the way they feel. I let's one of my favorite things about it. If you've never pet a sphinx cat, they feel weird. They look weird, but they are good cats. They're the best cats. And we had one and she would always hide under blankets if you couldn't find her. Right. She was completely. Blanket. Number seven, why we're so obsessed with cats. And I apologize because we kind of got a little off topic earlier and talked about it already, but they're they're clean. Yeah, I mean, like we say, you know, they groom themselves. They teach themselves to go into the litter box, which sucks to clean. But, you know, yeah, it's not like a, you know, not like a dog that's going to go in your house and then you got to clean that up. They spend an overwhelming majority of their day cleaning themselves too. Yeah. They're very clean. I mean, yeah, obviously animals are individual, just like people, but as a whole, they're a very clean pet. And just like all living things, we produce some sort of dirt on everything that we touch. So that clean as far as animals go. Right. Unless you don't like cat hair, then, you know, get used to it because it's our life now. Get us things. Or get us things. I mean, just like you don't have cat hair. The number six reason why we're so obsessed with cats is because of their mystery and their timeless elegance. Now, we had talked a little bit earlier about ancient Egypt and how cats were revered. One of the most iconic cat beings is best debt. She is a symbol of protection, fertility, and childbirth. This is an ancient Egypt. So she was originally portrayed as like a lioness warrior. But now we associate her more. She's the, she's got like the almost like the enubis black cat head. Okay. Yeah. So that's best debt. In a lot of history, cats have, in every culture, really, they they represent, like you said, mystery or like elegance and grace. They're always these symbols of, you know, agility. They're always treated like messengers a lot of times messengers for the gods or maybe even like the gods in disguise a lot of times. Right. Yeah, they would become like the vessel that the gods inhabited. Right. To become, you know, cats. To become cats. To become cats. And Ginkie Kawamura put it so beautifully. Cats and humans have been partners for over 10,000 years. And what you realize when you've lived with a cat for a long time is that we may think we own them, but that's not the way it is. They simply allow us the pleasure of their company. Yeah. Another person who has fallen to the cat propaganda machine. As they should, a lot of people do. And that's okay. Reason number five, we're so obsessed with cats, is their calming presence and the surprising health benefits that they can have on their pet parents. It might be apocryphal. I don't know if it's true, but I remember a thing about cats, the frequency at which cats per can have a calming effect on humans. Like it's one of these like sacred sounds or numbers or things like that that just have an effect on us. Right. Yeah, the sound of a cat's pur is scientifically proven to reduce stress and lower blood pressure, which does provide a therapeutic presence. So there actually is some science behind cats make us better people. Like health wise. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Only only health wise. Not spiritually. We've talked enough about cats, the spirituality. There's so much about cats and spirituality. We can't talk about cats without dispelling the thing about black cats being bad luck. Right. Don't kill black cats. Come on. Don't be mean to black cats. Black cats are wonderful. Please be mindful of your black cats on Halloween and Friday 13th. Because unfortunately, there are bad humans out there. Yeah. Notice we didn't talk a lot about bad cats. There's plenty of bad humans. Yeah. There's no bad cats. There's like one or two bad cats, but there's no bad. We got them both. We own both of the bad cats. It's true. Number four, they cats are very entertaining. Yeah. Yeah. They definitely are that. They have plenty of cat toys you can buy for your cat, which probably the most popular ones are things like laser pointers or the sticks that have like, I don't know, a flush, a fluffy something and then a bell on it that you can dangle over the cat. Because that's always fun. Oh, those are so fun. Whenever our cats, they'll have like nothing to do with me. I bottle race this little turd, by the way. But yeah, Clay will go and he'll put his hand up under the covers and like move him around real quick and he loses his mind. He loves it. They make plenty of cat toys, but you know what? You really don't have to buy cat toys. Cats prefer to play with garbage. It's true. It's any straws. Or back. God, they love straws. Crumpled up piece of paper. Crumpled up piece of paper. If you've got a cat and you ain't ever seen them in the same room as a straw, take a straw and just kind of like drag it on the ground or throw it in front of them and they will go, they will go friggin' nuts. They will lose their minds. They're always so funny. You can't be in a room with a cat and not just loves the cat. And I was actually just talking to somebody and they said, oh, what are you all recording? I said, we're doing an episode about cats. They're like, I love cats. They're like me too. It's like another one. Right, right. It's so sweet to me how even though I mean, I've read conflicting things. I've read cats are more popular like in number, but more people have dogs. There's more, I guess, more stray cats than like a feral cat. I believe that 100%. There's more cats, but dogs are still the most popular. Hey, get your cat. It's better nudish. Yeah, you should definitely do that. We love cats, but bad things happen to cats. You don't get homes. Yeah, bad things happen to cats in the wild in particular. Right. Right. And then they can't be in your house entertaining you and getting in boxes and falling off the counter and being scared by bananas. Was zucchini. Was zucchini. Yeah. Yeah. Have you all seen those videos where they take the zucchinis? It's amazing. And that brings us to reason number three. That was a really good transition. I'm proud of myself for that one. Cat means, have you noticed that cats have essentially taken over the internet? Like out of nowhere, all of a sudden, we all love cat. Well, it's, you know, we all love cats thousands of years, but like now it's socially acceptable. If the ancient Egyptians had internet, they would also have cat memes. Oh gosh, they so would. So would the reason why cat means particularly, get so much traction is because they're so fast. Cats do things quickly and stupidly. And it's hilarious. And we love it. Yeah, they're, you know, they're lazy for most of the day, but then if something catches their eyes, you know, they get the eyes get real wide and their, their motions get like real jerky and snappy and they'll sprint from one side of the room and crash into a bunch of stuff. Because we did talk about how graceful they were. Sometimes they're not. Except when they're not, the scientific term for that is called zoomies. Zoomies? That's the scientific term. That's a scientific term. Yeah, there's a couple of cat videos on the internet that I love very dearly. This is one with this guy that has this terrifying cat mask on. Oh, yeah, like hyper realistic. Right. And he's looking at the camera and you can see over a shoulder behind him are like five or six cats inside of like a baby crib and they were like all eating treats or whatever. Yeah, he tricked them into this room and he goes time to feed my babies and then he turns around really slowly and all the cats. You can see their eyes are huge. They're so terrified. They're so terrified. As soon as they see the actual face of this cat mask, they do just explode out of the crib in every direction and sprint out of the room, slamming into everything. Walls, doors, shelves, it's so funny. Oh gosh, I read that one of the reasons why cats are such turns is because they're gots perfect killing machine. Like they are agile and mysterious. Makes that look like 10 pounds. But they're 10 pounds and we keep picking them up and kissing them and putting wizard hats on them. Another reason why you get so many cat memes is because of this sort of it's not object permanence, but it's something like it where they don't understand that things aren't fixed in place. Right. So if there's like a book half hanging off a table, we as humans understand if you put weight on one end of that book, it's going to fall off the table. Right. Nothing holding it there. Cats don't seem to have that apparently. So they'll go to make these jumps and the jumps will be perfect. They will be. They'll be the perfect jump to where they'll jump just high enough to reach the surface that they're going on to where they just glide onto the surface. Unfortunately, that surface not fixated to the surface. It's on top of and it comes tumbling off and the cat makes a really stupid looking face when it falls. And then we laugh. And then we laugh. And that was another video I saw somebody showing their two cats playing, but you know, they kind of like play fight right on top of a bookcase. And they've got like this war music. The whole time it's like building up to this tension. And then one cat goes to leap from the other cat to a table, which has something like that, a bunch of boxes sitting on it that are right at the edge. And the video like slows down and the music sort of like comes to like a deer. And then you know, it speeds back up real time as the cat grabs one of these boxes and then it tumbles down and sort of like bounces off the bookshelf on his way down and they typically don't hurt themselves. No, no, no. No cats, cats typically do land on their feet. Yeah, there's a joke about cats being liquid because they'll fill any container that they will. Any ball or box, they will sort of just fill the shape of that. And that's something they have going for them also for if they're falling. Is they're so limber and loose when they're doing it that they typically don't hurt themselves. And they manage to look one of two ways. They're either so graceful and beautiful and like, wow, like that was the most elegant fall from grace. I have ever seen this as art. This is beautiful. Or they just derp real bad. Right. And then you're like, you idiot. Don't eat. I want you listeners to know that I'm heavily editing my language. And yeah, we would have used different words. We would have used different words, but we're professionals. We're professionals. We're very professional. We're very demure. We're very mindful when we're podcasting. Some of you other people get up on these podcasts and you'd be saying all these ugly words. It's not demeared. It's not demeared. One day many years in the future, like 10 or 15, someone's, someone's zoomer kid who has grown up to be like a full adult. We hear this bill. That is so old. That is the oldest meme I've ever heard. That is not skivety. That's not skivety. What in reality I'm like, you have no idea. I do not cite to me the old words. I was there when memes were created. We're discussing cat raise. I'm tempted to cut that out of what you just did. Cat raise. Yeah, you saying cat raise was and to use the term correctly, cringe. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. We're not going to give her where ages, but we are not from this generation. So there's we have our own generation. And they're full of cat memes. My favorite cat meme still today is grumpy cat. Just in general. I just love grumpy cat. Grumpy cat feels a bit data too. I don't think grumpy cat skivety. She's sigma. No cat. Right? No cat is good. No cat means like you're not lying. Yeah, no cat. Wait, cat. Wait, I don't remember. I like grumpy cat. I'm not editing this out either. You can struggle and flail all you want. I like grumpy cat. Like the old school. Where from the generation where you had to go by your memes at hot topic? And grumpy cat was one of those where it's like I like coffee. Right. The notably grumpy looking cat, who from my understanding was actually not grumpy. She was not her name was tartar sauce and I was. I know she was so cute. She was so little. Cat things or something else. See, right? I know. I mean, you get like, you know dogs you get like spot or like runner. Yeah. And then cats you get like tartar sauce. Not show cheese. Piss fingers. Piss fingers. Oh no, for a lot to say that one. We're probably not. Probably need to edit out his fingers. I mean, I think I just talked about two of them. Or you mean like a famous cat. Yeah, like a famous cat. I'm sorry. I don't think so. No. Really? I think the only one I can think of is grumpy cat. Well, there's keyboard cat, which is a much older meme. What's the one with the pop tart? Neon cat. Or Neon cat. Well, that's not a real cat. No, she's real to me. I liked our cat. We're not. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Our cat. We talked about her briefly, but the Sphinx because she has. She had one eye and then eventually she lost that eye. Her name was Joseph L. Naked Snake, speaking of cat names. Yeah, right. So she was naked and it would get cold in her house. We would have to put clothes on her. And the clothes we had were things like a pink tutu. Yeah, she looked like a gross little old lady in her little dresses. And she had a little collar that she would wear that had like a wire out front. So keep her from bumping into walls. Right. And she didn't have any eyes. No, she was red. She was red. She did look like a little alien. She was red, but she was happy until the end. I feel like we should say that. Like she was a cat. We do get a picture of her where we put googly eyes over where her eyes would be. You know, my friend Cassie took and used that picture for like an internet contest in one. Oh, really? She did. That makes sense. It was a good picture. She was like, I didn't think I'd actually win, but I got this gift card. I feel like I need to give it to. I was like, girl, I've got to pay Royal to you. You're right. I've got snake royals for using snakes like this. Oh, my girl. She was great. Reason number two, why we're obsessed with cats. They do give you affection, but it's on their own terms. And I think there's some kind of psychology thing here. Because like, God, we want that attention, right? We've got to work for it. But we got to work for it. Like I have to earn love. And like there's there's some kind of dark circles. Well, it's kind of, you know, like a lot of people nowadays, you know, we've got phones and Bluetooth in the cars. And so you know, we'll have Spotify or YouTube or whatever is playing your music. And you can choose from any song you've ever heard in your life, right? Right. You can bring that up in an instant. But there's something that's still and maybe we'll lose this going forward. Maybe the generations won't have the same feeling, but of listening to just the radio and whatever song comes on is what you get. Oh, isn't it so exciting to encounter your favorite song in the wild? And it's like, it doesn't make sense. I can listen to the song any time I want to. Right. I can listen to different versions of the song if I would like to. But it's different when it's, you know, it's not up to you. Right. When it's out of your control. And that's how cats love it. It's out of your control. It is. And when they lie on you, it's a blessing. It's a blessing. I have, God, I've met so many wonderful cats. But one of them, one of my best friends has a black cat named Coco. And she is such, she's very aloof. She's very stereotypical cat like. And her brother, his name is Ray, is super sweet and like just loves you all the time. And it's special, you know, and you love him. Of course, but when Coco comes in, lays on you, it's like cancel my appointments. I can't go. Right. Get out of here, Ray. Leave. Leave. Ray. I have to pet this cat that doesn't care about me. Right. She doesn't care about me. And I want her to like me. She's like Regina. Which brings us to before we get to the number one reason. Is Regina George? It's Regina George. Okay. But the number one reason before, excuse me, before we get to the number one reason, I do have a honorable mention that didn't make the list. So? But I feel like it should have. And we've talked about it. One thing we don't talk about with cats, you can literally just name them anything. Yeah, you can name them anything. I mean, we did kind of talk about it. We did. My favorite is when people name their cats, like regular dude names. Like, oh, this is my cat, Steven. Yeah. It's all right. You hear if they don't mention that they're a cat, you think they're like a roommate or something. Right. It's like, what can you say about your cat that makes it sound good? Oh, this is, uh, yeah, this is Derek. And it's like, that's a cat. And it's like, yeah, it's my cat, Derek. Yeah. Like, and his name is Derek. Derek. Because his name is Derek. I don't think any of our cats have people names. No, but they do have some pretty, pretty strange names. Or definitely the nicknames that you give them because each of our cats has about three to four names. That's another good point, along with naming them whatever you want. You can call them, you can call them something that's not even kind of their name. So they, they do recognize their name. They just kind of don't care. Exactly. Yeah. So. So a lot of people, a lot of people think that that's like, they're stupider. They don't, they don't realize, but no, they, they do recognize their name. They just don't really care. They just don't care. Some good examples of pet names. Taylor Swift has a cat that's named Benjamin Button. Oh, it was born old. May. Was he? I mean, look, if he was a baby's faints, we keep going. Oh, no. He would look like a little wrinkly old man. A little mean to the old man. Yeah. Kitty Perry has a kid named Kitty Perry. I don't know if I like that or not. I don't know if I like that or if I hate it. Really? Yeah. I have strong feelings about it. I can tell you that. Yeah. You don't know which one it is. I got you. Because I do appreciate a good pun. Right. And I think I'm still trying to figure out if I like it or not. I'll let you know at the end of the episode. OK. You think about that listener? So you'd be thinking about it too great to lock in those answers. What is the most unique cat name you've ever heard? Oh, boy, I have definitely seen your unit just unique. I've definitely seen some come through because you work at the vet clinic. I work at a pet crematory. I see a lot of cat names. I'd have to say that my favorite and I don't think I can say his name necessarily on the podcast. I'll pronounce it a little differently. His name was Shatheed. Oh, Shatheed. Shatheed. Yeah. And that's the. It's a great name. Right. And it's spelled SHI TH EAD. Right. Shatheed. I recently have gotten to where I really love Garfield again. Garfield. I love Garfield. When I was a kid, I watched Garfield night, the whole of Garfield's nine lives. Have you ever seen that? Probably. So it's kind of like some of the lives are cutesy and some of them are more serious, but it's like Garfield has nine lives. Yeah, some of them are really, really dark and some of them are very, very cute. And I love Garfield. And I'm just vamping. The last time I watched Garfield, it was like the animated cartoon from the maybe late 90s. Yeah, I had to go on YouTube. And I remember it scaring me as a child because like there's an episode where there's an episode where Garfield is like part of a laboratory experiment in one of his lives. And I remember it being like scary and sad, but then I watched it as an adult. It has a happy ending. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, he gets away. He gets away. Oh, okay. That's what's up. Thank God for Garfield. I know, right. And now at long, long glass, the number one reason why we're obsessed with cats. This better be a good one. It's pretty good. They're very independent. Like you can, they're very easy to like, you can go places. Yeah, we've taken vacations. And we'll occasionally pets it for people who are taking vacations. And a lot of times you kind of got to board your dogs. Right. Pays the mice state the house would. Right. Cats really, you can just kind of have somebody come in and check on them. Yeah. So just make sure they've got food and water. Scoop the litter box. Yeah, that's it. I mean, they're good. They're fiercely independent. They're the best friends. But that doesn't mean, and we've talked a lot about how cats are very, very easy. They, you know, you want to say they pretty much take care of themselves. But cats are masters at hiding pain and discomfort, like osteoarthritis. So a lot of times I feel like we need to mention this. Sometimes they feel, we feel like they're just being lazy. And it's not necessarily the case. Sometimes they're in pain. Yeah. You know, in the wild, they have to hide that because. It's weakness. Right. Well, predators in the wild, everything is sort of based on this, this sliding scale. You get the calories where they're easiest to get. Which means that's the same today. Right. Honestly, yeah. I mean, the easiest place you can get them is someplace like McDonald's. I like McDonald's. So predators will naturally go after the, the young, the old or the infirm. And you don't want predators to know that you are infirm. Right. So you hide it. And that, that kind of sounds like, oh gosh, why does that sound like life today? Like, you feel like you have to hide weakness and you have to walk in the room like you own it and don't be. Don't be a baby like me. But yeah, cats. Cats don't want you to know that they're hurting or they're sick. Right. It's natural instinct. It is. But as, and that's stewards of their care, that's one of our responsibilities is to notice like, hey, you know, there being a little slowed. There's different resources that you can use to tell, you know, like, could my cat be in pain? There's different little quizzes. You can do different veterinary products. But yeah, it's just like dogs. Sometimes they, they get old and they need some help. They get old. They get old. Yeah, dogs live a pretty long time, typically. Pretty long time. Dogs will usually, you know, limp or wints or, you know, gilp or something if they're hurt. And cats don't really make a lot of those noises. They just, yeah, they just kind of don't jump. Yeah. And it's totally natural for a cat to say like, hide under a table or, you know, like, get in your closet or something like that. Cats typically like places like that. Right. And, you know, when they get stressed, they go to those places. But they also do that when they're hurt. Right. So it can look a lot like a typical behavior for a cat. Sure. And that's, I think that's another reason in veterinary medicine. Why we do see cats, but you see overwhelmingly more dogs than cats. A dog's going to show you. They're like, mom, help. Cats going to hide it. But we've talked about cats for a long time. And unfortunately, our time of talking about cats is spreading. I'm sure it is. It has come to an end. Somehow we have managed to talk for over 40 minutes, just about cats. We're only a lot in so much time of day to talk about cats. Right. And it should be more. It should be more. So just remember that, you know, going to election. Yeah. Bring that to your, your, your, your supervisor, your superintendent. Anyone who can get that legislated to allow us to talk about cats more. Yes. We need more cats. Yeah. Set that forth. Sign, uh, sign any petitions that you see that, uh, work, that tackle that topic. Right. Right. You know, you got to stand for something, even if you're standing alone. And I stand for cats. I stand for cats. I stand for cat. And speaking of cats, you have your own business now that cats me out, right? What I do. So what do you do for that? So I'm a content creator. Um, I do content for veterinary clinics, veterinary related things, grooming, that sort of thing. I do Facebook, Instagram posts, and I help with reels. And, uh, and review management. Okay. So it's, it's something for like, vet clinics and stuff to, uh, Yeah, animal people. It's animal oriented. I have all this, all this vet med experience all these things with cats. I don't have a cat's only clinic. I'd love to have you. So you make like a post and things for special events or holiday hours or specials that the clinic might be running? Correct. Any, any kind of promotional thing, any kind of client education. Okay. And how can they, uh, reach you about that if they're interested? You can email me at cpalmer.catsmiao at gmail.com. Well, that's going to do it for us today. And thank you again so much to Zoetis for sponsoring this episode of Bees and Queens. And Clay, thank you so much for coming on this show. Well, I was already here at our house. Any excuse to spend time together with me and talk about cats is a good, is a good time. Of course, it's a good time. But everybody, take care, be safe. And remember, the best cat is the one you have at home. It's pet candy. Pet candy. Pet candy. It's pet candy radio.