Pets are odd. When you really sit down and think about it, you’re letting a wild animal live in your house. Kind of strange, right?
Well, those wild animals are bound to engage in some odd behavior from time to time, as these AskReddit users can attest to.
1. Smart cat
So, this is kind of terrifying to me, but it’s adorable at the same time, I suppose.
My cat knows how to open doorknobs. He’s learned that, with me being a female, I can’t leave the bathroom without using toilet paper. If he wants something and I’m in the bathroom, he’ll open the door, grab the toilet paper that is hanging down with either his teeth or his paw and pull it and bring it to me. He’ll then sit and wait and if I don’t use it (doesn’t matter if I’m on the toilet or not) he’ll get more.
Doesn’t matter if I’m in there to shower, brush my teeth, or take a piss. Neville will make you use the toilet paper until he gets what he wants.
2. The talking parrot
My parrot has a routine where he will ask himself “Wanna scratch?” and proceed to gently stroke his head with one toe, all while softly murmuring to himself “Good boy… a good boy”. He’ll then bite his toe and, after a moment, yell: “OWWWW! DON’T BITE! YOU BAD BIRD!”.
He also speaks in his “man voice” whenever he sees someone with short hair, male or female. He’ll also randomly say “I love you”, followed by “What the hell”.
3. Bedtime
My dog goes to bed at 8:30pm every night. And when I say goes to bed I mean he stops whatever he is doing, leaves whoever he is with, and goes upstairs, alone, gets into my bed, pulls the pillows off, digs back the covers, and burrows under and goes to sleep. Then when I come to bed later on, he acts annoyed that I am waking him up.
The oddest thing about this is that he does it at 8:30, every night, without fail. Not 8:25 or 8:33, but 8:30. No idea how he does that. He cannot tell time as far as I know.
4. Very nice
My cat uses the litter box and sprints down the stairs and does laps around the couch. We’ve dubbed it “poop ‘n split”.
5. Dogs are the best
Whenever I’m having a bad slump in my depression, I pace. My Pomeranian will follow behind me and lightly touch his nose to the back of my heel each time I take a step to remind me he’s there, following me for hours just nudging me so I don’t forget that I’m not alone. When I finally sit down, he curls up in my lap and nuzzles my stomach until I feel better.
If I don’t pace, he’ll still stay as close to me as possible. He’ll sleep jammed against the leg of my chair and the baseboard of the kitchen counter on the tile floor. He’ll cry at me if I go upstairs without him. I can’t even take a shower without him sitting in the bathroom with me. He only ever does this when I’m not feeling well. When I’m feeling alright, he generally keeps to himself.
6. Killer
My cat goes and kills so many birds and mice like any other cat will do, but when he brings them in he puts them in the toilet. It’s a weird thing to walk in the bathroom and see a dead bird in the toilet.
7. “In danger of starving”
This is probably common cat behavior, but regardless how much food is in the cat’s dish, he freaks out if he can see the bottom of the dish – as if he’s in danger of starving to death that very moment.
If you just nudge with the dish with your foot so that the bottom is once again covered with food, then he calms right down.
8. Like a baby…
My dog refuses to get up off the couch and go to bed on her own. My husband has to pick her up off the couch, cradle her like a baby while he carries her upstairs, and then has to tuck her into her bed. She’s a 50 pound pit bull.
9. Privacy
My dog wouldn’t pee if anyone was watching.
She’d get in the right position, in a suitable patch of grass then make eye contact as if to say: ‘some privacy please?’
10. TV watcher
My dog watches TV, specifically commercials. He even knows which ones have dogs, cats, monkeys, and other animals by listening for a specific jingle or name to be mentioned. Scooter has watched TV since he was a puppy. Initially, he would just glance and bark at the TV when an animal showed up across the screen, but he’d soon return to playing with his toys. Today, he’s addicted to the TV when it’s on. He could be gnawing on a fresh piece of rawhide, but once the Bud Light “Weego” dog commercial starts (just the first sounds of the commercial are enough to trigger him), he props himself in front of the TV and waits for Weego to show up. It’s amazing how he continues to learn which commercials and TV shows have animals, and he can recognize animal shapes (Sirius radio dog silhouette).
He spotted a border collie in a BlackBerry commercial once, and they had other similar ones without the dog. So, when BlackBerry ran a version of that commercial with their jingle, he’d wait for the 1 second showing of the border collie. Even, Flo from Progressive gets him going, cause that series has a few with goats and dogs in it. It’s gotten to the point that during the actual show, let’s say the Stanley Cup Finals, he just hangs out. As soon as the NHL theme song plays to cut to commercial he’s already sitting up in front of the TV waiting to see what commercial will feature an animal.
11. Sounds like a dog
My last cat would only scratch brick, play with his toys and then arrange them in his toy box afterwards, play fetch, and loved strangers. I never trained him to do any of that. You could also tell him to do things and he’d do them such as “throw that away,” “go get your mousey toy,” etc. You didn’t have to give the exact command either, he wasn’t trained to do these things, just learned them along the way. If you told him to do something he didn’t like such as put his favorite toy in the garbage, he’d dig it out later when you were sleeping and put it back in his toy box.
12. Weirdo
My dog absolutely loves chews – regular rawhide sticks, pig ears, you name it. The twist is that she very, very rarely actually chews on them. Oh no. She will put one in her mouth, systematically pace every square inch of the space, and finally proceed to hide it. If you see her doing this, it’s all a bust, and she has to find a new spot. She occasionally hides one, only moments later to decide that her spot wasn’t good enough, at which point she retrieves it…rinse, repeat.
Sometimes, she’ll pick a spot but can’t quite get it hidden enough. This usually manifests as her nosing the chew hundreds of times into a particular crack in a chair’s cushions, or into a fold in our big beanbag seat. Then, something magical happens. She gets pissed at it – the chew, the situation…it…and she starts whining. She will whine, very loudly, at life, and it sounds like a pigeon having a stroke.
13. The dog runs the show
My Australia cattle dog will try to kick my wife off the bed so that she can cuddle with me. My wife hates getting licked by dogs so naturally my dog will pin her down until she leaves. If that doesn’t work she will sneak onto the bed in the middle of the night to cuddle with me.
14. Routine
My cat showed up on our back porch one day, and after the proper amount of time/vet visits/searching for her possible owners, we adopted her. At first we put her litter box in my parent’s bathroom, and so she started to sleep in their room too. Any time my dad would wake up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, she would go ahead and get up too. She would stretch, follow him into the bathroom, and tinkle right next to him before following him back to bed. Every night.
15. Never heard of this…
My cat loves vegetables and won’t get out of my face when cooking. He gets excited whenever I cut an avocado, but I’m afraid to let him try it. I have to put him in a separate room just to eat guacamole.
He also does his best to unplug my phone charger from the wall each night while I am sleeping. I’ve deduced that he wants my phone to die so my alarm won’t go off causing me to miss work and stay at home with him.
16. Dogs are people
My dog won’t sleep without a pillow under her head. She’ll lay awake next to me staring at me, I’ll place a pillow next to her face, she’ll adjust so her head is comfortable, and then she’s out like a light within thirty seconds.
17. Skittles
My cat gives my significant other “baths” every day. He just waits till he’s laying down and then goes and licks his hair for him. He is compelled to do this every time my significant other’s head is within reach. He’s a few slices short of a loaf I think, but really sweet.
My horse loves Skittles apparently. He stole the pack I was eating and tipped it into his mouth. You could hear all the skittles hitting his teeth. Then he gave the empty pack back to me.
18. Rescue me
This may be considered an “odd personality thing” or an “incredibly stupid cat thing”. I lean towards the latter.
I live in a single-level house with a full basement that has only one way in or out. One of my cats will routinely go into the basement, stand roughly in the middle, and then meow forlornly until someone goes downstairs and ‘rescues’ him. Apparently, he gets lost and has no idea how to get back up the staircase that he just walked down mere seconds before.
19. I love this visual
My dog is so excited to get out of his crate when I get home from work, he frequently forgets to stretch until he gets half way down the stairs. He ends up stretching his back legs straight out and sliding all the way down the stairs on his belly.
20. Quirky cat
My sister’s cat has a few annoying quirks. Don’t get me wrong, the cat is super affectionate and loves people, but he had some bad habits. He would always knock over glasses of water and milk. Empty cups? Untouched. He would check for liquid contents before flipping the cup, waiting for you to notice and shout, and then he would run away. Also, he used to eat paper that had writing on it. He started to realize that paper with writing got more attention than him; he didn’t like that so he destroyed them. Blank paper was left alone.
He’s a drama queen, too. Once, he hurt his paw and had a limp. Obviously, we babied him until it healed. When it did, he would hold up one of his front paws up like it was injured. We were worried until I caught him walking normally. He noticed me and pulled up a paw.
21. Hello
My dog lays down in the middle of our walk if she wants to say ‘hello’ to a dog walking towards us. She wont move from the laying position until we ask her, ‘do you want to say hi?’.
22. Never learns…
When my dog eats, she takes the food out of her bowl, and runs across the house, to her favourite chair, to eat about 3-5 pieces of dog food. She’ll do that about 4-5 times until she realizes it’s too much work, and she just eats out of the bowl. Every. Single. Day. She never learns.
23. The dreaded doorbell
Whenever anyone talks to my dog, he will look away, making him superior to anyone else. He always wants to be close to people, but never comforted. If you comfort him, he will look away and if you try to make him look at you, he’ll turn the other way. He won’t have his pellets until he’s 100% sure no other food is readily available. If you try ‘go fetch’ with him, he’ll fetch it, come close, but not give it over. If you try to walk him while it’s raining, he’ll just sit down, look at you, and wait for you to give up.
The three things he will NEVER disregard are the doorbell, food (when mom/dad let the rest of the family know it’s time for food, he always shows up first) or the chance to lick human ears. Like, he’ll shove his tongue in, clean your ears, and then just chill out. Best thing ever is when the doorbell rings while he’s eating. He’ll be hesitant to move, hesitant to eat, and end up barking in his bowl, running around a corner as if he’s going for the door, and come back to his food.
24. Todd the cat
My cat, Todd, isn’t the brightest. He enjoys catching mice and small injured birds. He catches them and brings them through the cat door (upstairs) and brings them to my room (which is down stairs and the furthest location from the cat door). The catch is, they’re never dead. I’ve woken up to live birds flying around my room and my cat playing with a live mouse at the foot of my bed.
25. Cats are very strange
My two cats only drink water out of the other’s dish. They each have separate food and water dishes in the kitchen about 10 feet apart, same food, same water. But they will always eat some food, then go over to the other cat’s water to drink.
26. “Incapable of eating normally”
One of my dogs is incapable of eating normally. He will take a couple of kibbles out of his bowl, run over to wherever you are, look directly at you, and loudly crunch his kibbles. Once that mouthful is finished he will run back and get another, repeating the whole process. I should mention that he is a pug mix and he looks completely ridiculous at the best of times, when he’s eating it’s just weird.
He is also obsessed with spinach.
27. Hunger strike
If you don’t pet the cat, he will follow you around and bother you. He even goes on hunger strikes. So we pet him, and he shoves his face in the bowl trying to purr, wiggle his butt, and shovel food down his mouth all at once. This results in him making weird purring choking sounds and food and drool getting everywhere.
28. He understands
My dog will bark if I ask him or anyone else in the same room as him a question. Some how he knows. Yet when anyone else does this, he stays eerily quiet and just stares at them.
I go to school out of state, so he lives at home being taken care of by my parents. He refuses to heed any command given to him by either of my parents, but once I’m back home he listens to my every command or comment. My mom will ask tell him to go outside, he lays down, but if I tell him to go outside, or even listen to mom, he does. It’s the weirdest thing ever.
Lastly, the only instance where is other two quirks don’t apply. If my parents or anyone else accuses me of anything. For instance, turning down the air, eating someone else’s food, or anything like that. I can say “Ask the General.” When they do, he’ll either sit quiet or bark once, we figure the barking means yes, silence means no. I’ve gotten out of being in trouble because my dog covers my back.