I feel like total crap today. How bad is it? I just typed “today” as “too day” and “as” as “ass”. And contemplated leaving it like that.
Anyway, I have a question for all the cat owners out there. When your cat lays/sits like this, do you have a special name for it?
Notice how Wookie is sitting with her legs and tail tucked in so that the only extremity showing is her head. We call this position “catloafing”. Not because Wookie is being lazy. I mean, she is being lazy, but cats were born lazy. It’s not uncommon for one of our cats to sleep all day, wake up, stretch, climb onto our bed, and then sleep all night. I guess all that sleeping really takes it out of them.
Anyway, we call it catloafing because they look like a loaf of cat. Fresh baked catloaf, straight from the oven. We might wonder where the little hellions are when it gets too quiet, and we’ll start looking around to make sure they’re not getting into trouble. Once one of us spots the cat in question, we’ll usually say something like, “Wookie is at the bottom of the steps, loafin’ it up.”
Some of Mrs. ACW’s parent’s cats are chunkers, like borderline spherical, and when THEY loaf it up it looks really funny. It’s like a fur-covered gelatinous blob decided to grow a head to see what’s going on in the surrounding world, and upon finding that nothing is, in fact, going on, they decided to go to sleep, disembodied looking head rest gently on the amorphous rotund pile it calls a body.
So, I ask again: do you call the aforementioned position catloafing or something like that, or do you call it something else?
Awesome. I have always called it “Meatloaf Mode”, which I stole from my dad when I was short.
cat loaf is a winner, sometimes ours do that with the hind legs, but sort of squat with the front legs.
wow i just commented on a cat post on a blog.
You have soap poisoning. It’ll get worse. Impotence is the next symptom.
That’s the ‘fat snake’ position in kitty yoga.
I call it “gargoyling” because my cat usually does it when perched on top of things like the stairs, refigerator, tables, the TV, etc. and he just stares at me. It’s kind of creepy, come to think of it.
When my cat does that we say that he’s being a biscuit.
It doesn’t make any sense, I know this.
We call it ‘meatloaf’. As in, “oo’s a kyoot iddle meatloaf den?” And by ‘we’, I mean ‘me’, because if baby talk ever emerged from Don’s mouth several large cities would immediately be swallowed by antimatter explosions and the resulting cataclysmic destruction would jar the very foundation of the earth, causing tectonic cracking and lava eruptions and also the emergence of the denizens of the underworld to terrorize the remaining population of the earth.
I call it the “kitty tea cozy”. It looks like she is hiding a teapot under her when her legs disappear like that. Read into my interprtation what you will…
Also, your cat looks a heck of a lot like mine (Smudge), which I have never seen before!
Cat loaf is delicious. Much better than eggnog soap!
We call it “tucked in” like tucked into bed, not as in they’re tucking their beans and franks. My girls don’t have those.
jwer- meatloaf mode is excellent! I’ll be borrowing that.
jefke- give in to the power of catblogging.
Broadsheet- Are we talking shooting blanks, or full on ED?
Robin- Fat snake?! That sounds so vulgar!
AH- gargoyling is a good one too. I’ll be borrowing that as well.
stephanie- yes, biscuit is also good. I’m enhancing my vocabulary!
jamaila- so no baby talk from Don then.
Matt- Kitty tea cozy. Hmm, interesting. And yes, apparently we’re the owners of diluted tortoises. I’ve not seen a cat like Wookie before.
jali- Eggnog soap is horrible. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a LIAR.
Poppy- Got it. Tucked in like bed, not like Silence of the Lambs.
We just call it loafing. Or loafed. As in, “Mocho’s loafed on the bed”. I believe it originated from the “like a loaf of bread” concept for us, too.
When our cat does that, I tell my wife that he’s planning her murder - which is a great way to divert er suspicion away from me.
Funny, all the cats I’ve had, I never thought to name it.
“Loaf of Cat”… pretty good band name.
Scum- great minds think alike.
CBC- That’s very discomforting. Thank you for sharing.
CBK- Yes but what kind of band? Punk? Emo? Nerdcore? I’m thinking local hippie jam-band.
No joke, we call it that too! As in “aw, would you just look at that plump little catloaf?”
So I’ve never actually named it… But my cats will usually find a nice high spot in which to loaf…
I’m pretty sure they look around at all they survey and think… Mine… All mine as far as my eye can see it’s mine… Because I can’t be sure, but I think I can see them smirking at me as they do it…
I’m just sayin’…
Both our boys do that! We usually refer to it as a “tuck.” Plain and simple, as in “Look at the cat all tucked!” The things you say privately really sound lame when exposed for all to see.
That’s the “Walk around me, Bitch” position.
I know it well.
i used both tucked and loafed.
and we all know i am a crazy cat person, so i know what’s best.
I’ve never thought to name it, but I’ve only ever had one cat that’s done that. She’s very prim in general. She also curls into a ball and tucks her head under her paw. Then she looks like a hedgehog. The other cat just flops over.
we refer to it as the boss. hmmm yours is better.
Nervousgirl- Sometimes we also call them “fatloaf” or “lard loaf”
JS- Ours like loafing low, as you can see by the photos.
AGT- It’s funny how I never thought to call it anything as simple as “tucked”.
Stick- Yes. They barely move a whisker when loafed.
Kendra- You are well on your way to crazy catladyhood.
Danielle- Mrs. ACW’s parent’s also have a flopcat. We call her Salem.
BPR- “The boss” refers to the position or the cat?
We call it the crouching tiger, hidden don’t fuck with me position.
Stumpy.
It seems in the 3rd pic, that your cat has visible right and left cheeks. Baby got back!
Catloaf! It’s perfect!! I have often said my cat looks like a big bread when she does that. I also say she is sitting like a chicken, but from now on it’s catloaf. Oh, and those bones that stick out like cheeks in the back when they catloaf are referred to as “Sit Bones.” Used in a sentence as “Kitty has her Sit Bones out.”
give in I shall…
what i meant to say is when our cats do that with the hind legs and then squat on the front, we call it the ’sumo stance’. they then tend to get globs of sea salt and throw them around the house. it’s a pain in the ass really.
I call it tucked, too. I always thought the cat did it because she was cold or something. Plus, I think I see her do it more in the winter than in the summer.
For some reason, I’ve always made reference to it as a “turkey” position… as in, “turkey time!”, “oh look, kitty’s all turkey’d up!”. I think it might be because, at a glance, their hindquarters remind me of those big turkey legs they used to eat in medieval times… ? Nevermind. I don’t know.
Also, if they’re in Loaf Mode with front legs are straight out, that is Sphinx Mode. Just thought you’d want to know. (There is also the rare “Superkitty Mode” but not every cat does that, just, you know, the crime-fighters).
Um, except for the extraneous “are”. Sigh.
i call it either “sphere kitty” or “slug kitty” but when she gets into slug mode she is usually draped over my arm at the same time so i have to hold up her head because she’s far too lazy to do it herself. she also gets into “shrimp position” when sleeping but that’s when her face is tucked into her tummy but her back legs are extended.
‘Sitting on his nest’, or ‘Keeping his eggs warm’.
There you go.
Wow..I guess meatloaf is a common term. I just call it scrunched mode. I was doing some research on how to tell if your cat is having a chronic renal failure crash and one lady called it Meatloaf Position
Y’know, I just noticed Wookie’s coloring looks very similar to Tippy’s.
That is most assuredly the hovercat position.
We don’t have a name, but the standard comment is “look honey, Dinah’s lost her legs again”… She also only seems to do this in the middle of the living room while staring at us.
I call it meatloafing, compliments of B. Kliban, an illustrator of cats and sometimes other things.
Alas, I was unsuccessful in obtaining one of B. Kliban’s illustrations of a cat meatloafing.
Please forgive me.
I don’t have cats. But Prinny, my dog, does that, and I say it’s her baby seal look. She lays with all her legs under her and will lift her head up at me, and look at me like she’s about to get clubbed to death. I think in her previous life she was, in fact, a baby seal.
But I love the term catloafing.
Dood, I called it Bricking out. Because they looked like bricks of cat sitting in that position.
Catloafing? ROTFLMAO!! Oh, God, I’m tearing up!…
We call that pose being “buttoned up”. One of our three cats (the female) does this all the time on the back of the couch - she’ll climb up, sit down, and button herself up. If we’re lucky, she’ll do it right behind someone’s head and we’ll have a fuzzy vibrasonic headrest.
Catloafing. Love it. My husband would love that if our cat did that. Our cat is rarely visible except for the two seconds (if your lucky) you see him streaking toward you in a blinding flash before he pounces on you all pointy sharp things and furiously paws at your face is if you were on fire and then darts off to hide somewhere, surely plotting our murders. As if we deserved it. I mean, we give him warmth, food and fresh water (filtered, no less) and he still comes at us like Samurai Kitty. I think I need counseling…
Okay, I’m laughing so hard at the mental picture created by vitra’s comment I can barely type.
I’m with trinity67 - meatloafing, coined by B. Kliban, an illustrator of cats. I believe the caption for the meatloafing cartoon was, “Cat. (n) One heck of a nice animal, frequently mistaken for a meatloaf.”