RL animals interested in SL?

I'm currently being pested by our cat Madeleine.

She only pesters me when I have SL open.

She's currently kneading on my back, as I try to type this forum post. They have food, are well fed, and so on.

Several folks in SL have seen my cat on my back while playing SL. She's a sweetie. Anyone else have pets showing interest? Or downright DEMANDING attention (as she just did)?

I'm curious if (a) our cats are just on crack or (b) dogs are interested or (c) our cats trying to figure out the logic behind C is natural.

All input it welcomed. Madeleine is making this sentence hard to type with her "pay attention to me!" head butting.

-Flip

Haw! Does your kitty have a credit card?

It's only cats, Flip. My dog showed no interest whatsoever.

My cat showed no interest in me at all unless I was feeding her or she wanted to be let out. Log onto SL though and damned if she wasn't in my face meowing away.

No words of advice though except maybe give her tuna when you want to play unbothered.

Socks (yes, I know it's a terribly generic name - but I didn't chooose it), our resident cat here, only wants to come sit up on my lap (meowing incessantly) when I am in SL. Also, if we are downstairs talking, (2 or more people) he has to thrust himself between us and meow mercilessly.

dog lays under my feet. cat never comes around when i'm computing, only when i'm watching tv, eating or sleeping, shaving, talking on the phone...but never when i'm computing.

yes they have names, i just can't remember what they are. we only have one of each so it's just as easy to call them dog and cat.

Yes my cat is also VERY demanding.

Mine just brings her little mouse toys all the time , so i would throw them away and she'd fetch them then.

Or she'll just pester me by touching my arm with her paw and then quickly run away.

And if she's lazy then she sits next to me here on the coutch, taking a little nap.

She also walks by the keyboard mostly , blocking my view.

if i don't lock my kitties out when i play they launch organized attacks on the particles that fly up when i chat. i think they're still mad i got rid of their favorite nap spot when i got a flat screen monitor.

Our cat Brodie, upon noticing me on SL, will a) sit on the keyboard, b) nuzzle my mousing-hand all over, or c) chase the mouse pointer around the screen. Usually in that order.

My cat Kleo is too lazy to bother me, she just lays and sleeps. After, hearing these stories, I love my lazy cat even more.

Our cat Cleo counts among her main daily activities sleeping and finding inappropriate things to ingest so she can subsequently puke them up (usually on a carpeted surface and accompanied by a wad of catfood-infused hairball). Today it was the wallpaper bits I have been ripping off a wall in the living room. Why in the bloody hell a cat would look at old (circa 1970), nasty, damp wallpaper and go "Yum yum! I've gotta eat me some o'this!" is completely beyond me.

So, to answer the question, Cleo pays absolutely no attention to SL.

My fat cat ONLY harasses me when I'm sitting at the computer (aka - playing SL). Otherwise, she ignores me. Go figure. Flip, I feel your pain. I think my cat is rather jealous.

So, let me get this straight... if we're playing Second Life... a cat might as well be playing Nine Lives?

10th Life.

Cats are jealous! they need a lot of attention.

Maybe it's some sort of conspiration?
But why would cats try to prevent people from playing second life? And who do they work for? Obviously not for the illuminati, since SL is one of their projects...

My parrot Jake enjoys watching me fly around

i must be getting really jaded. i immediately thought this title was refering to the character of some players. anyway...

i don't own any animals. but let me venture this.

if you are like me, you spend 50% of your waking hours at home on the computer (as SL has replaced procrastornating infront of the tv). the other 50% of the time is spent scurrying around getting ready, cooking, eating, being busy.

perhaps SL is the only time you are not preoccupied and enough for your pet to assert themselves into your life?

or, perhaps your pet is perplexed by your zombie like state, fixated by a strange inert device and is trying to intervene on your digital crack addiction?

You're correct Issarlk - it's not the Illuminati that cats are working for.

They are creatures of chaos - and they are only adding a bit more mischievousness and unpredictability to SL. Who knows what random keystrokes will occur when kitty headbumps your typing fingers, or where you'll end up in SL when they daintily walk across the keyboard to bat at the "mouse".

Cats thrive on contradiction and are not obediant to rules of logic or sometimes even laws of physics! (see Schrodinger's Cat) What other creature shows their love by kneading your softest parts with the little paws that seems awful cute and cuddly at first ... but then turn into needles of pain when they really get going? Don't we all have kitties who love to be petted and scrinched around their heads and necks, but then if you dare discontinue the attention, reach out with their claws to swat your hand and maybe a tentative bite to let you know that THEY were not done with you yet ? How about their staring up into the ceilings or bathtub drains for minutes ... with nothing visible to our eyes? My cats wil suddenly run across the house one end to the other, meowing plaintively at something unseen, scratch the couch rather the expensive cat-scratcher, then jump up on the computer table and flop belly-up looking for a "wittle wuv". Ahh ... they are true manifestiations of our Great Goddess Eris!

"When DOGma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases". I prefer catmas
All Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!

Phew! Thanks for that outlet!!!

- discordia Sandgrain

I'd take it as a complament and move on..... Your cat is just jealous of SL is all....

Seriously though I have head of this happening before. Beleave it or not, its actually the result of the sounds & frequencies which SL produces. It's one of the reasons cats insist on laying on us in one form or another; they like the way we "feel". Cats are VERY sensitive creatures who respond to a ton more stimuli then we do. Simply put, your cat LOVES the sounds & feel of SL, an since it cannot determin it is comming from your PC as you are so close to it, it thinks that YOU are generating the "good vibes".......

Actually its the same reason some cats like watching TV an specific programs (an not just those with cats & dogs in them). They just like it is all. For a test, next time just run SL an do a automatic action (like dancing), walk away from your PC, an just watch what your cat does. If it follows you (and stays with you), then its just jealousy. If it however sits down next to the PC with a "happy" look on its face, well you have your answer. Oh and covering part of your PC with a cloth or something won't help either but a can of "tuna" in another room might distract the cat long enough so you can sit back an enjoy the game more.... at least for a while.............

LOL Torley *hugs*

Well, I'm glad our cats aren't the only insane ones. Sometimes when I put the computer screen up on our projector wall they'll chance the mouse all over the place. They're big fans of chasing hockey pucks in a similar fashion.

Jenn also once had a cat which would watch the ticker scroll on CNBC from right to left and then look around the corner of the TV to see where the stock ticker went!

-Flip

Yea I'll have to agree that cats like SL... my cat Maggie scares the crap out of me by jumping up on my lap when I have my headset on... happens almost nightly!

My other cat Orion likes to lay under my desk, but I think it's just cuz there's a heating duct there!

Arti

SL friends who have spoken with me at legnth in world have most likely had our conversation interupted by at least one of my two cats. Picasso is the worst - he like to bring live critters (mice, rats, possum, snakes, iguanas, birds and his all time favorite - lizzards) into the house and toss them on my feet or even at times right onto my keyboard. When he is not doing this - he sits across the room and stares unblinking at me. It's disconcerting at times. He has a certain type of meow he makes when he's carrying something live in his mouth and that's my cue to move away from the keyboard and run down whatever poor creature he has dumped in the house with the pool net. (I keep an assortment of pool nets on hand).

Our female cat, Luci is less subtle. She just jumps right on my shoulder and watches everything I do. If I'm involved in SL conversation at the time and do not immediately stop and acknowledge her presence - she moves onto the keyboard, which usually gets me to ask the person that I'm speaking with in-world for a timeout and I pay attention to her. She has also been known to just jump on me while I'm typing (I swear she waits for the keyboard clicks) and bites my ears and nose.

I spend a lot of time with my fur children - the moment I get home from work, I go outside and play hide and seek with them and chase them around the yard. I do the same in the morning before I go to work. Once I bought a dog suit at Target and put it on and chased them around the house in it. Hubby walked in the door and found me on my hands and knees in the kitchen, wearing the dog suit and barking at the two of them and my cocker spaniel (who has since passed away). Needless to say, he was a bit taken back. They thought it was great though!

They both jump on me while I'm doing my AM exercise on the rug - usually one cat on my stomach and one on my feet. They sleep with me and they hang around and yowl the entire time I'm in the shower and expect to be dried off when I come out of the shower even though they are not wet.

The irony is - usually when I'm bored and I WANT to play with them, they hide and are no where to be found. The little buggers.

I have taken to warning my friends that stay overnight at our house to watch out for wild critters if they get up in the dark at night. I had to do this after finding a possum in the guest loo one night and an iguana on the guest bed another day. It has an up side though - no one stays more than a week.

So - if I tell you in-world "brb - my cat just brought a live squrriel into the house and I have to go chase it down". I'm not just looking for a way to end the conversation.

heh my lil brat kitty loki has shown particular interest in avatars on the screen... im not sure exactly what he thinks they *ARE* but he sees them at least as small little moving things, and seems quite keen to figure out how they taste (going to far as licking the screen sometimes).

so yeah he hears the typing noise and comes running up onto the desk to generally be a bother and crouch down an squint at the screen hehe

My cat (Simmy) loves to type and stand in front of the monitor when I am playing SL. Only when I am talking to fellow SLers though, not when I'm alone building. She also chews on my mic ... I think she's trying to tell me something.