Nobody is completely certain of the breed of cat they will receive from the shelter. Or what schemes they concocted while they waited to be let loose on their trusting new household.
Huey made an odd start. and just became stranger.
When Christy Dukitsch took him home from a shelter in Toronto, Canada, in 2014, the first thing he did was deliver a resounding head butt to the woman’s other cat, Lewis – an awkward introduction that would blossom into a lifelong bromance.
“He has been a brat since I got him, into everything,” Dukitsch tells. “We used to refer to him as the ‘tiny terrorist.’”
But no one was ready for what Huey would do next.
When he spotted a Q-tip lying around, the cat dragged it over to his water bowl. He let it steep there until it was appropriately softened.
He placed it at Dukitsch’s feet after that.
Fetch?
Dukitsch, who was in awe, was forced to comply. The oddest game of fetch was thus launched, and Huey continued to get obsessed with it, occasionally carrying a number of soggy Q-tips to his closest friend’s feet.
Dukitsch said that when he sees them, “he goes crazy.” He purrs and gets pleased when I show them to him.
Huey isn’t the only cat with this peculiar obsession, it turns out.
Another former rescue cat from Toronto, Walter White, goes even further.
He sneaks into the bathroom of his owner, unlocks the medicine cabinet, and takes some Q-tips for himself.
Arts and crafts? Ear cleaning? The perfect mousetrap?
Walter’s owner, Melanie Orfus, describes how he typically merely bats the Q-tip around with his paws, eats the cotton off, and loses them under the furniture. Then he receives more.
Orfus’ home is a testament to the cat’s mania for Q-tips.
“Sometimes I find them in my bed, in the couch, and, once, even in the cupboards,” she says.
And you will know Walter by the trail of Q-tips he leaves in his wake.
She admits that Walter is really shy despite his playful antics. His favorite hiding places are behind the stove and in my kitchen cabinets, which he open himself.
She continues, “He literally sleeps all day in my bed beneath my blankets. He will come out at 7 o’clock and start his strange nighttime rituals, such as bringing me Q-tips, pleading to hold him like a baby, or pestering his bigger brother Puffy.
We may never know why cats like Huey and Walter White prefer a Q-tip to catnip. But we do know every cat has his own wonderful weirdness just waiting to be unleashed on the world.
Some are just a little weirder than others.
