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Do cat buttholes touch every surface they sit on? Science answers.
Cat owners sometimes have unique questions that even Google doesn't always have the answer to. This is probably the sole reason cat forums exist, but one kid who needed a 6th grade science project decided to skip the cat forums for answers and instead use the scientific method. Kaeden Henry, a sixth grader living in Florida, bravely pondered a question few (if any one) has been brave enough to ask: do cat buttholes touch every surface they sit on?
Since cats do whatever the heck they want, training them not to jump on kitchen counters is a feat even Hercules struggles to complete. These fierce felines don't care if you're cooking dinner or trying to get comfy in bed. If they want to sit somewhere, they're going to do it. The thought of cat butts on that expensive Serta pillow designed to feel like you're sleeping on a cloud can gross people out, but thanks to Kaeden, you no longer have to wonder if the butthole itself is also making contact.
Courtesy of Kerry Hyde
The curious sixth grader is homeschooled and well-versed in the scientific method thanks to her mother's PhD in animal behavior with a concentration in feline behavior. And, since they own cats, the science experiment was pretty straightforward (and directly impactful).
To complete the experiment, Henry and his mom, Kerry Hyde, bought non-toxic lipstick and applied it to each of their cat's anuses. Then, the cats were given commands.
Courtesy of Kerry Hyde
"Non-toxic lipstick was applied to their bum-bums, they were then given a series of commands (sit, wait, lie down, and jump up. Side note: Both cats have been trained since kittenhood with a variety of commands, they also know how to high-five, spin around, and speak.), they were compensated with lots of praise, pets, and their favorite treats, and the lipstick was removed with a baby wipe once we collected our data in just under 10 minutes," Hyde wrote in a Facebook post.
The results? Turns out that, no, cat buttholes do not touch every surface cats sit on. Now, let's all take a collective sigh of relief while we go over the details. Kaeden's experiment covered long-haired, short-haired, and medium-haired cats (if your cat is hairless, you better stock up on Clorox wipes just in case).
"His results and general findings: Long and medium haired cat’s buttholes made NO contact with soft or hard surfaces at all. Short haired cats made NO contact on hard surfaces. But we did see evidence of a slight smear on the soft bedding surface. Conclusion, if you have a short haired cat and they may be lying on a pile of laundry, an unmade bed, or other soft uneven surface, then their butthole MAY touch those surfaces!" Hyde shares.
Now every curious cat owner can rest easy knowing that as long as their cat has hair, their bare bottom balloon knot is not touching the majority of surfaces in their home.
Courtesy of Kerry Hyde
The amusing experiment caught the Internet's attention. People laughed and commented, with one person writing, "This is probably the most useful information I’ve learned from a science fair project."
"Good to know!...I can now eat my sandwich left on the counter with confidence!" another writes.
Courtesy of Kerry Hyde
"A+++!!! Whew!! I am very grateful for your sciencing on this subject. My fears from walking in on my cat sitting on my laptop keyboard and subsequently being grossed out and cleaning furiously in a hyper-ocd manner have been somewhat allayed and now maybe I won’t have to use QUIIITE so many wipes." someone chimes in.
"Finally.. Someone answers the important questions!!"
There are lots of different kinds of service and companion dogs. Some are "seeing-eye" dogs that assist people with visual impairments. People with mobility issues, hearing loss, or who are at risk of seizures might benefit from a service dog to help them and keep them safe. People with autism, PTSD, anxiety, or depression can also benefit from a highly trained canine companion.
Regardless of the task, certified service animals must undergo an extremely rigorous training process. Their job is not an easy one, and they need to prove they're capable and not prone to being distracted. No one knows this better than the folks at Double H Canine Academy in Louisville, Kentucky — a training facility for pups.
The team at Double H also recognizes that not every dog is suited for a life of service. In a hilarious viral video posted to YouTube, it's abundantly clear that not all dogs are meant to follow orders.
German Shepherds make great service dogs. Well, not all German Shepherds.
Photo by Anna Dudkova on Unsplash
Ladies and gentleman, meet Ryker. He's a German Shepherd who was a student at Double H trying to earn his service dog bona fides (bone-a-fides?). Unfortunately, Ryker flunked out in such spectacular fashion that the team couldn't help but put together a little "highlight" package of his best moments.
Ryker really tries his best, but the poor guy just can't help himself. He doesn't want to work; he wants to play. Ryker steals a tennis ball from the bottom of a walker, drags around an entire wheelchair by its handle, and pulls his trainer over trying to go after a fetch ball. There is no piece of equipment that he doesn't want to chew or climb on. There is no leash that can contain him. There is literally not a single distraction that he will not fall for. Perhaps his most extreme fail is, when trying to open a refrigerator door, he ends up dragging the entire thing halfway across the room.
Definitely not service dog behavior. Watch his contagious, fun-loving spirit in the video here:
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
The video racked up over 2 million views, and commenters agreed: Ryker may not have passed, but he was definitely a certified Very Good Boy.
'Why bring one thing from the fridge when you can bring the whole damn thing"
"Frankly, I don't understand why he didn't pass. I mean he folded the wheelchair up. He removed the walker from the person after they clearly were done with it. He washed the floor. He moved the fridge. What more could you ask of him?"
"My family and I adopted a service academy 'drop-out' ten years ago. He's still with us and is the most AMAZING dog I'll ever have."
"Being a service dog was not his purpose in life... still a good boy, his purpose was to give us laughs."
"On the plus side, if you lose a tennis ball Ryker is your dog!"
As you can see, Ryker is living his life to the fullest. While he may never be the world's greatest service dog, he continues to provide an invaluable testament to being true to oneself.
Ryker is more cut out for this kind of life.Giphy
The list of skills that service dogs can have is astounding. Not all dogs will acquire all of these skills, but some of the basics are:
The fact that Ryker has had any training at all makes him exceptionally well-suited to civilian life. As a family house-dog, Ryker won't need any of the skills above, but his abundance of love and playfulness will serve him incredibly well with his forever family.
This article originally appeared five years ago. It has been updated.
When talking with other parents I know, it's hard not to sound like a grumpy old man when we get around to discussing school schedules. "Am I the only one who feels like kids have so many days off? I never got that many days off when I was a kid! And I had to go work in the coal mine after, too!" I know what I sound like, but I just can't help it.
In Georgia, where I live, we have a shorter summer break than some other parts of the country. But my kids have the entire week of Thanksgiving off, a week in September, two whole weeks at Christmas, a whole week off in February, and a weeklong spring break. They have asynchronous days (during which they complete assignments at home, which usually takes about 30 minutes) about once a month, and they have two or three half-day weeks throughout the year. Quite honestly, it feels like they're never in school for very long before they get another break, which makes it tough to get in a rhythm with work and career goals. Plus, we're constantly arranging day camps and other childcare options for all the time off. Actually, I just looked it up and I'm not losing my mind: American kids have fewer school days than most other major countries.
So it caught my attention in a major way when I read that Whitney Independent School District in Texas recently decided to enact a 4-day week heading into the 2025 school year. That makes it one of dozens of school districts in Texas to make the change and over 900 nationally.
The thought of having the kids home from school EVERY Friday or Monday makes me want to break out in stress hives. But this 4-day school week movement isn't designed to give parents a headache. It's meant to lure teachers back to work.
Yes, teachers are leaving the profession in droves and young graduates don't seem eager to replace them. Why? The pay is bad, for starters, but that's just the beginning. Teachers are burnt out, undermined and criticized relentlessly, held hostage by standardized testing, and more. It can be a grueling, demoralizing, and thankless job. The love and passion they have for shaping the youth of tomorrow can only take you so far when you feel like you're constantly getting the short end of the stick.
School districts want to pay their teachers more, in theory, but their hands are often tied. So they're getting creative to recruit the next generation of teachers into their schools — starting with an extra day off for planning, catch-up, or family time every week.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
So far, the data shows that the truncated schedule perk is working. In these districts, job applications for teachers are up, retirements are down, and teachers are reporting better mental well-being. That's great news!
But these positive developments may be coming at the price of the working parents in the communities. Most early adopters of the 4-day week have been rural communities with a high prevalence of stay-at-home parents. As the idea starts to take hold in other parts of the country, it's getting more pushback. Discussions on Reddit, Facebook, and other social media are overrun with debate on how this is all going to shake up. Some parents, to be fair, like the idea! If they stay-at-home or have a lot of flexibility, they see it as an opportunity for more family time. But many are feeling anxious. Here's what's got those parents worried:
The effect on students' achievement is still unclear.
The execution of the 4-day week varies from district to district. Some schools extend the length of each of the four days, making the total instructional time the same. That makes for a really long day, and some teachers say the students are tired and more unruly by the late afternoon. Some districts are just going with less instruction time overall, which has parents concerned that their kids might fall behind.
4-day school weeks put parents in a childcare bind.
Having two working parents is becoming more common and necessary with the high cost of living. I know, I know — "school isn't daycare!" But it is the safe, reliable, and educational place we send our kids while we need to work.
Families with money and resources may be able to enroll their kids in more academics, extracurriculars, sports, or childcare, but a lot of normal families won't be able to afford that cost. Some schools running a 4-day week offer a paid childcare option for the day off, but that's an added expense and for families with multiple kids in the school system, it's just not possible.
This will inevitably end with some kids getting way more screentime.
With most parents still working 5-day weeks, and the cost of extra activities or childcare too high, a lot of kids are going to end up sitting around on the couch with their iPad on those days off. I'm no expert, and I'm certainly not against screentime, but adding another several hours of it to a child's week seems less than ideal.
Of course there are other options other than paid childcare and iPads. There are play dates, there's getting help from family and friends. All of these options are an enormous amount of work to arrange for parents who are already at capacity.
A Commissioner of Education from Missouri calls truncated schedules a "band-aid solution with diminishing returns." Having an extra planning day won't stop teachers from getting scapegoated by politicians or held to impossible curriculum standards, it won't keep them from having to buy their own supplies or deal with ever-worsening student behavior.
Some teachers and other experts have suggested having a modified 5-day school week, where one of the days gets set aside as a teacher planning day while students are still on-site participating in clubs, music, art — you know, all the stuff that's been getting cut in recent years. Something like that could work in some places.
As a dad, I don't mind the idea of my busy kids having an extra day off to unwind, pursue hobbies, see friends, catch up on projects, or spend time as a family. And I'm also very much in favor of anything that takes pressure off of overworked teachers. But until we adopt a 4-day work week as the standard, the 4-day school week is always going to feel a little out of place.
This article originally appeared in February
Robin Williams performs on stage.
Robin Williams once beautifully said, "I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy. Because they know what it feels like to feel absolutely worthless and they don't want anybody else to feel like that."
One night at a comedy club in Los Angeles, a new, nervous stand-up comic was called to the stage by the emcee. In one hand, she casually had a beer that she propped up on the piano. In the other, was her notebook full of scribbled, half-written joke premises and a few wine stains. She did her opening joke and the response was so quiet, she could hear the ice machine crackling in the kitchen. Joke two — a slight spattering of nervous laughter. Joke three got a heartier laugh, but then it went back to deafening quiet by joke four.
She mercifully got through her final joke, and said "That's my time" long before the red light in the back of the club even went on. She scurried off stage with her beer, like that rat in New York carrying a piece of pizza. Panicked, embarrassed, and frankly — a little hungry.
It was just one of those nights. The last time she'd done this act — same words nearly exactly — she'd received an applause break. This time, she was left questioning every one of her life decisions. Why had she come to Los Angeles? How was the next month's rent supposed to get paid? Why had she cut her hair in the "Rachel-styled" haircut?
As she was about to enter the hallway that led into the bar area, she could feel actual tears forming behind her eyes, like little faucets that were slowly turning on. "Don't cry at the comedy club," she told herself. Rather, "Don't cry at the comedy club AGAIN." But as the tears came anyway, she looked up and lo and behold, there was Robin Williams. She stuttered, "You. Are. One of my favorites. Ever." He looked at her, his blue eyes warmly crinkling and said, "You were amazing."
It hadn't been true. But the fact that he would go out of his way to make this total stranger's awful night into one of her best at that time, was just the kind of person Robin was.
I know this because that woman was me.
I wanted to tell him about the Mork and Mindy poster on my wall as a kid, and how I had cut out Mindy's face and put in my third-grade class photo. I wanted to tell him how much I loved his care for animals and for the unhoused and for the less fortunate. Or that because of him, I had a weird fetish for suspenders. (The last one wasn't quite true, but I still wanted to say it.)
But instead I merely laughed and said "Oh, thank you. But I can do better." He gave me a gentle look like, "We're all in this together," and even though I knew I'd never have a career like his, it dawned on me that it didn't matter. That being kind to others actually DID matter and that he was a lighthouse in a really stormy, pitch-black ocean.
I stuck it out and just a few years later, got to perform in the super cool and coveted "New Faces" show at the Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Fest. Didn't kill there either, but I was able to step back and look down from an aerial view. How we uplift others, whether through laughter or kindness, is really the only control we have in this world.
Years later, after Robin passed away, I had heart surgery and was feeling down. I had read that cardiac issues could leave a person biochemically depressed and the first person I thought of was him. I messaged our mutual friend from San Francisco and asked if he remembered Robin speaking to him about heart surgery and depression. He only affirmed that yes, it was a very real side effect and that I should take it seriously.
I have always thought of the neurotransmitter Serotonin like it was a flowery perfume. Notes of honey, lavender, rose. When someone has a good amount of it floating through their synapses, it leaves trace of itself wherever it goes, as if the tunnels it burrows under pumps it out through a steam grate. But from what I've heard, Robin struggled with that too. And yet he still found a way to leave a lovely and inviting scent behind him, because he wanted to make sure OTHERS were okay.
A heart shaped neon sign in the dark
Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash
I guess, even in his death, I was looking to Robin for answers. But one puzzle remains solved: making others happy is the kindest thing we can do, even when our own valves --- whether heart or perfume pumps --- fail to work.
