Cat Meows Underwater Video Critique

For anyone is who has sensibilities towards animal welfare, this video of a cat meowing under water has to be upsetting. Firstly, the cat is not actually meowing under water. He or she has her mouth slightly under water so the meow sounds interesting to the sort of blockheads who like funny cat videos at the expense of an unhappy cat.

Here are a couple of stills from the video in case it is removed from YouTube (note: I have cleaned up the colour in these stills):

cat meowing under water
cat meowing under water

The still images actually help focus the mind because one can only come to one conclusion: the cat is unhappy.  Also, this cat looks confused and frightened to me.

The cat’s owner says:

“[the cat] does not like the bathtub…”

That would seem to be an admission that he put the cat in the bathtub. Or his partner did. That is not a good start. Here’s the video:

VIDEO NO LONGER WORKS – SORRY.

This cat is very static, indeed. She looks as though she has been washed all over as her head and ears are wet. Perhaps she was dirty and the owner has cleaned her and then decided to video her looking miserable. I think that is about the kindest assessment I can make.

Her static stance is worrying. It can only be due to fear, confusion or intimidation. My guess is that fear or anxiety coupled with confusion are the main emotions.

And for a cat to let her mouth fall slightly below the water line is also very strange. That supports the confusion theory, for me.

The cat’s owner laughs at his cat while he is videoing. To be frank, he sounds a bit idiotic to me but I am a bit of a grumpy old geezer.

Conclusion

YouTube lets video makers put a description under their video. There is no description for this video, which indicates some guilt. What I mean is there was probably no good reason for putting this cat in the water other than to film her being anxious and to see what happened.

However, to be as fair and as objective as possible, putting a cat in a water-filled bathtub when she hates the bathtub is not necessarily nasty behavior because the cat might need to be washed for a good reason. One reason might be that she had a chemical on her fur, which couldn’t be licked off by the cat because it would poison her.

However, to film her after washing her (if that was the case), leaving her in the water looking confused and miserable and even possibly swallowing some water is once again an abuse of a cat for financial gain for the cat’s owner.

This video has acquired 2.5m views. It would have made some money for the video maker. How much? At a wild guess about $50+ a month. Small stuff but still money made at the expense of a cat.

When your cat is fairly obviously distressed, you don’t grab the camcorder and film her. You make her feel better as soon as possible, don’t you?

27 thoughts on “Cat Meows Underwater Video Critique”

  1. The author of the best comment will receive an Amazon gift of their choice at Christmas! Please comment as they can add to the article and pass on your valuable experience.
  2. That isn’t the video I meant. I will try to find it and send you the link. The one I saw a cat is soaking in a plastic tub of water and he just looks so happy and content. He’s not playing, just soaking in it, the way I like to soak in a hot bath. I have to assume the water he’s in is heated. I hope I can find it. The water is probably not good for his skin and his coat– just like my mom’s cat who would swim out into Lake Delton to get to her out on a raft anchored in the middle of the bay. They couldn’t stop the cat from swimming out to them– it’s what she wanted to do. She insisted on being with them. But it really made her fur dry like straw. That’s what my mom said. It was before my time.

    My childhood cat, Mittens, liked to be bathed in the sink with the sprayer. Mom gave her a bath once when she was sticky and once she’d had a bath that way she didn’t want to groom anymore, she wanted Mom to bathe her all the time. I have a picture labeled “Bath time for a Muttonhead” with Mutsy sitting in the sink looking happy and content, but wet. She just preferred to have mom give her baths. I guess that was one of the reasons we called her Muttonhead. But we loved her and I wish she could still be around. She and Monty would have gotten along famously. She could teach him how to get out of trees and catch mice and he could teach her how to groom herself instead of being so silly to want to get a bath in the sink.

  3. I sent you an email of my video of Monty playing in the puddle. Unfortunately, I only took one video, when the puddle was small. As it got bigger he got more crazy about it, but I never thought to film that. Better would have been a film of the look on my sister’s face watching him. She thinks my cat is nuts. Often she says, “Kobe (her cat) would never do that!”

  4. Hi Ruth. Yes, lots of cats like and love being in water. They should do because a decent percentage of wild cats like water because it cools them in hot climates and there is food in and round water. This is the video I think you are referring to:

    https://pictures-of-cats.org/Cat-Playing-In-Water.html

    Sorry the video is sad. I agree that we can’t focus on sadness all the time. I try have some fun too. I like larking around. I think Monty’s behavior in water shows the natural attraction domestic cats can have to it. It is a personality based attraction but there is some hard-wired attraction to water in the domestic cat generally.

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