Cat owner puts book on her head and her cat makes the weirdest sound imaginable

A Russian cat owner puts a book on her head and her cat makes the weirdest sound imaginable. This is a video from Russia’s version of YouTube. You can’t see the cat’s owner but I have seen her in another similar video and she can get her cat to make these weird sounds by putting a book on her head and walking around. It sounds very bizarre but I think there is a plausible explanation.

Hover your mouse over the video to bring up the play button and other controls.


My belief is that this is an indoor cat and the cat and human have a very close relationship. The cat knows their caregiver’s appearance as you’d expect but when she puts a book on her head it alters her appearance and her cat no longer recognises her. She becomes a hostile invader to the cat’s ‘den’ his/her inner sanctum.

This provokes aggressive body language and sounds. The body language is a pre-aggressive action which would include swiping with the claws and perhaps pouncing and biting. The combination of body language: ears back to protect them and slow, hunched movements with the strange vocalisation is designed to warn the unknown hostile creature that unless you scram, I’ll attack.

The sound is saying something like: “Piss off! If you don’t, I’ll attack you.”

The woman takes the book off her head and all reverts to normal. We don’t see that bit but we briefly hear the woman giggle because she is amused by her cat’s apparently bizarre reaction.

Only the cat’s reaction is not bizarre. It is normal, in fact, although we don’t see it that often and this example is extreme as the sound produced is genuinely very strange.

But all cat behaviour is normal as it is instinctive and it originates in millions of years of evolution as a wild cat and about 10,000 as a domestic cat.

Russia’s conflict with YouTube

The Russian authorities – essentially the Kremlin – hate YouTube because lots of Russians use it and there are far too many videos criticising Russia over their invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent ‘special operation’ which has turned into a war of attrition leaving around half a million Russian men dead and many more injured. Plus, 900,000 men have left the country in a brain drain to avoid conscription.

And so, the Kremlin has slowed down YouTube in Russia by 70 percent to try and drive Russian users away from it and to use the Russian version called – unimaginatively – RuTube.

There are calls to total ban YouTube in Russia to force all Russian users to join RuTube. These are the machinations of a dictatorship. You don’t earn a following and users out of merit. You just kick their arses and force them to join the crappy Russian version of YouTube.

I searched for cat videos on RuTube by entering ‘kot’ in their search box. It worked fine.

The video is embedded and I expect it to stop playing in due course. The video quality is crap. Can’t change that, sorry. Anyway, it is the sound that is the most interesting.

One last point: the cat is anxious. The caregiver made her scared to force her to make the weird sound for the video. Not a good idea. Not good cat caregiving.

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