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Staring at Cats Communicates Aggression

Ablestock.com/AbleStock.com/Getty Images

How's this for a familiar situation: You, the sociable cat owner, are entertaining guests in your home. Everyone's sitting around, minding their own business, until the cat wanders into the room. Immediately, your friend group splits in two -- everyone who loves cats starts cooing like utter lunatics and invitingly slapping their laps, while the dog people (and the hopelessly allergic) ignore your four-legged toxoplasmosis bomb.

And then what does the cat do? It walks right past the babbling peanut gallery and starts cuddling with those stone-hearted souls who have zero interest in getting cat hair all over their crotches.

Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images "I just can't get comfortable without the sound of someone's lungs closing up."

What's up with that? You see, cats use extended eye contact to display aggression or dominance, whereas looking away is either submission or an invitation for affection. So does that mean you can never look at your cat again?

Of course not. If you want to look at your cat but not come off as a jerkwad, just meet its gaze and then blink very, very slowly, a gesture that reassures it that you are not a threat or competitor. You can also go that extra mile and try exchanging blinks in Morse code, but that may simply reveal that your cat has been silently swearing at you for years.

Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images "You are one thumb and one Glock away from a fancy feast of lead."

3

Half the Food in Your Kitchen Is Pet Poison

Ryan McVay/Photodisc /Thinkstock/Comstock/Getty Images

Animals are famous for eating just about any goddamned thing they find. If a dog happily eats cat shit it finds in the street, then it seems impossible to screw up at feeding time. Yet a few seconds of Google searching will turn up long lists of all of the seemingly harmless foods that will straight up murder Fluffy if he eats enough of them. For instance, we have previously mentioned that, contrary to what decades of Warner Bros. cartoons taught you, rabbits cannot subsist on carrots (if you didn't know that, you shouldn't feel too bad, since only 8 percent of rabbit owners do).

Michael Blann/Digital Vision/Getty Images Which makes this stock photo super unsettling.

All right, so what about cats? Give a stranger a kitten, and the first thing they'll do is give him a little saucer of milk. That's fine, right? Nope! Despite what virtually every facet of our culture has ever told you about cats, milk is actually super bad for them. In fact, they don't even have enough of the enzyme necessary to process the stuff, so it's not even an "in moderation" thing: They're biologically lactose intolerant.

All right, so what else have we seen cartoon cats eat, other than lasagna? Fish, right? Surely the key to a healthy feline is a nice can of tuna every day. Nope again -- while tuna isn't poisonous to them, a steady diet of it can lead to nutrient deficiencies and a dreadful (if unthreateningly named) condition known as "yellow fat disease."

Michael Blann/Lifesize/Getty Images We would have gone with "Garfield Syndrome."

2

Shopping at Pet Stores Causes All Sorts of Horrible Problems

Photos.com

What kind of sick bastard could ever be sad in a pet store? There's tons of brightly colored toys lining the walls, chipper animal-loving clerks bopping around offering advice, and domesticated fauna pawing playfully at the glass, just begging you to take them home. It's the happiest place on earth! Or at least at the mall.

Photos.com It's like a prison, if prisons sold their inmates to random families.

Or at least it would be, if the animals weren't trying to escape from the sordid web of torture and murder they're trapped in.

Odds are that you're at least familiar with the existence of puppy mills and kitten factories (if not, you can read the details here, because that shit's way too dark for a comedy website). These organizations sacrifice any modicum of comfort for the animals in exchange for the maximum amount of cuddly creatures catapulted out of the womb as quickly as possible. Aside from the obvious and immediate animal abuse problems, this contributes to animal homelessness by bloating the already overwhelming unwanted pet population, since there are already way more animals in need of homes than there are homes available. But hey, this is an entry on bad pet stores. Your pet store down the street doesn't buy its animals from mills, right?

Photos.com "If you believe that, we've got a farm outside the city you should check out."

1

Supporting PETA Is a Terrible Idea

Mark Cuthbert / UK Press / Getty

You likely know PETA as that "activist" organization that seems more interested in raising a media brouhaha than affecting change. They're always convincing celebrities to strip naked for their posters or releasing dunderheaded Super Mario Bros. and Pokemon knockoffs in order to make labored points about perceived animal abuse in fictional video games. Sure, PETA may be naively gung-ho about animal rights, but they're not actually bad guys, right?

PETA Nah, they seem above board.