Help, my cat has Screen Dependency Disorder.
July 2, 2022 6:02 PM   Subscribe

My cat is obsessed with TV and screens in general. She spends hours sitting in front of the TV even if it's off, and when we watch something she jumps up right in front of it. It's annoying and worrying.

My son and I are watching the new Umbrella Academy season (it's great), and it SPOILER has a character who controls ravens, so there's a lot of birds whenever she's on screen, with a lot of bird noise as well. My cat, Asami, who's a lot, even for a cat, perked up her ears when the birds first came on, then squatted on the bed in front of the TV, jumped more than 1 meter and slammed into the screen with her paws, making it rock and go blue, but fortunately not breaking it.

After that, she became obsessed with the show, first, trying to catch the birds, going around the TV, etc., then she extended this to any show we watch, birds or no birds, then to my macbook and tablet, whether or not I'm watching a video, then to the TV even when it's off—she sits in front of it, waiting for us to turn it on.

This is especially odd because we live in a house with a yard and trees with actual birds, yet she prefers to watch them on TV.

To make things worse, we showed her some of those 'for cats' videos, with birds, mice, etc, and they're basically cat porn. We've using them to distract her so she lets us watch TV.

This whole behavior started two weeks ago. Before that, she was a perfectly odd cat who liked to watch TV with us sometimes but didn't really care either way.

So, questions:

1) Is there a way to wean her of her screen obsession?

2) If not, is showing her the birds and/or mice videos on the tablet bad for her? I worry that this whole thing is making her anxious and frustrated and don't want to make it worse.
posted by signal to Pets & Animals (12 answers total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
Response by poster: Datapoint: our other cat, Naga, died recently. They weren't friends as such, but they did hang out close to each other most of the day. She might just be lonely, I guess.
posted by signal at 6:07 PM on July 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


We gave in and gave the cats their own small TV that they control with a motion sensor. It has done them no appreciable harm and they go back and forth between watching the real birds or the TV birds. They don't appear to be anxious or frustrated except when a power outage knocks their TV out of commission and we don't fix it fast enough for them. Sometimes they get annoyed at that.
posted by Stacey at 6:09 PM on July 2, 2022 [31 favorites]


Maybe get an interactive toy that's more "real" than the television screen?

My cats went nuts for this little toy bird. It chips and fidgets in a realistic way and it's motion activated so it continues moving as long as the cats keep batting it around.

Another idea might be to give the cat a safe perch nearer the television on a shelf or something off to the side so they can have a front-row seat from which to study the "birds"
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:17 PM on July 2, 2022 [6 favorites]


Regarding #2 - the man with the "oldest cat in the world" let's his watch 2 hrs of TV a day. He also let them drink coffee and milk, so maybe it was a put-on.
posted by fiercekitten at 7:41 PM on July 2, 2022 [3 favorites]


Give a cat an pixel and it wants the screen, give a cat an inch and it wants the whole yard! This is a non answer, just feeling your pain. We built our cats a catio (chicken wire wrapped multilevel perch thing) so they can be outside without killing birds. Now they go to great lengths every day to escape into the yard! One will slam itself against the screen door and the other will squeeze out! And they howl for hours now to be let out beyond the catio. I hope you find a solution. I will try RonButNotStupid’s trick - thank you!
posted by drowsy at 9:38 PM on July 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


cats can be nearsighted so she might see the birds on the screen better than the birds out the window

get her a tv of her own and put on videos from the Paul Dinning in Cornwall channel on YouTube so she can watch that instead of bothering you during your shows

our cats tried to find the birds behind the screen at first but after a while they figured out that they could only watch them

also she's a cat who cares if she gets addicted to tv it's not like she has a job to go to
posted by Jacqueline at 10:09 PM on July 2, 2022 [36 favorites]


Is there a window with a nice view you could put a comfy seat/cat condo in front of?
posted by Thorzdad at 7:21 AM on July 3, 2022


Cats have a different (faster) visual processing speed than humans and consequently depending on the frame rate, TV can look jerky and weird to them, like a flip book or other type of primitive animation does to us. That's the main reason why some cats don't show much interest in TV even when whatever is on (birds! fish! other cats!) seems like it would interest them. It may be that your cat has only recently figured out how to translate what she's seeing on the screen into HEY THERE'S A BIRD! and she's into the novelty of it. Maybe something about the way the birds appear in Umbrella Academy made them seem more real to her. Some of those videos made specifically for cats are actually filmed at a higher frame rate to make it easier for cats to process them as smooth motion. So it could also be something new and specific about the TV she has been watching lately that explains the change in her level of interest and her behavior.

I also think you're right that since she recently lost a cat companion she might be bored and lonely and actively seeking new interests. That could actually be a healthy coping strategy on her part!

My own cat became obsessed with a particular YouTube bird video for cats for a while after I turned it on for her one very cold, snowy day when she was wandering around crying because the birds she normally watches out the window were all hiding from the weather. For a couple of months after she first watched it, she would beg for me to turn it on every day. We had a few near misses with the TV at first (thankfully it does have a very sturdy anti-tip safety stand which makes it hard for the cat to hurt herself, but she still could theoretically break the screen). I managed to train her not to jump at the TV by watching her closely and pausing the video every time she even looked like she was going to try it. Thankfully she's pretty smart so it didn't take her too long to realize that lunging at TV birdies means no more TV birdies. After a couple of months of her asking for this new kind entertainment all of the time, her interest dialed down. Now she pretty much only asks me to turn on her shows when the weather is bad and the windows are boring.

Anyway I agree with others that the easiest thing to do here is probably to go with the flow and try to find a way to let her do what makes her happy (watching birds on TV) without interfering with your own TV viewing, or endangering herself or the TV. Knowing cats, after the novelty wears off she will probably find a new thing to be annoyingly obsessed with (my cat's new favorite thing this month is demanding fresh raw green beans to play with when I bring them in from my garden).
posted by BlueJae at 7:45 AM on July 3, 2022 [7 favorites]


This sounds incredibly adorable but is understandably now a problem! I'm so sorry about the loss of your dear Naga, and it sounds like Asami has found her way to cope. In addition to the great advice above, I will suggest a trite-but-true suggestion: is adopting a second cat an option for you right now? It may not be and cat chemistry can be hard to predict but it sounds like Asami will be ready and open to a new live-in friend! I think it'd be the best solution for the long-term but that Asami will probably find other outlets with time regardless. Then again, maybe she'd share her screen obsession with the new sibling and you'll end up with two TV-obsessed cats!
posted by smorgasbord at 9:17 AM on July 3, 2022 [2 favorites]


Regarding #2 - the man with the "oldest cat in the world" let's his watch 2 hrs of TV a day. He also let them drink coffee and milk, so maybe it was a put-on.

I had a cat many years ago who liked both black coffee and Diet Coke. You had to watch cups and glasses like a hawk to keep her out of them.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:35 AM on July 3, 2022


Response by poster: Thanks for all the comments, advice, and stories, and to smorgasbord for your kind thought.
posted by signal at 6:05 PM on July 3, 2022


Response by poster: So, the solution finally was to join her and go harder. We got two new kitties, and now all of us spend happy hours watching videos of birds eating seeds.
It's quite relaxing.
posted by signal at 10:41 AM on August 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


« Older Reading twitter without an account   |   Physics filter: Sweat alternatives outside water Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.