Few things are as terrifying as a cat gone wild.
We sometimes forget that our cute little furry friends are actually just mini lions and pretty much the only reason they don’t eat us is because they come in cute little packages, but make no mistake – they will do what they want. This a resounding truth experienced by every cat parent, including @rodent.scum on TikTok who has shared a video of her orange lord who kept meowing and biting her on her head, leading her to reach out to the world and ask: What’s he doing?
The cute video, which has more than 5.8 million views as of this writing, shows a little orange domestic shorthair and his mama, who goes by Jules. The little guy squeaks at Jules in little pulses and she asks the camera, “does anybody know what this means?” As she says that he climbs on her shoulder and starts nibbling at her hair. More squeaking ensues.
“Ah that’s my head,” she says, as he nibbles away. A close-up reveals that he is indeed biting a good chunk of Jules’ hair, pretty much right above the crown of her head. The little cute guy backs off and meows and honestly sounds disappointed, leaving an incredulous Jules to sputter a “What?”
“Don’t you dare bite my arm again,” she says as he just licks his little lips. “Stop it be normal!” He does the opposite and squeaks right at her face, causing her to jump back once again laughing. Then he swats her. “What does this mean?” she asks the camera. “What does this mean? What does this mean?”
Now the cute little guy seems frustrated. It’s like he wants something. But what? Then he goes for the head again. “What is he doing?” she says again. Now comes the fun part. This particular video has almost 14k comments with suggestions of what the cat is doing. It’s like a mystery everyone wants to solve.
One person gives 4 possible suggestions: He’s either warning her about a health condition; trying to pick her up because he thinks she’s a kitten; trying to show her his dominance or our favorite, “he thinks you need bangs.” Hilarious!
Other suggestions include, “It means you have an orange cat,” or that he’s “talkative,” or that he wants to “take you somewhere,” or that he has “cuteness aggression,” something quite a few people mentioned. The two top suggestions? Either he’s trying to mate or she’s sick and needs to go get her head checked.
“GIRL GO GET AN MRI he’s going for same spot.” “Yes Cats have a strong sense of smell & can detect things we can’t. My cat kept going after a mole I had on my head. So I had it removed but it was benign.” That one’s pretty scary.
Someone else said that the can can detect “something wrong in your body.” Another person claimed that this was how their “cat behaved when his mum was sick with cancer & we didn’t know. He was trying to tell us any way he could. I don’t know but does he do this often? He’s trying to tell you some.”
After perusing the comments diligently, it looks like the cat was a stray off the street, wasn’t neutered and probably (definitely) was experiencing the mood shifts caused when the need to mate hits. Take that how you will.
But jokes aside, Jules might want to take the seemingly cute antics of her cat into consideration as those popping up in her comments to say that there might be a disease the feline has detected are not wrong. As per a study by Applied Animal Behaviour Science, cats can detect chemical changes in their environment and that includes the tiny alterations in how their human smell due to hormone fluctuations brought on by a slowly progressing illness.
While we fervently hope that Jules’ orange mini devil is just showing his affection for his mom in his own unique way, this might be the time she gives in to paranoia and takes into account the countless examples of cats detecting underlying diseases in humans. Better safe than sorry.