).png)
The Science Pawdcast
The Science Pawdcast breaks down the latest science happening in the human world AND the pet world.
Each episode will also bring you a guest to enthral you with their area of knowledge.
You'll learn, be captivated, and laugh along with host Jason Zackowski.
Pets and Science, it's the pawfect mix.
You'll also get episodes of PetChat which are the live shows from social audio.
PetChat is a live community gathering updates about the animals in our life, but also the animals in the wonderful community that supports us!
Heart and Hope.
Science and Shenanigans.
The Science Pawdcast
Season 5 Episode 33: The Intriguing World of Trilobites, Cats, and their Behavior Patterns with Dr. Mikel Delgado
Wouldn't you love to explore the mysteries of the ancient world, understand the quirky behavior of our furry friends, and learn how to make our pets’ lives better? That's exactly what we’re offering you in this riveting episode! We've got an incredible lineup in store, starting with a trilobite's preserved last meal leading us to fresh insights into these ancient creatures, and a nodosaur from Alberta revealing its diet through its stomach contents.
Join us as we traverse the world of animal behavior, investigating studies on the impact of predatory behavior in dogs, and how providing them an outlet for their natural instincts might improve their mental health. But we're not just about dogs; we’ve got feline fans covered too! We delve into research on neonatal kittens, squirrels' phenomenal navigation skills, and a fascinating look at 'contra-free loading' in cats. You'll be amazed at what we've discovered about our purring friends.
To top it off, we're thrilled to have on board renowned cat behaviorist Dr. Michael Delgado. We discuss with her the unique challenges of keeping cats as a captive species and the importance of satisfying their environmental needs. You'll learn about the interactions between cats, the potential for vindictiveness, and tips on enhancing the environment to reduce competition among them. Additionally, we talk about the wonders of positive reinforcement training for cats, and how it can enrich both their lives and those of their owners. This episode is a must-listen for every animal lover out there – we promise, you won’t be disappointed!
Dr. Delgado's Links:
Pre-Order the Doc's Book
Dr. Delgado's website
Bunsen and Beaker Links:
Save 10% at Bark and Beyond with the coupon code BUNSEN!
The 2024 Bunsen and Beaker Calendar is ready to order!
The Ginger Stuffie is on presale so check the link here!
Join The Paw Pack to Support The Show!
https://bunsenbernerbmd.com/pages/paw-pack-plus-community
Our Website!
The Bunsen and Beaker Website has adorable merch with hundreds of different combinations of designs and apparel- all with Printful- one of the highest quality companies we could find!
www.bunsenbernerbmd.com
Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter!
Bunsen and Beaker on Twitter:
Bunsen and Beaker on TikTok:
Bunsen and Beaker on Facebook
For Science, Empathy, and Cuteness!
Being Kind is a Superpower.
https://twitter.com/bunsenbernerbmd
Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zikowski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold onto your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy.
Speaker 2:Out there Around the farm, the leaves on all of the trees are fall colors. We've had warm evenings for gorgeous walks and, knock on wood, the snow hasn't come yet. It's always lucky if we get all the way to Halloween without there being snow, and I don't remember a fall as nice as this, with as beautiful of colors of leaves changing and them falling around. But you know, I think that's because it's random when winter comes, some years we have like a really long fall and sometimes winter comes in September and as we're inching towards October, we're just gonna keep hoping that the snow stays away for a little bit longer, even though I know Bunsen is dreaming about it and he can feel the wind on his face when we go outside in the morning. Alright, well, what's on the Science Podcast this week. In Science News this week we're gonna look at something that was discovered in paleontology. That's very, very cool. And in pet science we're gonna look at prey games and how they may or may not affect dogs and the dog bond with humans. Our guests can ask an expert as cat behaviorist. Yes, that's a thing and the interview is amazing. Dr Michael Delgado. That's a really good interview and the irony is we covered one of her studies on the Science Podcast and I didn't know that till we started talking. So it's a really great interview. Alright, let's do the joke, the bad joke. This is dinosaur related. There's so many good bad dinosaur jokes. Alright, what do you call a dinosaur that wears glasses? Do you think he's Soros? Okay, on with the show, because there's no time like science time. This week in Science News we are gonna talk about trilobites. Now, before I get to the news article. Here's why I was just tickled with this. You know it's really cool. It's not a study, it's more of a news item, like something that was discovered.
Speaker 2:During the summer, chris and I got away on a couple little couples getaways and we went down to the Badlands of Alberta and we got to go to the Royal Terrell Museum and I hadn't been to the Royal Terrell Museum in years, probably a decade or more. It's a world renowned dinosaur museum and as we were walking through the museum I felt like I was a little kid again, looking at all the dinosaur bones. And then we got to this enormous room and inside this room there's one huge fossil and it was in glass and you can get really close to it, and it was the nodosaur that was discovered in the oil sands north of Edmonton, like in our province. They were doing some digging and they hit something and it was a bone and they stopped. This fossil was incredibly well preserved. This nodosaur, if you want to, I guess compare it to something, is like an ankylosaur and it was. It was surreal because the entire body of it, like probably 75% of it, was preserved. You could see the scales on the creature, you could see its head and the most wild thing is that its contents of its stomach were preserved and the paleontologists could figure out what this creature's last meal was. And it lived 110 million years ago. So at the Royal Terrell Museum, in this room, I just stood in awe of this nearly 100% full skeleton of an armored dinosaur and what made it so special was my favorite type of dinosaur is the ankylosaurus, and the nodosaur is a type of armored dinosaur like the ankylosaurus. So why does this relate to the news item? I'm sorry, I got all nerded out by my story about the nodosaur.
Speaker 2:Well, they found a trilobite, a special type of trilobite, and inside this preserved fossil they found fossilized food in its digestive system. And that is amazing because trilobites lived even longer ago than nodosaurs we're talking. We're talking like 400 million years ago and trilobites are amazing. They lived in the early Cambrian period to the end of the Permian period. Millions and millions of years ago like 520 million years ago to like 250,. They predated the dinosaurs and the ocean. The oceans of earth were full of these little arthropods, like these marine creatures called trilobites. They have a three low body structure with one lobe running down the center of both sides, and they can be tiny to up to two feet big and you wouldn't fault aliens who landed at that time and left to think that earth was the planet of the trilobite because they were so diverse. There were over 20,000 different species so far that paleontologists have cataloged.
Speaker 2:This was discovered by paleontologists Valerina Vascananova and they found was inside this creature stomach, by taking a 3D scan of the trilobite, and inside its stomach, its digestive system, there were fragments of shells, little types of I guess they're called Aquino Derms and other little small bottom dwelling creatures. It is thought that some trilobite species had two dual digestive systems, but the scans revealed that this specific species, this specific type of trilobite, did not. And because there was clumps of like shells found in its stomach, it suggests to the paleontologists that trilobites fed continuously, like they were scavengers, probably poking around through the broken remains of creatures on the sea floor. Trilobites didn't have a powerful mouth for biting, so their role as a scavenger, their role as like a bottom feeder, there seems to be this. This evidence inside the stomach leads credence to that. In a little bit of irony, the 3D scan also seemed to show that this trilobite, before itself became a fossil, was also scavenged by other organisms. So I guess what's good for the goose is good for the gander. That's really all there is to this. It's just a discovery, and I thought it was so cool that we should talk about it that, by taking a 3D scan of this fossil, the last couple meals of this ancient creature, okay, whao, we now know what they ate or what was on the menu before Died and became a fossil. That science news for this week.
Speaker 2:This week in pet science we're gonna talk about a really unique study that took Something that some pet owners are frustrated with and put it to the test with a outlet. So where I'm going with this is the study was about predatory behavior that some dogs exhibit. Some dogs are actually bred for a certain amount of predatory behavior. If you are thinking of a tracking dog or hunting dog there, they were bred to Track, hunt and actually kill prey that is either wounded or flushed out by the humans. And if you think about a border collie, they do have a little bit of predatory behavior but they kind of stop it at the stocking and herding, not necessarily the killing part.
Speaker 2:There's been a lot of research lately with dogs that well, predatory behavior is dangerous to livestock and other pets and even people in your homes that are small. That's, suppressing it or not allowing dogs to have predatory behavior as an outlet Perhaps could be bad for their mental health or their welfare. For example, not letting a dog chase anything ever or putting barriers up like fences and muzzles there there are some behaviorists that are questioning if that's good for the dog and that's led to an explosion of things like barn hunt, which I was shocked to hear about, and when we took beaker dog diving. That's one thing that this outfit also has. They have about barn hunt. Now no animals are killed but it's an outlet for dogs and their bread.
Speaker 2:Predatory behavior they actually take and Again I felt a little shocked when she was explaining this to me they take Jerbals and they put the gerbil in a tube and they hide the tube in a barn and then dogs, one at a time, are let to track, hunt, smell and find the tube with the gerbil and and they they absolutely don't let the dogs do anything more than find the tube and the dogs are like trained to, like sit. But it from my understanding a lot of the people that have their dogs go through this that predatory behavior has an outlet and there's less that they see on a walk or in there. You know their day-to-day life with the dog. So that's what this study was sort of getting at. They were wondering that because you're giving an outlet for predatory behavior, does that increase the attention and the Gazing time that a dog would give the person, giving them that outlet. Instead of like something like barn hunt, they subbed in games with the dogs. It goes orient, I stock, chase, bite, slash, kill, dyssect and consume. Beaker does this and it's adorable but it's also horrifying. Go after a toy and shake it. That's them killing it. That's them killing the animals. So it is sub in for all little critter.
Speaker 2:So this study had two different stages. There's one stage where they gather data from an online survey and that allowed the experimenters to try to find eligible dogs. So those are dogs that had predatory behavior and for the people that passed the first part of it. The second stage was the experiment where they had the folks run the dogs through the test with the toy. Take three minutes of video and then the team would analyze the footage. During the three minute video the first and third minutes participants were asked to stand Motionless and quiet with their dogs. But during the second minute, the participants were asked to perform specific actions. Some were asked to use a toy to replicate part of the predatory sequence and and then some were asked to throw a toy and then some were the control. So they did nothing.
Speaker 2:Sadly, the dogs didn't do anything for that, and during the first minute where the participants stood Motionless and silent, and the third minute where they stood motionless and silent, silent, the research team took a look at how often the dog looked at the person, gave them attention. That was this game, this predatory game, something that increased the Increased the interest in their human, because it was fun, it was fulfilling a need, blah, blah, blah. So what were some conclusions from the study? Well, in the surprise to nobody who owns a dog that's been bred for predatory behavior, they, those dogs, were overrepresented in the study. They're the most likely to engage in predatory behavior. And the other conclusion is there was no change in how often the dog gazed at the human. So the dog had fun, or appeared to have fun. The dog was engaged in the game of throw or the game of tug, but there was no difference in how often the dog looked or gazed at the human. So for us on the science podcast, what I found interesting was just that there is growing evidence that allowing outlets for safe predatory behavior in dogs Might be a good thing. I mean, it's what they were bred for. They were bred to do the thing to be predators, to help out humans or at least stop the predatory behavior at some point towards kill the thing. And the other is it didn't seem to affect how often the dog looked at the human. Anyways. Interest in study. Right, that's pet science for this week.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, before we get to the interview section, here's a couple ways you can help the science podcast out. Number one if you're on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating. Tell your friends and share it with people who love science and pets, like teachers. Number two think about signing up as a member of the paw pack. It allows you to connect with people who love our show and it's a way to keep the show free. Number three Check out our merch store. We have the Bunsen stuffy 2.0. There's still some beaker stuffies left that they're adorable as well. Warm, cuddly clothes and adorable drinkware. The link is in the show notes. Now on to the interview. It's time for ask an expert on the science podcast, and I have Dr Michael Delgado with me today. Doc, how you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great, jason. How are you?
Speaker 2:I am good. I'm good, I'm excited to talk to you and we're gonna get to why in a hot second. But where? Where are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show from?
Speaker 3:I am in Sacramento, California.
Speaker 2:Okay, have you lived there your whole life or have you had to ping-pong around with work, school, all that stuff?
Speaker 3:I have lived in Sacramento for six years. I moved here when I did my postdoc at the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis and decided to stay. But I've lived. I Grew up in Maine and then I moved to California about 30 years ago. Okay, I've been in California a long time.
Speaker 2:Now I introduced you as Dr Delgado and you you said that you have. You went to veterinary school. Is that correct? Is that your training in science slash research?
Speaker 3:Well, let me clarify first of all, I am not a veterinarian, I'm not that kind of doctor. I'm the PhD type of doctor.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh no. I just don't want anybody asking me questions about why they're cats limping or anything, because, yeah, I Research background. So so, yeah, I have a PhD in psychology, with an emphasis on animal behavior and cognition, which I earned from UC Berkeley in 2017, and after that I did research at the School of Veterinary Medicine.
Speaker 2:Okay. So when you were little were you into the whole psychology thing? Were you like trying to play mind games with your parents, friends, other thing like, what got you into that line of line of education?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so definitely was not a budding scientist from childhood. In fact, I was more you'd call a late bloomer. I'm actually. I was a college dropout, I was an undergrad, and I'd been in college for maybe two and a half, three years and realize I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was, you know, 2021. Well, what I wanted to do was move to California and start a punk band, and so that's what I did.
Speaker 4:I dropped out college and moved to California.
Speaker 3:I played in bands, you know. I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area San Francisco for about 12 years and then Berkeley for almost 12 years and Really just did a bunch of cool stuff in my 20s that had nothing to do with science or be in the smart person you know did a lot of playing rock shows, go into rock shows, worked at a Cooperative grocery store and it wasn't until much later, when I started working in an animal shelter, that I considered going back to school and finishing my degree. So that was pretty late in life. I was in my mid to late 30s and I'd been working in the animal shelter for almost eight years and realized that I kind of wanted to study Animal by animal behavior in a more formal way.
Speaker 2:That is a wild origin story.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was definitely love it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not your typical like, oh, my parents did this, or I wanted to be a vet since I was two, or anything like that. No, nothing like that at all. It was not on my radar, really until one of my cats passed away, and when he died it was very sad. He was an amazing cat. I started volunteering at the local animal shelter and basically volunteered there so much they offered me a job and again that kind of led me to.
Speaker 3:So I was working in the cat behavior program at that shelter it was the San Francisco SPCA, and so you know, I had all these different duties as part of my job, which included like helping shelter cats adjust to being in the shelter environment, which is very stressful for cats doing behavior modification, helping new adopters and cat owners deal with behavior problems and Just realizing like, oh, like, this is science, this is animal behavior and there's actually a science behind it and I want to learn that science. And so that was when I decided to quit my job, finish my bachelor's degree, and then, when I was getting my bachelor's, I learned about grad school and what that meant how you get in Really kind of you know, getting in touch with the world of research and what was happening and also kind of understanding what I wanted to do. As far as research was concerned. I'm you know, I'm a, I'm a softy, I'm a vegetarian, so I knew I didn't want to do like heavy-duty, invasive lab research with animals.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:So I found a lab where I could study wild, free ranging squirrels, so that's what I did. My PhD dissertation on was Fox squirrels on the UC Berkeley campus, so I chased squirrels around. Yeah so yeah, it was really fun. Squirrels are amazing.
Speaker 2:They are amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're great second favorite species. I'll see that much.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, I see right right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, all that time I was also doing cat behavior consulting. So while I was in school I was offering services to Cat owners that were having, you know, behavior issues with their cats, and so that was kind of my way to help pay for grad school. I'm pay my way through grad school. And then after grad school was when I was like, okay, I want to get back to the cats, and so that's when I pursued a postdoc position At UC Davis at the School of Veterinary Medicine, where I did get to study kittens and cats and do fun stuff with oh my goodness, can I ask a squirrel question before my?
Speaker 2:So, I love squirrel questions, literally like a year ago or two years ago, year and a half, go on this show. We there's this wild study where they looked at squirrels and how they do like advanced physics when they jump. Like did you, did you ever look into that? Like how they calculate, they can like almost like precognition, they have spidey sense, but it squirrel sense, yeah, so that?
Speaker 3:was actually people that I worked with at UC Berkeley. I was not involved in that research, sadly. I studied their food. Yeah, I studied their food storing behavior and social interactions around food and stealing and Related squirrels and stuff. So it was. It was really fun. But one of my lab mates, judy Jen, she was working with someone in the Bob full lab and that's they were doing the spidey sense squirrel.
Speaker 3:So, squirrels like parkour. Basically jokingly called it a parkour course because it was this Giant wall they built that the squirrels would would jump on and they'd move all the obstacles and Record how the squirrels navigated around those obstacles. So so yeah, I'm familiar with that work. Really cool.
Speaker 2:Squirrels are the best, except for cats okay, let's get into the cats, can you? You did a whole bunch of research, obviously with your your PhD postdoc with cats. What was your research on, like? What did you find interesting? Was there something unexpected? What could you share with us?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a lot of that research was looking at orphan neonatal kittens and so this is something people may not be familiar with. But a lot of kittens Accidentally get separated from their moms before they're weaned and of course they're dependent on mom for the first several weeks of their lives. But what happened is a good Samaritan might be strolling through a park, come across a tiny, crying, wiggling nugget of kitten, or maybe a few, and probably what's happening is that mom's gone off to get food. She can't take her kittens with her when she's hunting, but she has to survive. So when people come across those kittens, they often remove them from where they were, take them to the animal shelter, like we found kittens.
Speaker 3:The problem is shelters don't have a lot of capacity to care for those kittens because, especially when they're really young, they need around the clock care, like you have to feed them every two to three hours.
Speaker 3:So we have a rescue group on the UC Davis campus run by students that takes in these orphan kittens, finds foster homes for them, they bottle, feed them around the clock and get them adopted.
Speaker 3:What we recognize was we have this whole like sample of kittens who've been separated from their mother that week might be able to study and recognizing that early maternal separation is a likely stressor. We can then compare these kittens to kittens that are fostered with their moms and look for behavioral differences. And we also were interested in just what help these kittens grow best, stay healthy, prevent health problems and thrive, and so a lot of my research was looking at that early life experience and how it impacted their behavior, and, for example, in one study we found that kittens who'd been separated from their mothers At a young age, so within the first few days of their life, we're more likely to show signs of stress. During a little separation test, where we basically isolated them away from their litter mates, put them in a little playpen for two minutes and looked at how much they moved around and cried and so compared to mother I know it was very heartbreaking two minutes.
Speaker 3:I was like it's just two minutes, but during that two minutes.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I was just like I just it's a tugged at my heart strings a bit.
Speaker 3:They're so cute that I mean we're talking one week old kittens, are very tiny and fuzzy but they did cry and move more than mother reared kittens who'd also been separated from their mother and litter mates. So what we can kind of infer from that is that they are some, they are more stressed Then kittens that are with their mother, which makes sense. And, you know, the bigger picture is like what happens to those kittens down the road, and that's a long term study that unfortunately I didn't have the funding or time to complete. But there's a whole world of research about early life experience and we know in other species, like humans, early life experiences that are stressful can have an impact throughout your entire life on your health, your mortality, your emotional well being. So it would make sense that some of these early life stressors could have impacts for cats as well. Again, future question, maybe someone else can answer it. But lots of I have lots of research questions about cats, more than I answered for sure. That's usually what happens with science.
Speaker 2:That's usually what happens with science, though.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, that's good science, right, as you leave with just many questions, as you thought you would answer, and I think, as far as the most like surprising study that you know are surprising findings from some of my research, I was very interested in this concept called contra-free loading and that may be a new concept for a lot of your listeners. So I can.
Speaker 2:I know about this. I know about this. I am so excited.
Speaker 1:Okay, go ahead, okay Okay.
Speaker 3:So contra-free loading is this tendency that's been observed in lots of captive animals, that they actually prefer to work for their food rather than get it for free.
Speaker 3:So free loading would be you like it for free, and then contra-free loading is the opposite, right, contra. So this has been observed in pigeons and bears and humans and all kinds of primates besides humans Wolves, etc. So lots of captive studies show that when you know, and it's there could be different reasons. One is that maybe when animals are bored while working for their food would give them something to do. The other thing is that animals naturally work for their food, whether they're foraging or hunting. So you're giving them the opportunity to express a natural behavior by giving them like a foraging puzzle. So maybe you know, I think you've seen like in zoos they give, like the big cats, pumpkin stuffed with meat and they just get to rip them open and play with them and then it's very, it seems to be very good enrichment for most animals. So I was curious whether or not this would be true of domestic cats. And the reason I was curious is because there was one very small study from 1971, which happens to be the year I was born, so very old but it was a study of six laboratory cats and it showed that cats did not contra-free load. And so from this I mean the title of the paper. This was a scientific publication and it was called Feline Indolence and basically they concluded that cats are the only species tested that do not contra-free load and that's like, ok, the only species like this is weird. Why would cats not contra-free load? So I was like, well, they're laboratory cats, so they were kept at like 85% body weight. So they were very hungry, and hunger does decrease contra-free loading, probably because the animals are so hungry. They just want to eat as quickly as possible. So I'm thinking like, yeah, they're in an under-stimulating environment, they're hungry. There's only six cats in the study. Let's check this and let's check it in house cats that are happy and not starving. And so we recruited 20 people in the UC Davis campus area and Sacramento to participate in our study.
Speaker 3:Of course, as soon as we started it was right before the pandemic, so we had to develop some protocols for handing off equipment and training people, but luckily we had people set up cameras in their homes and basically what we did was we had cats given food in a tray that was open, so no work required or a food puzzle of the same size and shape, which was it was round and it had compartments where the cat had to stick their paws in to get food out.
Speaker 3:So for those who are not familiar with the food puzzle idea, these are basically just toys where you you know if you're a cat or a dog or whoever you have to interact with this puzzle to get food out of it. So some of them are balls that roll around and food falls out, and some of them are like a board with cups and tunnels and then you have to use your paws to fish the food out. And the food puzzle we used was more that type. So it was a stationary round food puzzle called the Trixie Tunnel Feeder, if anyone wants to look it up. And so we had we only had, you know, healthy cats between one and 10 years of age. In the study they all had to be the only cat in the home and they had to be indoors only so we knew they weren't getting other food.
Speaker 2:Snacking on a bird or something?
Speaker 3:Yeah we're trying to control as many things as possible. So first we had all the owners train their cats to use a food puzzle, because cats are kind of not maybe super receptive to change their creatures of habit. So we knew, okay, we want to make sure they know, they understand how to use the food puzzle. Right.
Speaker 3:And they can get food out of it before we test them with a choice. So we did that and three cats had to be kicked out of the study at that point because they were just like hell. No, I'm not doing this, I'm not working for food?
Speaker 2:Oh my God so cats.
Speaker 3:So that was, that was the first, you know sign. Okay, well, maybe cats aren't super into this. And then we had the 17 remaining cats. So in that case we had the owners do two to three trials a day with a video camera so we could code everything later and they would give the cat the choice. They would put an equal amount of food in the food puzzle and the tray. They'd be close to one another, placed in front of the cat at the same time, and record which one did the cat go to first, which one did the cat eat more food from and which one did the cat spend more time at. So those are our measures of contra-free loading, like, if they contra-free load, they should eat more food from the puzzle, they should approach the puzzle first and they should spend more time at the puzzle. That is not what the cats in the study did, so we did not find strong support for contra-free loading in cats, just like the previous study, which was very I mean, it was funny, it was cool.
Speaker 3:Sometimes we're surprised and disappointed. Maybe I was a little disappointed in the cats, Like I was kind of hoping they would, you know, prove me right that cats are not contra-free loaders. But lo and behold, so three cats. An additional three cats did not use the food puzzle at all during the testing, so I guess they were okay with it during training and then just said no, forget it. And then of the other. So now we're down to 14 cats that ate any food from the puzzle. But regardless, none of the cats spent more time at the puzzle. None of them chose to go to the puzzle first, and the only cats who ate a lot of food from the puzzle also ate a lot of food from the tray. So it seemed like hunger and food motivation.
Speaker 3:They're just hungry. Once they ate all the food from the tray, they're like okay, I got to. I guess I have to work now. So so cats do not seem to be strong contra-free loaders and, like I said, the ones who did use the puzzle were just more food motivated in general. So once again, cats failed to contra-free load.
Speaker 2:Um, doc, I am. I'm smiling from ear to ear and I am, I am just gleeful with you. I did not know you were the scientist behind the study. I covered your study on the science podcast. Um, it was an animal cognition correct, like it was a, and I made a TikTok video about your study.
Speaker 1:Um, uh so.
Speaker 2:I'm just, I just love I, I just it's so cool that I've talked. It's so cool. I'm talking to you Like I've got goosebumps. This is just great Cause I thought it was the most hilarious conclusion ever. Um, the cats just not going to work. They're not going to work for the food where everything else will. Um, yeah, oh, wow, that's so cool. Our listeners are going to be tickled pink. Um, excellent that that I mean they're going to. They're going to start to key in that. This is you. Uh, anyways, that's wild, wow yeah.
Speaker 4:So that is a cool study.
Speaker 2:Congratulations. Thank you, yeah, it was it was a cool finding.
Speaker 3:I was very, you know I was, I was. I was pleased that it got published. I would. You know. What I don't want people to take away from it is that cats shouldn't ever be given a food puzzle. But you know, what it does mean is that we have to think about like is this a healthy, food motivated cat? Well, they're a great candidate for using a food puzzle, and food puzzles are great enrichment for animals and so, but there are going to be some cats that are just not the best match for that kind of enrichment. Maybe find a different activity for those kids.
Speaker 2:I love it. That's amazing. Well, I'm just a little stunned. Right now. I have to. I did not know I was going to be talking to you. I swear I said your name in the study, so it's just been. It's been a minute since that episode came out.
Speaker 3:It's been a couple of years. Yeah, it's been about two years since that paper came out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, twenty twenty one, I think if I am if I'm remembering, wow, okay, okay. So the other?
Speaker 3:how do we talk that?
Speaker 2:Could we talk a little bit about feline minds. You mentioned you are a consultant. Is that, is that your consulting business or consulting thing?
Speaker 3:Yes, so feline minds is my consulting business that I co-own with a friend and fellow cat behavior consultant, deela R Perry, and she and I worked together at the San Francisco SPCA many years ago.
Speaker 3:So when I left the shelter, she also left the shelter and we decided to offer consultation locations for cat owners and really the goal is to help people better understand their cats in order to prevent behavior problems. And so a lot of the types of issues we get called about include cats not using the litter box consistently and cats not getting along. So often that's a new cat has been introduced into the home and there's some conflict between cats. So those are the two most common reasons we get called for help, and when I'm working with a client, the goal is to help them assess the environment, like, is this cat living in a healthy, happy environment? And it kind of gets back to that idea where we were talking about the contra-free loading and captive species. I didn't say this explicitly, but maybe we should think about cats as a captive species when they're living in our homes. I think cats should be endorsed.
Speaker 2:Rather than a pet. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think they're both.
Speaker 3:I think they're both and not everybody agrees with me on this, but I think recognition that we're restricting their lifestyle by keeping them as a pet tying into this idea of like. Are cats completely domesticated and how much have we changed them through domestication? I know that's like a big topic to dive into.
Speaker 3:But I think when we're planning how we should make our cats happy, we have to consider that we are restricting some things for them by keeping them indoors. And, to be clear, I'm very pro keeping cats indoors for lots of reasons, including their safety, their health, bird predation, not being a jerk to your neighbors, that sort of stuff, because cats can cause problems. But at the same time we have to recognize that by doing so we take away certain abilities to say hunt, which is a natural behavior for cats. We take away their ability to make some choices in their day to day life, such as avoiding maybe cats they don't like. So maybe you have three cats and they don't like each other and by keeping them indoors you're kind of forcing them to coexist.
Speaker 2:So it's like you're stuck in an office with somebody you hate and HR is HR is not doing anything about it.
Speaker 3:Exactly so okay.
Speaker 3:So not that it's bad that we're keeping them as pets, but just recognizing that they have needs that we have to go out of our way to meet. And so a lot of what I do in my consulting work is helping people meet their cat's needs and recognizing where there are problems in the environment, because a lot of cat behavior problems per se they're natural behaviors that are being expressed in a suboptimal environment. That's usually the case. Like the cat needs more litter boxes, the cats need more vertical space. The cats need more hiding spaces. The cats need the ability to avoid each other if they want to. The cats need the food dishes to not be side by side. So things that reflect cats natural behaviors. They need play time every day because that's a substitution for hunting behavior. They need mental stimulation. They need safety and choices. So really helping people kind of understand their cat's needs, that helps a lot of the problem behaviors go away, because once people understand what their cats need they can provide those things the cats.
Speaker 3:In a healthy environment the cats are happier. That's not always the case. When cats aren't getting along. I will say you know, we're choosing many times a new roommate for our cats. They don't have any say. You can imagine if someone imposed a new roommate on you and you didn't have any say in the matter and maybe you don't get along with them. There could be problems. So yeah, sometimes the cat conflict is a much more serious and harder problem to solve, but those are the kinds of things that I typically help people with. We get you know other problems like cats waking their owners up at three in the morning, cats scratching furniture, cats meowing too much, cats biting and scratching people, so that there are definitely cats and dogs getting along. There's lots of other things that can happen in the human relationship where they need a little professional assistance. So really my goal is again to help people better understand their pets, make everybody happy. I want cats to be happy, I want people to be happy, I want them to have good relationships.
Speaker 2:Well, just two things. I have never been around cats until the last year, oh wow. I've been super allergic to cats all my entire life and my wife and my son used my science against me. They found I did a story about this type of cat food that bound the yeah, the FelD1 protein or something like that. It worked. They adopted this cat, they rescued this cat without telling me and then fed it to the food and I wasn't allergic to it. But cats are like, they're interesting, like they are very different than dogs and I've been just trying to adjust to that.
Speaker 2:They're just not dogs in the same way that dogs are dogs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think the natural thing that people want to do is compare cats to dogs.
Speaker 3:I always ask who's smarter cats or dogs, or who's X cats or dogs? It's like they're apples and oranges. They have a very different physiology, they have very different evolutionary history, they have a very different domestication history, even though, like, why they live with us is very different. Cats really haven't been asked to change much at all during domestication. They've always been cute, they've always hunted mice and that's really all we've asked of them, whereas dogs, we've really selected them for specific behavior like help me dog, fetch this for me dog, help me hunt dog, protect me dog. And so we see so much more change in dogs than cats from their closest living ancestors. So, behaviorally, I'm just like that's wild that cats have always been cute.
Speaker 2:That is, I know that to be true, but cats have always been cats, right Like they've always like. If you go back to the what is it? The fertile crescent where they came from, they haven't changed that much because they still have the DNA from that area of the world. Wow, okay, I love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's not that they haven't changed during domestication, but the kinds of changes are just very different than what we've kind of imposed upon dogs. So I think that to compare them and expect them to be the same will just lead to disappointment. So it's always better to just appreciate each species for who they are and what beautiful qualities they have.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, like Bunsen and Beaker are dogs, a burning smelting dog and a golden retriever they were bred for like specific things, like haul the heavy thing in the mountains and protect the family from bears and fetch the dead duck from the water. So pretty, pretty different jobs. Very important skills. Pretty different jobs, pretty different jobs.
Speaker 3:I hope you're putting those dogs to work.
Speaker 2:Well, bunsen doesn't pull stuff except small children in sleds, which is cute, and Beaker does dog diving, so it's pretty cute yeah.
Speaker 3:Nice Very nice.
Speaker 2:So my question I was going to ask because I'm just like so stunned that like if you take Ginger, our cat, she would kind of look exactly like Ginger thousands of years ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And so wild. If you look at the African wild cat, which is their closest living relative, that is your classic kind of brown tabby, and so we do see much more variability in coat color in domesticated cats. So that is one thing that we have selected cats for is a much bigger variety of coat colors. Okay, and of course they are. They are more tameable compared to African wild cat kittens. So we know that there's been some changes in our cats, but a lot of their behaviors are very similar. The physical appearance is very similar the teeth, the structure. Yeah, he could, he could go back in time and he'd be okay, but he's also probably very happy on the couch.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, can I ask you about the couch? Sure, so I don't know if you follow Bunsen and Beaker on any of the social medias. I'm on the Twitter. Okay, have you seen Couch Wars?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Okay, so people who listen to the podcast are dying laughing right now. For the last three months it started in we're recording this at the very end of August, it started in June sometime Our cat Ginger and Beaker our goal retriever they have been having a like cold war fight for one of the corners of our couch. So they they like they don't like physically fight, but one of them gets there and then they like like smugly sit there to low like Lord over the other one that they got the corner of the couch and I don't know, even know how to what I'm trying to go, where I'm going with this, but like does do cats hat? Like we kind of have this impression that cats can be judgmental or vindictive or you know, like have you heard that before about cats? Like is Ginger, is Ginger like doing that to to stick it to Beaker? Like it's very weird, they fight over this couch corner.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the way I would approach it is again kind of thinking about natural behavior with cats, and one thing is that they like vertical space, so certainly any space that's higher up off the ground is desirable to cats. And two is that they like to have lots of choices and lots of resources. So when you have maybe a highly desired resource that is also limited, then you're going to see competition over it. So I would first think about, like maybe that couch corner would be a great place to add some cat shelving or a cat tree, and see if you can give ginger something even better than he can manage or supervise from an even higher vantage point. And then wait, is it Bunsen or Beaker who likes?
Speaker 2:that it's Beaker. They're both girls, so both ginger and beaker are both girls. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So then beaker can have the couch and ginger can have her elevated space. So that would be my approach to that situation would be increase abundance, right? It's like ginger can't be on the couch and the cat tree at the same time, so you just got to give her something that she'll think is a little better as far as the like vindictive thing. You know people really, man. They spend a lot of time creating wild stories about these plots. Their cats are sitting around stewing thinking about revenge.
Speaker 2:I believe the meal wrote a book. My cat is trying to kill me, so yeah.
Speaker 3:So as far as you know what we know about like animal emotions and cognition, we don't really think there's strong evidence for those what we call secondary emotions or more developed emotions. We know that our companion animals and probably all mammals, if not all animals, feel basic emotions like fear and joy and lust and frustration and those kinds of things, but the whole like jealousy or plotting revenge is probably a little bit above their pay grade. So rather than making up large, elaborate stories, I do prefer to kind of think about what's the motivation for this behavior and what are the possible explanations and what are the possible solutions. So motivations would include wanting to be up high. They both desire this resource.
Speaker 3:Maybe there is some competition, like if it's where humans like to sit and pet them, so maybe it's just a great spot to sit if you want to hang out with humans. Maybe it smells really good because they've both been sitting there, so it's got some nice animal smells. But again, thinking about cats, love to be up high, love to be warm. Let's just give them something better in the same location so they can share. You have a shelf above that couch Now they're basically sharing the same square footage but they're not side by side and they don't have to compete. Everybody's happy Win-win. That's what I go for.
Speaker 2:I love it, doc. That's so great so we can think about that. That does take away some of our most popular content, though. Couch Wars is a big thing Right now.
Speaker 3:it's a thing right, so you can't take it away. You've got to talk about it.
Speaker 2:I don't know if they're stressed out that this is happening, but yeah, that's something we can work towards.
Speaker 3:Maybe we can create a new competition between them. I've got ideas.
Speaker 2:You do Okay. So we have some standard questions on the podcast we asked our guests to share, and one is a pet story. Since your life revolves around cats, do you have a pet story to share with us? It doesn't even have to be about a cat.
Speaker 3:Wow. Well, honestly, my only pets as an adult have been cats. I've never had a dog, that's okay, I've never lived with a dog.
Speaker 3:So I know we didn't. You know I'm very much a cat person. I guess let's see. You know, I don't have like a ton of like great stories and I always think about my cat, kiddums, who when he passed away he kind of changed my life because of losing him and he also he had to be euthanized on my birthday, so he like he was kind of a drama queen it was. It was like exactly how he would go out, which was like I'm going to ruin your birthday and you're never going to forget me.
Speaker 3:So it was perfect. But you know, because of him I started volunteering in the shelter, and because of volunteering in the shelter I realized I wanted to work in animal behavior. And then my entire life changed. I literally remember the day I came home from volunteering at the shelter, sat down at the dinner table and told my boyfriend I think I want to be a cat behaviorist. And you know which is like what is that? This was in 2000. Like what is a cat behavior? You know that's not even like a known entity in the world.
Speaker 2:He's made up a. Thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and he was like cool. I think you should go for it.
Speaker 3:And so that was like you know the universe kind of telling me that you know I'd loved cats my whole life but now you could actually like turn this into a career and lifestyle, I guess. So so that was, I think, kiddos. I got him one as a teenager. He moved to California with me with my other cat who was named Jesus. He was also a great cat and then, yeah, my life was changed. So so, yeah, now I have three. I mean, I've had a few cats in between. Now I have three sister cats and so that's been an interesting experiment, just kind of learning about personality and genetics and relatedness and shared environments.
Speaker 2:So yeah, You've got a whole science experiment in your house.
Speaker 3:I like to think of it that way. Yes.
Speaker 2:Do you have just a quick question Do all of your cats have like their own stuff? I read that that's really important when you have multiple cats.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so for multiple cats it's not necessarily that they have their own stuff per se, but that they have the ability to time share. So, for example, I have three cats their names are Ruby, coriander and Professor Scribbles and we have three cats, so we have four litter boxes. So it's not that this litter box belongs to Professor Scribbles and that litter box belongs to Ruby. Now they all use all of them. But it's really about kind of as I alluded to with the couch, it's like you want to have choices and abundance. So having more than one per cat is good, because if they don't want to share, then they always have a choice to go use something else. So it's not like I said that you know, this bed has Ruby's name on it and nobody else can use it. It's just that there's always another bed that they can go to, so they don't have to sit on it together or get in a fight.
Speaker 2:Well, that's cool. I'm glad you that was your answer, because otherwise I'd be given people bad advice on our newsletter.
Speaker 3:No, you're giving good advice.
Speaker 2:I got it from a vet site. So, anyways, that's a cute pet story. Thank you for sharing the other question we asked our guests to share, or the other thing we asked our guests to share is a super fact. It's something that you know that when you tell people kind of blows their mind a bit. Do you have a super fact you could share with us?
Speaker 3:I do. I picked the super fact because I think it's really important and it may blow people's minds, but I'm really hoping that people will open their minds and see their cats differently, and so my super fact is that you can train cats.
Speaker 3:Yes, so do to do what like, everything to do tricks, to do behaviors you would like, like go into their carrier to Scratch the scratching post instead of the couch, to do a high five, to sit on a mat, to do cute things, to do practical things, to let you trim their nails, etc. More just bringing the concept out to the world that, yes, cats are trainable, because I think a lot of people don't think cats are trainable. They, you know. Certainly there's some things that you don't need to train cats to do. For example, cats do not need training to use a litter box. I call it field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. If you provide your cats with a nice big, open, clean litter box with soft, sandy litter inside, they instinctively use it. We don't need to train them to do that, and I think that kind of mindset made people think, like well, if I don't need to train them to use a litter box, they're probably just not trainable, right? So what that means, though, is that when people have problems with their cats, like my cat is getting on the counter or my cat is scratching the furniture, or or, or or they don't think like oh, I could actually do something about this. The same thing with, like you know a lot of people have difficulties getting their cat to the veterinarian, getting their cat in a carrier, giving their cat medication.
Speaker 3:These are all things that we can train our cats to do using positive reinforcement training. It's just like we do with dogs. If you've ever watched people in a park training their dog with treats and a clicker, so that's a little sound maker. What they're using is a method called positive reinforcement, where we basically respond to behaviors we like by letting the animal know we like them and giving them a treat, and this is much more effective than using punishment based techniques like shot collars or squirt bottles, etc. It's not so much that those methods don't give you results, but they come with a lot of side effects and they're just not as humane and effective as using rewards based training or positive reinforcement training.
Speaker 3:So I encourage people to look into it. There's some really great resources out there. One of them is called cat school and there's lots of people training their cats. I've seen all kinds of cool stuff from cats, like letting you examine their teeth or letting you trim their nails. Like I said, going into their carrier on their own and closing the door behind them. There's all kinds of cool stuff out there, and so I'm just hoping that people hearing this will look at their cat and be like, hmm, I could train him to do some tricks. I could train him to do some practical behaviors.
Speaker 2:I agree, and I had no preconceived notions when we got the cat. I just assumed it could be like a dog. So I used positive reinforcement and that's why we get such good pictures and videos with her, because I can get her to come and sit and stay and look at the camera and we put her in her backpack. She just goes in like she's got this little cat backpack that she goes in, and people are like how come your cat isn't scratching her face off? And I was like I don't know, I give her a treat Like she likes it, like I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yes, and that, subconsciously or not, you have been, like you said, treating her like a dog, and it's not. Like you know I already talked about this cats are not dogs, but all animals have the potential to learn in the same way, and so our cats are very capable of learning in the same ways that dogs can, and the training methods that we use with dogs, when we're using positive reinforcement work with cats as well, you may need to make some adjustments to your training. Cats are certainly. They have a smaller stomach, so maybe they're like tolerance for a long session of training is going to be much lower. You might be more find it more effective to just train them for a few minutes at a time, because after a few treats they're not that hungry.
Speaker 3:We already talked about food motivation, and so once they're not motivated for food, their interest in training may go down, unless there's something else they really like, but it is going to be a little bit different and they're not necessarily going to be maybe as motivated to do things just to make you happy, like I think some dogs might be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the Buzzing and Beaker will work all day for food until they throw up. Exactly, yeah, and yeah, ginger's got, like I don't know, a hot two minutes Like sure, and but that's enough to do a little bit of things.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:You can take a lot of photos and videos in two minutes, edit it together on social media. I'll tell you that everybody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess that's a good way to sell the training is that you will get good social media content without torturing your cat, like so many videos do these days.
Speaker 2:That's a super fact, everybody from the super doc. The last section we get to know our guest a little bit more. It's where you know we're going to figure out if you got something you're passionate about outside your research and you're part of a nonprofit, what's going on with that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're on a group board for a nonprofit called Mission Meow and we are an organization that basically crowd funds donations from businesses and individuals. So we have a lot of business partners who commit to giving us quarterly donations, and then we have individuals also donating, and so what we found is that, you know, if this person gives us $150 a quarter and that person gives us $25 a quarter, and that business gives us $500 a quarter and this person gives us a one-time donation of $10, well, we can take all of that money. And then we can give grants to feline-centric nonprofits that are big. We can give them $10,000, $6,000 to complete a really important project. So we've given money to. So our first grant was to Cats Berry Park. We gave them $10,000 to complete their adoption center construction, and so we're helping organizations replace their HVAC system. We're helping them build foster kitten packets that they can give to all of their foster parents, so foster parents have everything they need to take care of kittens. So we're really trying to use, you know, modern day methods as far as crowdfunding and have a bigger impact and help everybody else have a bigger impact. So you can give a small amount of money knowing that it will be part of a bigger project where we actually have a very tangible project that we're funding, that has a clear outcome, that is goal-oriented towards helping cats have better lives, whether it's a TNR program or a rescue group or anything else. So we're doing quarterly grants right now. Eventually we hope to grow to be able to do more frequent grants, maybe monthly. That would be the dream, but right now we are trying to do what we can manage and so we're sticking with quarterly grants. And it's great.
Speaker 3:We're at missionmeoworg. If you're interested, maybe you have a small business and you'd like to support us and be one of our business partners. We promote our business partners as well, so we interview them for our blog. We share information about them on social media. It's really about building a community of cat lovers, but also supporting these small businesses that are doing cool things that we also think are great. So it's a really cool organization. Yeah, so I'm proud to be a part of it. I'm the treasurer, which I had to learn how to use QuickBooks, so that should tell you right there Like I was willing to use QuickBooks for this organization. That's how strongly I feel about it. So, yeah, that's cool, and so I spent some time involved with missionmeow.
Speaker 3:Otherwise, I have a lot of hobbies I love food, I love cooking, I love baking, I love music, I love reading, I love hiking. So I do try to stay beyond well, and I think it also helps that I'm not actively in academia. So I think when you're a scientist, I mean I am working as a research assistant for a lab in Indiana remotely, so I do a lot of stats and writing and that sort of thing, but I'm not a professor, right? I think it's a lot harder for some people to maybe think about life outside the lab if they're the PI of a lab and they're responsible for, like you know, five postdocs and 10 grad students and a bunch of undergrads and trying to keep things running. So I've always been pretty good at trying to have a good life, work balance and have fun.
Speaker 2:I'm on your website, michael, and there is a photo of you, like rocking out with some guitar. Here you play the guitar, which, like what, I don't know anything about guitars Are you? Is that a bass guitar or a normal guitar?
Speaker 3:That is a bass guitar in that picture. Okay, I thought it was a bass guitar.
Speaker 2:I thought it was a bass guitar, but I don't know that much so I didn't want to?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so well, as I alluded to earlier, you know I dropped out of college the first time around to move to California and start a band, and I did that and played in bands for many years, toured around the US and did all kinds of fun stuff, slept in a lot of people's floors and played in people's backyards and, you know, in clubs at two in the morning to two people. So there was a lot of really like rock and roll lifestyle going on.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I did stop playing in bands when I went back to school because I just couldn't really manage the like full time research, education and staying up until two in the morning. That was not like very compatible. So I still dabble in music. I have my guitars, I like to play, I love to listen to music. So when I was in grad school I was a DJ at the UC Berkeley radio station Calyx, and that was super fun. Oh cool. Yeah, my DJ name was F-bomb.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, you are epic, you are just wild.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it was really, really fun and it exposed me to a lot of current music.
Speaker 3:I think you know, when you love music, you often kind of get stuck in the music that you liked when you were a teenager and then you're like oh there's no good music anymore, and listening to like freeform college radio is a great way to just shake you of that notion, because you'll hear so much cool, independently created modern music In addition to all the great music you loved when you were younger. But there's just a. You know I'm really passionate about music and I like to hear new stuff. That's exciting. I like to see live bands every now and then, and yeah, so music is probably. You know it's high on the list. Nothing's as high as cats on the list, but it's up there.
Speaker 2:Cats squirrels, cat squirrels music, something like that, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2:The hierarchy of Dr Delgado's needs Cool, exactly. Yeah, what's your opinion of Planet of the Base? Have you heard that?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Oh, you haven't. Okay, I'll have you. Yeah, planet of the Base. It blew up on TikTok. It's hilarious.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's probably why I haven't heard of it. I've avoided TikTok just because I can't like have another social media time. It's a whole thing. Yeah, yeah, it's on YouTube.
Speaker 1:I'll check it out, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, sorry, I can cut this. It's a stupid song. Okay, it's a 90s Eurovision and it was a spoof. It was a spoof of that with like broken English and it blew up and it's just very, very funny.
Speaker 3:I have to say that I watched Eurovision for the first time and it was not what I expected. I thought it was going to be really great.
Speaker 2:Oh well, then you're in. This is on par with that, then.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, we're at the end of the interview, doc. Thank you so much for being a guest. If you send us some links, like of feline minds, we can make sure that's linked, as well as your nonprofit. We can make sure that's in our show notes. And can people follow you on social media? Where are you at, if that's a possibility?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm most active on Instagram, at michaeldelgado, and Twitter, which is at michael underscore Maria, which is my middle name.
Speaker 2:Okay, we'll make sure there's some links in the show notes for everybody.
Speaker 3:Excellent. Thanks so much for having me, this was really fun.
Speaker 2:We are proud to have bark and beyond supplycom now as an official sponsor of the signs podcast. Bark and beyond supplycom is a small family owned company that started off making joint supplements for dogs, but now they sell toys and treats and a whole bunch of other goodies. So check out the big box stores and check out the amazing deals and awesome stuff at bark and beyond supplycom. You'll see a link in our show notes and use the coupon code Bunsen B U N S E N for 10% off at barkandbeyondsupplycom. Click the link. Skip the big box stores. How about the little?
Speaker 4:guy.
Speaker 4:Okay, it's time for story time with me, adam. So what story time is? Story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. I will start. My story is about the farm.
Speaker 4:Every couple of years we get lucky on the farm and we find we might find a cat walking around. Larry was one of those cats and he's very nice and he's in the house. He was very chill. There were other cats like. There was an orange cat which we named Orange Kitty very creative, and who else. There were other cats who were outside cats. There was an outside cat that I saw last year who was gray and was cute. But a couple days ago I saw a cat and it was cute. It was black and it had a little white tea on its face like around its eyes. But yeah, a little cute kitty running around in the front field. It was very cute and it was tiny. So I put out food for it and we're eventually going to try to make it nice and like us by putting food out for it. Yeah, that's my story is seeing a little kitty. Dad, do you have a story?
Speaker 2:Well, my story is a continuation of the beaver saga. If you've been listening, beavers have moved into our creek area and have been up to all manner of nonsense since we literally just stumbled upon a massive beaver dam in the summer. And because it's so cool and they've worked so hard, we got a trail camera and we have been trying to capture the beavers on the camera. I put it up. We get nothing. I put it up and I get video of myself videoing myself putting the camera up. No beavers, and every time we maybe don't go for a walk down by the beavers, they do more beaver stuff. Like five days ago, a massive tree they almost knocked down like not around it perfectly, it's like ready to fall down and I was like great, they're going to come back and finish the job. I don't know, maybe they're union workers and they hit the maximum amount of hours they should be working.
Speaker 2:And I set up the camera right by this tree. Nothing, they didn't come back to the tree. So today I didn't. I didn't even go there. I'm like you know what, we're going to ignore that whole area and maybe the beavers will be back. Took the dogs for a walk and on the way back on the path we take to get to the first big pond area the beavers made they had knocked a tree down over the path. They had just like knocked it down and left it there. So I don't know, maybe they're going to come back for the tree, maybe they're sending us a warning, I don't know. But while this story is not Bunsen beaker or ginger related, it is animal related and it is a lot of drama with the beavers on the property. And that's my story for this week.
Speaker 4:Maybe you got a like I don't know how long does the trail cams battery last Days days and days.
Speaker 2:How long have you kept it up for? It's now two days in that spot, so maybe we just got to keep it up there for like a week.
Speaker 4:Yeah, probably Okay. Mom, do you have a story?
Speaker 1:I sure do. My story just has to do with hanging out with Bunsen and beaker, and Bunsen has been a big baby and he's been spending time with me on the couch and just cuddling in and letting me pet him, which is something that he very much enjoys. But Jason got a video of us last night. I was laying on the couch and Bunsen was getting petted and he was loving it, and Jason said oh, how come that that never happens with me? And I said, jason, the two of you wouldn't fit on the couch together.
Speaker 2:No, that's probably true, but that doesn't mean I don't dream of it.
Speaker 1:I know the other thing that's happening this week is Ginger is a gremlin.
Speaker 1:She she wants to go out so badly and we've been taking her out to put her in the patio when we go for a walk, so she is getting a lot of safe outside time, but she positions herself at the door and runs through the legs of the dogs so she can just get outside. So this is unfortunate because she's little and she's a little slinky and can duck and dodge when we're trying to catch her like a goalie. So that's what's happening with Ginger and she's so cute, but she's also such a gremlin and that's my story.
Speaker 4:All right, that's it for Storytime this week. Thank you all so much for listening to my section of the podcast and thank you for listening to the podcast in general. I hope to see you all on the next podcast episode.
Speaker 2:Bye-bye. That's it for another podcast episode. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to us and check out the show notes. The book for Michael Delgado's book is now in pre-sale, which is so exciting, so we're timing the podcast to come out. If you're listening to this, it's the end of September and the pre-sale for the dog's book is ready to go. We'd also like to give a shout out to the top dogs. They are the top tier of our community, the Pop Pack. If you want to join, check out the link in the show notes. Take it away, chris.
Speaker 5:All right, let's get started. This is Linda Sherry, carol McDonald, catherine Jordan, courtney Proven, donna Craig, wendy, diane Mason and Luke Liz Button, kathy Zerker and Ben Rathart.
Speaker 2:For science, empathy and cuteness.