I spent a chunk of my day off with Señor Malcolm Negocio aka the Artist Formerly Known as Rowan aka The Angel of Osgoode aka Mac.

I was always led me to believe that cats didn’t react to catnip until they were ‘at least’ six months old. Loonies on Yahoo Answers, random cat ‘experts’ on web forums, and internet veterinarians seem to say the same.

Mac is probably five months, based on his teething/recent acquisition of molars. He is cuckoo for catnip. He has been since he came into Richard’s life a few weeks ago and first encountered The Banana.

SCIENCE DEFEATED.

Except this one article says three months. But you have to dig to find it. And is it more reputable than others? I’m not a scientician, but she has a show on Animal Planet UK, and you can always trust tv experts, right?

(Damn, it can be a frustrating chore to find actual facts on the internet sometimes.)

Also, Mac is a goddamn giant. Some children walk at 9 months. Some are nearly two. Mac is a stoner at the human equivalent of eight years old. Or maybe 12.

(Oops.)

Anyway, catnip is great. Even big cats dig it (though lions and tigers are less likely to, apparently).

See? Fun.

But not all cats are into it. I’ve known a couple of cats that had no interest (though the two I’ve had that I remember were apeshit for it), and it turns out a third of all cats don’t react to it (or half, say the random cat forums) at all! That’s so many! I had no idea!

But the most interesting thing is that very, very few cats in Australia react to catnip. Why? It’s damned difficult to import animals into the country, so the cat gene pool is quite small. Whether a cat reacts to nipping is genetic. Australian kitties lack those bits of double helix.

Poor little teetotaling bastards.

(If this reads like a stoned cat wrote it, it’s because I accidentally had a 90 minute nap and feel like I’ve been through a sieve.)