Pets definitely are not allowed to inhabit the place where I live, but after my friend offered me a kitten for $30 that was medicated and came with food, litter, and a litter box, my roommate and I started to think about how we could house a cat in our 8 person suite. Well, all of our hopes and dreams came crashing down when one of the suitemates told us that she was allergic to cats, but that we could get a dog. Yeah, let us hide a Golden Retriever. The next animal we looked into getting was a chinchilla. This was because we heard that they were easy maintenance and that they did not smell.

How are chinchillas as pets? Well, they are little and weigh about a pound.  They are very furry and soft with cute ears and do not make annoying noises, but they are very energetic. As for the noises that they do make, they have the ability to chirp, squeak, and bark, so they are pretty interesting creatures. They are partially nocturnal and do not enjoy being disturbed during the day. They are high strung and have short attention spans. This makes them pretty skittish and most of them do not like to be held–making them not so suitable for children. Once a chincilla is accustomed to its owner it could become very attracted to this owner and allow the owner to freely touch its soft fur.

Chinchillas like to eat desert grasses because they cannot efficiently process fatty foods, high protein foods, or too many green plants. A lot of chinchilla owners feed their pets high quality, hay-based pellets, and they keep a constant supply of loose hay in order to sufficiently meet all of the chinchilla’s dietary needs.

The best thing about chinchillas is that they do not typically smell because they do not sweat. What this does mean is that chinchillas do not fair well in hot (over 80 degrees F) or humid weather because they can get overheated and may suffer from heat stroke. They clean their fur by taking dust baths. This dust that they roll around in is special chinchilla dust made of fine pumice.

Chinchillas can be gray, beige, white, ebony, and many other colors.

Just on the off chance you missed the June 14th issue of Current Biology, there was an insightful article about cats entitled “The Cry Embedded Within the Purr”.  In summary, your cat is smarter than you think he is and he’s been playing you for a fool.  Cat owners everywhere responded with a collective ‘duh’.

For all the loyal readers (Hi, Mom) who also read my columns over at our sister site, Camp Campaign, you know how I feel about our government spending our hard earned tax dollars on research of dubious value.  But in this case, rejoice.  This study was not funded by us, but by the hard working taxpayers in the UK.  Suckers.

Anyway, the researchers in this study recorded various cat cries and played them back for study subjects.  The researchers noted each participant’s response to the cries.  They then mixed and matched portions of the electronically recorded cat meows and measured the responses to the edited meows.   Seriously.   You can read the abstract of the study here, if you’re into that sort of thing.

According to their findings, cats  deliberately will intermix an occasional cry with some soothing purring when they want you to feed them.  The subtle juxtaposition of the cry in the midst of purring gives the impression of greater urgency to the cry, pushing you, the humble pet owner, to rush to the cabinet for  a can of Friskies Select as you apologize for letting Fluffy suffer so long without food.

The bottom line of the study is that your cat is playing you, “exploiting sensory biases that humans have for providing care”.  In other words, the cat knows that you will jump to the rescue if you sense she’s in some sort of distress, and she knows how to fake the level of distress necessary to prod you into action.  The bad news is that your pet has outsmarted you, and even now that you know it she’ll just up the cute and cuddly factor to continue to play you as the fool.  The good news is that you’re not alone.