Social media sites like reddit are prone to accumulating numerous smaller communities for the sole purpose of posting videos and pictures of cats and other fuzzy little animals. Participants in these spaces have developed an abundant lexicon of colourful words for describing the appearance, behaviour, and context of these pictures. This is a non-exhaustive glossary of these terms.
Poses
- Loaf - When a cat sits in a compact posture with all four limbs tucked neatly beneath its body
- Monorail cat - When a cat loafs on a narrow ledge, such as a banister
- Shrimp - When a cat is lying on its side with its rear legs extended straight in front of it, in a bent posture
- Drumsticks - When a cat is lying on its back with its rear legs extended straight out from its body, as though displaying them
- Sploot - When a cat, Corgi dog, or rabbit is laying on its stomach with its rear legs extended out behind it, sprawled prone as though exhausted
- Toolps - The opposite of a sploot, when a cat or other pet is laying on its back, supine, with all its limbs extended but limp
- Purrito - A cat wrapped in a blanket like a burrito
Expressions
- Scrunge - The expression an instant before a cat sneezes, in which the cat's teeth are visible and its eyes are squinting in a grimace
- Teefies - When some of a cat's teeth are slightly visible in a photo, even though its mouth is closed, due to the viewing angle
- Blep - When a cat's tongue is sticking out of its closed mouth, seemingly obliviously, as though the cat forgot to retract its tongue after grooming itself
- Airplane Ears - When a cat's ears are folded back in annoyance or displeasure, somewhat resembling airplane wings
- Silly Mode, Attack Eyes - When a cat's eyes go from unfocused to widely dilated in response to seeing something worth pouncing on
- Stremtch - When cat's face is being pet, and the cat forcibly shoves its head forward through the human's hand, causing the cat's facial features to appear stretched
Features
- Toe beans, jellybean toes - A cat's paw pads, which tend to resemble pink jelly beans
- Toe feathers - The elongated fur between a cat's toes
- Bottlebrush, plume - An extremely fluffy tail on a longhaired cat
- Chonker - A cat which is overweight in a way that viewers consider endearing
- Absolute Unit - Anything at all which is extraordinarily large for the category of thing that it is, but especially domesticated animals, such as draft horses or Maine Coon cats
- Floob - The primordial pouch of fat on a cat's abdomen
- Standard Issue Cat - A grey or brown tabby cat, considered to be especially ordinary-looking
- House Panther - A short-haired black cat
Behaviours
- Greebles - When a cat spontaneously pounces on no apparent thing at all, or scampers as though startled by nothing, the "invisible creatures" causing this reaction are known as greebles.
- Tippy-taps - When a dog prances or hops lightly in place, out of excitement
- Zoomies - When a house pet scampers swiftly around a room several times in succession, either startled or excited
- Purrkour, Barkour - When a cat or dog, respectively, performs elaborate acrobatic stunts off terrain or furniture, similar to parkour
- Catculations - When a cat bobbles its head up and down and to either side, in an effort to judge the distance and safety of a leap
- Buttwiggle - When a cat prepares to pounce, and its rear end wiggles side to side in anticipation and to get better traction before the leap
- Butt Elevator - When a cat's hindquarters are being pet by a human, and the cat lifts its rear but leaves its front half in a resting position, in reaction
- Activation Noise - When a cat's attention has been called by a human touching them while they are resting, resulting in a distinctive trilling "mrrrp?"
- Cat Tap - When a cat gently taps something or someone in an inquisitive manner
- Cat Slap - When a cat smacks the tar out of something or someone, startled or annoyed, but without deploying claws, so no injury is intended in the act
Iron Noder 2022, 18/30