Hello, I'm Simon. Welcome to Simon's Cat
logic. We'll be finding out from a cat
expert why cats behave the way they do. Today we're going to talk about catnip.
Catnip is a herb called a Nepeta which is cat mint. And, I brought
two of these plants for the garden and
we're just watching my cats go
completely loopy over these plants. They
ate the leaves and they rolled around on
top of them and they strip them of all
their leaves. And, these poor plants were
decimated. So, what I had to do was buy
another plant and then sort of rotate
them so give them one plant that they
could chew it leave a few leaves on it
and then keep them in pots and give them
another one while this one recovered and
have like a rotation system with these
these poor plants. Because the cats would
be absolutely crazy with them. And, then I
thought I've got to put this into a film
that this sort of obsession with cat
mint.
Catnip is a perennial herb that comes from the plant cat mint. And, the scientific name for this is Napeta
Cataria. It's the chemical nepetalactone
that causes the chemical response in the
brain in susceptible to cats. The behaviours that we see can vary so they may sort of
nibble or lick the Catnip.
They may show rubbing behaviour like
Buddy's doing right now. And, they may
also roll around on the floor and
show aspects of object play. Like nibble at it for example.
The effects of catnip are quite short-lived and don't seem to harm the cat at all.
Catnip can be used to rub on scratch posts to make them more appealing to cats. So, they're more likely to scratch them.
As you can take the leaves
like this. Break them apart and rub them on the post.
Some cats respond to catnip and other
cats don't. It's thought between 50 to 75%
of cats do respond to catnip cat.
Catnip can vary in both strength and quality which
may also account as to why some cats
respond and others don't
Well, of all my four cats it was Maisy, the
big grey tabby, who went absolutely
googoo over this cat mint I had in the
garden. She was the one that used to
dribble and sit there for hours in her
own little world chewing the leaves and
literally rolling around and around and
in all the little shreds of leaf that
she'd chew up. She was absolutely crazy
for this stuff. And, she was one that
really influenced that film that gave me
the idea behind that.
you
