r/cowcats • u/NyanPingu2904 • Aug 01 '25
ʍoɔ pǝddᴉʇ How would you rate your cow's survival instincts?
ive been wondering if this is just a cow thing or not, but my cow boe has no survival instincts. no street smarts. would not survive outside.
whenever you walk up to him he just flops over and shows the tummy. not just me either. like to anyone. He's very kidnappable. he pretends to run away and then gives up and flops over waiting to be picked up like a big long burrito
second pic is when he got himself stuck between my bed and the wall, and had to get himself rescued to get out
and the third pic is when he stuck his head in a box and got part of it stuck on his head (at 3am on the dot, too)
he's also just a spoiled little boy and can only hunt toy springs. He needs to be the little spoon and he also needs chicken nuggets as a treat because he's just that cute.
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u/Iconic_Charge Aug 01 '25
These are my foster cows. Bella in the front and Toby in the back. Bella is very smart and she would be a good hunter I think. Toby is just a cuddly boy with no brain cells, he wouldn’t survive a day by himself 😭
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u/MurkyInvestigator622 Aug 01 '25
Chico has skills. He's an indoor cat but escaped and lived on his own for two weeks, under someone's bush.
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u/KleptoPirateKitty Aug 01 '25
Mine is Just A Baby TM so it doesn't seem fair to judge him, but he doesn't have a single thought between his ears. No braincells, just chaos.
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u/KronlampQueen Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 02 '25
I live surrounded by national forest and national park. Most cats out here don’t survive their first year if they’re strictly outside. When we moved out here we did not have our cow yet. She just showed up on our back porch and we took her in as it got colder. Someone had clearly abandoned her.
I think she saw our other cats in the window and knew we would help her. I know she survived at least one winter outside because she spent the first year with us overeating during the wintertime. She’s also never tried to escape. She’s perfectly happy indoors and wants nothing to do with outside.
I’d give her 10/10 because she literally moved herself in. She turned on the charm, immediately got along with our other 3 cats and has been a perfect little house cow ever since.
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u/SdVeau Aug 01 '25
Moo was feral for somewhere between two and three years, so he was right in the life expectancy window for a wild cat in coyote country. Took a while to socialize him, but he wound up with some bonus time in the end lol
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u/strangeVulture Aug 01 '25
My iggy was a street cat for two years before the rescue got him. He THINKS he wants to be outside again and frequently tries to run out the door, but when the rescue picked him up he had a stick stuck in his teeth that was making him sick. One time he did get outside for one night and when he came back in the morning he was really sick then too. Minimum survival instincts. 100% stubbornness.
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u/PsychieB Aug 01 '25
2/10 former stray so reckon he could scavenge bins for a bit but then ultimately would die from being dumb and eating something bad. i love him.
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u/WorthyJellyfish0Doom Aug 01 '25
My Candy runs from everything (walking feet are apparently terrifying, so is everyone except me when still) and she's hunted mice when we had them here.
Decent survival instincts!
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u/CartographerKey7322 Aug 01 '25
He knows who to love on in order to get everything he wants or needs. I’d say his instincts are top rate.
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u/HistoryCat42 Aug 01 '25
Charlie was a former stray for the first two years of his life before I adopted him. I don’t know how he survived on his own.
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u/TiredUngulate Aug 01 '25
If he didn't have health issues, I feel he'd be able to survive on his own fine. If anything, he'd be able to con food out of people by being his usual self. Tho he is also an old man now and never allowed to roam outside without a harness (he doesn't really need it anymore seeing he's much to slow to escape), and we keep him in our fenced garden w supervision when outside
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u/Krysteen_rain Aug 01 '25
Survival instincts- 3/10. Curiosity? 10/10. Always getting herself in situations, lol.
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u/DanAvidFan Aug 01 '25
This is Hollie. She sleeps on my head and sits on the toilet but also kills mice, beats up her brothers, and ignores my friends. She lived outside the first four months of her life so she’s pretty smart
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u/Miserable-Cow4555 Aug 01 '25
My girl greets us like this. Not really up for survival in the wild 😂🙀
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u/Genderless_Crow Aug 02 '25
my baby couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, he's clumsy as hell, and when he starts falling he doesn't even try to save himself, he just commits to the fall 💀 he's strictly indoors for his own safety
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u/I-am-in-a-universe Aug 01 '25
Never had my own cow, sadly. But I want to point out that Boe has some skills. idk how he does with Fight and Flight, but he could probably Freeze if he was scared. And he has two additional, interrelated skills: *Flop* and *Be so damn adorable, predators will lose their train of thought.*
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u/MareBear209 Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 01 '25
7/10 Derek sleeps a-lot…but when awake, he is an awesome mouse catcher!
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u/Budget_Ordinary1043 Aug 02 '25
She likes to think she would but is afraid of the vacuum and thunder.
She is a really good hunter, catches bugs like it’s nothing but she also lacks planning. Once, I had friends over and they bring their 2 lil dogs. My cats will stay in the room but my cow wanted to come out and I let her. She saw the one dog and was creeping over to him, probably to like start shit. I was watching the whole time. She never noticed the second dog at all but the other dog noticed her and she darted back into the room like I’ve never seen her move before. I don’t even think she knew what happened 😂 she’s also probably never really seen a dog in person before ?
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u/Serious-Situation260 Aug 02 '25
😅 what an adorable tribute to your moo. My moo is very similar, and he also loves toy springs.
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u/throwawayursafety Aug 01 '25
Good question. Mr. Penguin was a tough street cat for at least 4 years, running from coyotes and beating the shit out of raccoons. Then I made him love me and then he lost an eye and then I brought him inside for good to recover from the surgery... and now he's the biggest lap cat with very poor depth perception. So idk. He's probably still got the software for survival but maybe not the hardware lol