Why are cats ACTUALLY afraid of cucumbers?

A little while ago you could find hour long compilations of cats being frightened by cucumbers and since then people have been asking “why are cats afraid of cucumbers?” and I am here to answer this question, and as a bonus treat, I will tell you 3 facts you probably didn’t know about cats.

Okay, the good stuff …

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Alright let’s get into this and talk about cats and their weird cucumber phobia. To start off, cucumbers aren’t particularly scary, they don’t stink, they don’t taste weird and they also don’t carry around weapons that could harm a cat who, by the way, walks around with retractable knives on their paws. So why would a cat, who has 9 lives and probably has a few to spare, be afraid of a lowly cucumber. The most dangerous thing a cucumber does is give you gas and cats are carnivores so they don’t have to worry about the flatulence.

Here’s the thing, it’s not what a cucumber DOES or COULD DO that frightens a cat, but rather what the cucumber resembles. Which is, a snake and long ago cat families and snake families had a falling out and there has been bad blood between them ever since. When we say long ago, we are talking, ancient Egyptian times. Don’t believe me? Well here’s some knowledge for you, in ancient Egypt cats were worshipped as gods and snakes were seen as evil beings, as is depicted by the snake-like monster that the Sun god, Ra has to defeat every night. Ra doesn’t fight the snake as a burning ball of sulphuric acid (which I think would be decidedly more effective in reptile killings) no, he fights the snake in the form of a cat.

And it is as if all cats thereafter got the memo and carried on kicking snake ass, and still do to this day. The thing is cats don’t punch too far above their weight class, they go for the smaller snakes. The thinner wriggly guys, the more wriggly, the more fun the cat will have as it slowly plays it to death. Come to think about it, cats are a bit demented.

Here is the kicker though, cucumbers do not look thin or wriggly, they look more like the constrictor type snakes, the snakes that look like they bench 600 with their tail and never miss leg day. I am talking about snakes like boas, pythons and anacondas, those guys that give you the hug of death and swallow you whole. Cats wouldn’t stand a chance against one of those guys, and if a constrictor was as close to a cat as the cucumbers are in these videos, the cat would be in a death hug before it could jump away.

Quick sidebar

Fun fact, this is why the cats tend to jump away, because of how fast snakes can strike. Most, if not all, snakes have a strike rate that is about as fast as the blink of an eye. Scientists have researched this and I am just sharing the facts.

The funny thing is that cats share a lot of similarities with snakes, such as: both animals tend to eat the same prey, mainly rodents and birds; they both have vertical pupils to help them see better at night and in dim lighting; this coincidently is also when both animals tend to be most active as they are both nocturnal. Both animals hiss, yes you heard that right. Snakes as well as cats hiss as a defence mechanism. The hissing makes them sound a lot more dangerous than what they are. Lastly, both have something called a nictitating membrane… more on this at the end of the video

And we continue on

Another reason cats are “afraid” of cucumbers is purely because of the proximity of the cucumber to the cat. When next you are about to start a “cat’s jumping at cucumbers” video, look at all the details of the video, it usually happens while the cat is eating, or stalking something else. Cats are very observant animals and eating is a vulnerable act, so to have something placed behind them while they eat, without them knowing, would obviously scare them. If that something resembled a danger noodle? Even worse. All that is actually happening is that the cat is being startled, just like if someone had to suddenly appear behind you while you were eating, better yet if someone snuck up behind you with a toy weapon that looked like it could harm you.

So now that we know that cat’s aren’t actually AFRAID of cucumbers and that it is more a startle response combined with the cucumber looking like a lifelong enemy, that gets that reaction from the cat, let's talk about how safe this is for your cat.

But what about you?

Have you had a fright recently? Someone snuck up behind you and made a loud noise or you watched some jump scare movie? You remember the heart racing and the cold sweat and the blood draining from your face? Now Imagine your cat having that same reaction, scaring a cat with vegetables increases stress and anxiety. Especially since it is their human, who they trust and are supposed to feel safe with that is scaring them. To them, that scare was a life-threatening experience, like if you narrowly avoided a massive car crash.

If you feel bad for trying to scare your cat with a cucumber, good, you can be glad cats can’t carry Freddy Kruger around and place it outside your shower to scare the crap out of you.

Now if you held on this long, here is your treat …

The Cat Facts

1. The first one is too PURRfect not to mention, a cat’s purr can reduce levels of anxiety and depression in humans and can even heal you. Now before you yell bull at your screen, think about how chilled and relaxed you felt the last time you heard a cat purr. Yeah, I thought so. You felt good, didn’t you? That’s because a cat’s purr vibrates at 25 to 150 vibrations per second, in humans 25hz frequency is where healing happens.

Cats also purr to calm themselves down, it is said that it is their self-calming and soothing mechanism. It’s like when someone laughs when they are nervous. So, if they can calm themselves with a purr, why can’t we benefit?

2. Cat’s don’t bring you their kills so that you can see how awesome they are at hunting. It is a lot less selfish and a lot more arrogant than that. Cat’s bring you dead rodents, birds, bugs etc because they see you as unfit to fend for yourself and think they better help in some way since they are such effective hunters. Talk about cocky! Okay to be fair it is probably more caring than that, cats in the wild bring their kill to their kittens or cubs in order to teach them, so they are trying to teach us to hunt it seems. Do they realise that most humans don’t even kill their own food anymore?

3. Cats have 3 eyelids , they have the usual ones, the ones we also have except theirs have fur and ours doesn’t, these are the lids that close horizontally. Cats also have an additional lid that closes over the eye vertically, it’s the white thing you see when it looks like a cat is sleeping and it’s main eyelids are half open. This 3rd lid a cat has is called a nictitating membrane and is not usually seen. It sits in the inner corner of a cat’s eyes. When a cat is fully alert and awake you can’t usually spot the 3rd lid.

The Bonuses

Since you stayed this long, here is a bonus fact about cats.

A cat’s nose is as unique to each cat as our fingerprints are to us as humans.

Oh, and if you're not super into cat buts more of a dog kind of person and really want to train yours super well, then click here.