18 ms·

Not just catnip,valerian too,which is a 'top recreational drug' for cats, apparently. When we were kids,we used to give small amounts of valerian root to our ca

Not just catnip,valerian too,which is a 'top recreational drug' for cats, apparently. When we were kids,we used to give small amounts of valerian root to our cat to chew. The cat would literally tear anything apart just to get it. Then,a few minutes later,it gets high, and just keeps rolling over purring with satisfaction.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Our cats are definitely more into valerian than catnip, they dive face first into the stuff, eat it, roll around in it, etc. With catnip, no reaction.
- eps 6y ago
  Valerian is the cat drug in my home country. Mentioned it once to a friend, a Canadian, and brought him a bit the next time I went back home for a visit. His cat had no reaction. Zero. But the catnip worked as expected.
  - gwern 6y ago
    That's a little surprising, since Bol et al 2017 (https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-017-0987-6 https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-...), testing catnip/Valerian/silvervine/honeysuckle on ~100 cats, found that the response to each is correlated. (I get a tetrachoric correlation of 0.6 for catnip/valerian in my analysis: https://www.gwern.net/Catnip#optimal-catnip-alternative-selection-solving-the-mdp https://www.gwern.net/Catnip#optimal-catnip-alternative-sele... ) I think you probably just got unlucky there.
    - eps 6y ago
      Possibly, but I do wonder if there's a difference between American and European cats as far as the drug response goes.
      - gwern 6y ago
        Oh, there definitely is a difference in probability of being a catnip responder: https://www.gwern.net/images/catnip/catnip-googlesurveys-countryforest.png https://www.gwern.net/images/catnip/catnip-googlesurveys-cou... European countries appear less likely. However, that seems explainable simply by higher or lower genetic level of catnip response propensity. They are less likely to respond, but I would expect the correlation matrix to be the same. There's no particular reason to expect the fundamental biology to be different and thus that a cat in Europe is responding to catnip using a different biological pathway and so whatever overlap there is with the valerian response may be completely different and the correlation within-cat different.
jrimbault 6y ago
Olive wood too. Many cats will lick a piece of olive wood and seem to get some kind of high from it. I've seen many cats lounging under (or on top of) olive trees in the Alps around Nice (France).
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  The cat I had growing up was OBSESSED with olives. He would eat one, then roll around in the spot where it was on the floor. It was the same reaction he had to catnip, but more extreme. My current cat is much less interested in olives, but loves catnip.
- beagle3 6y ago
  Is this a specific olive specie? I have an olive tree in my yard, about 10 cats who live in the yard and the street, and none of them ever seemed to care about the tree or the olives.
  - jrimbault 6y ago
    Try cutting and sanding a (too big for their mouth) piece of wood (it's a very hard wood), in my experience that's the most "potent" form of the drug. I used to keep a piece of wood, a bit larger than a domino, for my own cat and sanded it more or less regularly. I don't know about olive species, but I know that not all cats have that weakness.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

Our cats are definitely more into valerian than catnip, they dive face first into the stuff, eat it, roll around in it, etc. With catnip, no reaction.

eps 6y ago
Valerian is the cat drug in my home country. Mentioned it once to a friend, a Canadian, and brought him a bit the next time I went back home for a visit. His cat had no reaction. Zero. But the catnip worked as expected.
- gwern 6y ago
  That's a little surprising, since Bol et al 2017 (https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-017-0987-6 https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-...), testing catnip/Valerian/silvervine/honeysuckle on ~100 cats, found that the response to each is correlated. (I get a tetrachoric correlation of 0.6 for catnip/valerian in my analysis: https://www.gwern.net/Catnip#optimal-catnip-alternative-selection-solving-the-mdp https://www.gwern.net/Catnip#optimal-catnip-alternative-sele... ) I think you probably just got unlucky there.
  - eps 6y ago
    Possibly, but I do wonder if there's a difference between American and European cats as far as the drug response goes.
    - gwern 6y ago
      Oh, there definitely is a difference in probability of being a catnip responder: https://www.gwern.net/images/catnip/catnip-googlesurveys-countryforest.png https://www.gwern.net/images/catnip/catnip-googlesurveys-cou... European countries appear less likely. However, that seems explainable simply by higher or lower genetic level of catnip response propensity. They are less likely to respond, but I would expect the correlation matrix to be the same. There's no particular reason to expect the fundamental biology to be different and thus that a cat in Europe is responding to catnip using a different biological pathway and so whatever overlap there is with the valerian response may be completely different and the correlation within-cat different.

jrimbault 6y ago

Olive wood too. Many cats will lick a piece of olive wood and seem to get some kind of high from it. I've seen many cats lounging under (or on top of) olive trees in the Alps around Nice (France).

RandallBrown 6y ago
The cat I had growing up was OBSESSED with olives. He would eat one, then roll around in the spot where it was on the floor. It was the same reaction he had to catnip, but more extreme. My current cat is much less interested in olives, but loves catnip.
beagle3 6y ago
Is this a specific olive specie? I have an olive tree in my yard, about 10 cats who live in the yard and the street, and none of them ever seemed to care about the tree or the olives.
- jrimbault 6y ago
  Try cutting and sanding a (too big for their mouth) piece of wood (it's a very hard wood), in my experience that's the most "potent" form of the drug. I used to keep a piece of wood, a bit larger than a domino, for my own cat and sanded it more or less regularly. I don't know about olive species, but I know that not all cats have that weakness.