Richard East has been traveling around Australia in his VW van for more than two years now, accompanied by his cat Willow. He says traveling (and living in a van) with a cat is easier than traveling with a dog because she's so laid back. Willow doesn't wander far off, but just in case, she is wearing a tracking collar. He posted this picture of him and Willow having tea and a chat in a forest at reddit. He also answers questions about his experience traveling with Willow. You can keep up with their adventures at East's website or Facebook or Instagram.

House cats can overcome the primal urge to hunt prey animals like rodents, birds and rabbits and peacefully co-exist in the same household if you socialize them with other species when they're young.

But it's rare to see the exact moment when a kitty and a bunny become best friends, so cherish this precious moment caught on video as a tiny kitten and a little bunny play a rollicking game of tag.

(YouTube Link)

-Via Laughing Squid

Nobody can make you feel like an unwanted and unlovable schlub on Tinder quite like a dog, because while people are busy swiping left on your profile pic everyone will swipe right on a pic of a cute dog.

Phil the Alaskan Malamute's owner created a Tinder profile for him to test this theory, and not only did Phil's profile pic get him lots of love it sparked some crazy conversations with humans looking for pets in all the wrong places.

Some people saw Phil's profile and tried to woo him away from his owner with promises of belly rubs, head scratches and biscuits, but it turns out Phil was only in it for the exposure.

See more from Guy Makes His Malamute A Tinder Profile And The Conversations Are Hilarious here

In this video from Dublin, a cat named Jas will not put up with an empty bottle next to him when it's so much fun to knock it off. His humans are getting a kick out of it, too.

 
(YouTube link)

Oh yeah, this video is cute and all, but making it a game is showing the cat how much you love him knocking things off the counter. He might end up doing it the rest of his life just to please you. However, he is a cat, so "pleasing you" won't be his main agenda. -via Tastefully Offensive

Being chased by a roaming dog looking for trouble can be humiliating, terrifying and frustrating since those curs don't know when to mind their manners, and people often make matters worse by running away.

Brendan Leonard from the Adventure Journal says running is a bad idea because dogs instinctively chase anyone who runs from them, so it's better to stop, turn around then flip the f$%k out on the dog.

According to Brendan staying calm and barking back at a dog trying to chase you down may confuse the dog and diffuse the situation:

What the dog has not seen is a human being going FREAKING CRAZY on it. Which is what you're going to do. For one second. When the dog realizes you have completely lost your shit, it will be shocked. You are unstable, possibly dangerous. And, ideally, the dog will stop chasing you.

I've seen the power of standing still diffuse a situation with an aggressive dog that was chasing my friend and I, but I certainly wasn't thinking about barking at the vicious Rottweiler as it sniffed my butt and tried to figure out why I didn't run away. Longest three minutes of my life...

-Via Lifehacker

Winter is a great time to see marine animals and if you're willing to go somewhere a bit cool this season, there are a lot of places you might want to visit. In fact, with these kind of animals, it might be a good idea to plan a vacation around specific species. For example, if you want to see narwhals, Nanavut, Canada is a great place to go. On the other hand, if you want to see reindeer, you should head to Tromso, Norway. And not all of the places are chilly -the best place to visit humpback whales is in Hawaii. 

Read about other great places to travel and see animals over on Travel and Leisure.

Cats are strange and inscrutable creatures, and trying to figure out their behavior or what they're thinking is like trying to solve the problem of world peace- it may be possible but nobody has done it yet.

But it appears the vet who came up with these clever explanations for cat behavior is on to something, and their explanations seem way closer to the truth than the opinions of so-called cat "Experts".

Imgur user ItsJayOrDan was visiting his local vet one day when he noticed some comics by Adam Ellis pinned to the cork board, and under each pic was an explanation of common cat behaviors which prove this vet really knows their stuff.

Now that this brilliant vet has begun revealing the secrets of felinekind we may someday truly understand the furry little savages living in our homes, but until then we need to keep our kittehs happy and avoid their traps at all cost.

See more from This Vet Put Explanations Of 15 Common Cat Behaviors On His Cork Board here

While it has been proven that birds like parrots and cockatoos understand the difference between human words and mere noises they still don't understand why humans feel the need to mess with their heads.

And yet Onni the cockatoo seems to genuinely enjoy having his human Chet mess with his mind by making all kinds of strange noises with his mouth, noises that totally blow little Onni's mind.

(YouTube Link)

The duo have a strange yet extremely endearing relationship, which mom Rebecca Stout captures on video, and I'm pretty sure Onni thinks Chet is a bird too- a large, hideously deformed bird with no feathers whose beak fell off, but a bird nevertheless.

(YouTube Link)

-Via Laughing Squid

"I don't mean to bother you but could I get a signature please?"

Redditor minipiemix dressed her pit bull in a UPS costume, but everyone else thought it should be PUPS delivery service. Her name is Peanut, and she's a sweetheart. She's not all that conscientious about her job, though.

"Hi there! Don't worry, your package is only slightly crushed!"

In fact, Peanut wrecked the entire costume not long after the pictures were taken. No matter, the moment was recorded for posterity.

G. Herman Gottlieb got a bright idea in 1909. He went to the woods in Manhattan (there were apparently still woods in Manhattan then) and picked two large baskets of catnip. He then went door-to-door on Fifth Avenue to sell catnip to wealthy cat owners. Gottlieb did not consider the many New York street cats that picked up on the scent of freshly-picked catnip. Before too long, there were 30 or 40 cats following him.   

When Mr. Gottlieb saw Police Sergeant John F. Higgins on 114th Street, he cried out with joy. At last, he thought, someone could help him disperse the band of felines. Sergeant Higgins wasn’t so kind though, and he immediately arrested the catnip peddler for causing a crowd to collect, which was against the law.

“Why don’t you arrest the catnip?” Gottlieb asked. “That is collecting the crowd. Not I.”

“Come on, before the cats from the Bronx and Jersey get here,” Higgins said, leading Gottlieb to the station house on East 104th Street. Several cats followed the men to the station house and made themselves at home inside while Sergeant Higgins reported the arrest to Lieutenant Lasky.

An argument ensued between Lasky and Higgins on whether the law against collecting a crowd was limited to a human crowd or could be applicable to cats. Meanwhile, the station cat defended his territory against the "crowd" that followed Gottlieb into the police station. The incident made the papers up and down the eastern seaboard. Read the tale of the catnip caper at The Hatching Cat. -via Strange Company

Two kittens try to squeeze through a small hole in a cardboard box at the same time. They're babies, so they don't know it would be more efficient to take turns. But soon you'll see that taking turns doesn't amount to much when you see how many more kittens there are!

(YouTube link)

And they kept coming. I was beginning to think that some human was putting the kittens back in the box out of camera range, so we'd keep seeing the same kittens go through the hole. If not, there are ten kittens. -via Tastefully Offensive

Caring for others is what gives our lives meaning, and keeps us going when life gets us down. Josh Marino suffered PTSD after serving in the Middle East. He got very close to committing suicide when he met a black and white kitten that gave him a reason to live.  

(YouTube link)

Once Josh was able to let others affect him, he got his life together. He attributes the beginning of his turnaround to the cat he named Scout. This is his tribute to the cat that saved his life. -via Laughing Squid

Photographer Tim Newton saw a cat outside his home in Anchorage last week, and thought nothing of it, until he noticed it was a lynx. He started shooting photographs through his window, and found it wasn't alone. It was a litter of seven lynx kittens and their mother!

So for the next half-hour, Newton says he just went back and forth, from window to window, photographing them.

At one point, Newton decided to test his luck by going outside to continue photographing the kits. While the mother was cautious and alert, he says she was also very calm with him in her presence. Moreover, some of the kits were very intrigued by Newton.

"I actually had my bathrobe on," says Newton. "So I didn't have legs, as far as the kits could tell. And I didn't have eyes or a head. I just had this big round thing that went 'Click, click, click.' So I think the little kittens didn't have any clue what I might be."

The family stayed for about 40 minutes, then calmly left the yard. You can see the whole collection of photographs at Newton's site. -via Atlas Obscura

(Image credit: Tim Newton Photography)

(YouTube link)

They say that Penny is a smart dog, but why can't she put the letters in the right order from left -to-right instead of piling them on top of each other? Oh yeah, because she's a dog, and you don't expect dogs to be able to spell in the first place. What Penny is doing is a trained response, but a spectacularly well done one. -via Tastefully Offensive

I'm surprised more people don't have pet snails in their home considering how cool SpongeBob's snail Gary is in the cartoons, but the lack of pet snails is probably due to the fact that most people don't like slimy pets.

But the giant West African snail German insect breeder Adrian Kozakiewicz of Insecthaus shows off in this video looks like it would make a pretty cool pet, and even though it's the size of a small cat it doesn't make a peep.

(YouTube Link)

-Via Laughing Squid