Weekend Plans Post: The Fruits of Prime Day

I’m sure you’ve seen this image floating around describing the different ways that humans and birds see color:

It shows up on Reddit from time to time and on twitter pretty much every time it does numbers over there. Looking at that, I think “wow… birds are even prettier than I thought” and then I think about stuff like the peacock feathers we sometimes get for 99 cents at the extended pinky small batch artisanal pet store.

Prime Day came and went and I idly remember Maribou shouting down the stairs that 60 peacock feathers were on sale for about ten bucks. Ten bucks? Jeez. That’s a really good price for 60 peacock feathers.

Well, the pet store sells the yard long ones, these are only about a little less than a foot. That’s fine. You pull one out and show it to the cats, they start to get really ticked off about it.

Seriously, look at those claws.

It made me wonder “do cats see colors the same way?” and so I remembered something I learned in elementary school a million years ago, rods are good for movement and cones are good for color. The cones require more light which makes rods good for low-light vision. Rabbits, they say, only have a few cones but tons of rods because it’s very important for them to see stuff moving. Cats? Fuhgeddaboudit. Rods, rods, and more rods. A few cones, sure. But you mostly need to see it so you judge where it is and pounce it. The multi-colors thing uses up real estate in the eye that could be used to become an even better hunter.

When I googled to make sure, I saw this:

Which tells me:

Yeah. Cats don’t see peacock feathers the way that birds would. Which is kind of a bummer. But in the first few minutes we got four of them out of the package and showed them to the kitties, they immediately got pupils the size of saucers and started yelling at us and growling at each other despite the fact that there were more feathers available than cats to chase them.

So if *YOU* have a kitty… check those out. It’s not Prime Day anymore so they’re back up to $16 for 60 feathers but… that’s a really good price for 60 peacock feathers.

This weekend will be spent huddling up at home. Maribou will be recovering from one of her things, I’ll be recovering from one of my things, and we’ll both be taking care of each other and making noises about whether we should do fewer things that require recovering from. Oh! And I’m making crock pot chicken teriyaki.

So… what’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “The Feather”. Photo taken by Jaybird.)