Anyone who has lived with cats can attest that their sense of humor tends to joke around. They don’t have the kind of facial features that allow you to smile; purring serves that purpose. Cats don’t laugh out loud either, but when a cat pulls off a prank successfully, it always seems quite pleased.

Some cat pranks are part of their pretend hunting and gaming activities. Popular with kitties is the secret stalking and sudden ambush of another kitty, an older cat, a human, well basically anything. Adult cats sometimes also play this game with each other or with humans. If the cat about to be ambushed, the Stalkee, hears or sees the Stalker, the cat being stalked may sit up and make eye contact with the Stalker as if to say, “Oh no, don’t!” That round is attributed to the cat Stalkee who would have been ambushed had he not been alert.

Some ever popular pranks played by cats include:

Sudden jumps out of nowhere.

Hitting the other cat’s butt when its back is turned.

And the invasion of the territory in slow motion.

An example of a slow motion invasion is the cat lying on a pillow with the human and gradually “hugging” closer to take more and more of the pillow until the human is almost forced out of it. From the cat’s point of view, this joke is also about expanding its territory, at least in the short term. If the human tries to retrieve the pillow, the cat may vocally protest, as if to say, “Hey, that’s my space now!”

Much of the cat’s game has to do with their fine sense of attack range. I once knew an old cat who lived in a house with a very aggressive macaw. Those birds have powerful beaks, and the macaw was bigger than the cat. The cat could easily have been injured or killed if the bird had gotten close enough to bite her. She never did.

When the bird was out of its cage, the cat kept cautiously out of reach. But the cat observed that the bird could only get through the bars so far once it was in the cage, so it positioned itself an inch out of beak reach. He drove the bird crazy, and he never stopped trying to get to the cat. But the cat was serene. If that cat laughed, she was too quiet for herself.