The Unified Catnip Theory- part 2

So, I've been wondering why kittehs, uh, "do silly things". Thus was born a continuing research project. Part 1 was about strawberry stems. This, Part 2, is about mint. It's actually pretty hard to find good YTs of cats reacting to mint- one reason is that catnip is also called catmint, so that complicates the search process.

For reasons I will explain in due time, after I've presented ALL the data, the fact that cats react to mint in this way makes a huge amount of sense to me.

Cat loving mint tea bags


Coco prueba la menta


Smokey on mint gum


Click on these linkys to go directly to the YouTubes above- kitteh#1, kitteh #2, kitteh #3, aka Smokey of strawberry stem fame.

Comment of Smokey's human in Part 1 got me interested in mint- human said "my cat also reacts this way when she smells mint gum". And, then, oh wow, human posted a new YouTube showing this (kitteh #3 above).

Human of Smokey said: I mentioned in my other cat video that smokey reacts the same way to catnip when she is on mint gum.. her reaction is a little bit different from the strawberry stem.. she didn't seem to like the mint gum at first then she started smelling it and licking it more then she rolled on it..and i was keeping a good eye on her so she wouldn't put the piece of gum in her mouth..

Two points in response- 1) I told Smokey's human that I suspected that the mint odor wasn't pure enough to give a strong reaction, and maybe Smokey was having a kind of mixed reaction because of other ingredients in the gum... and 2) Thank you for being a responsible cat owner! We don't want kittehs to get into chewing gum, srsly.

And, then, of all things, Chiva's human told me via email that s/he suspected Chiva was so totally into the toothbrushes because of the mint flavor from the toothpaste... (Chiva here)

Yep, mint is part of the Unified Catnip Theory!