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Comment by podiki | Hacker News Reader

Really interesting, so you get high and get bug protection, win-win! Sadly my cat has no reaction to any of these that I've tried: catnip, silver vine, and one other herb I'm forgetting (Japanese maybe?). Maybe he's secretly a kid from the nineties and took the DARE program too seriously...

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Silvervine is Japanese, so that's already listed; you probably tried either Tartarian honeysuckle or valerian. Immunity to all of them is pretty unusual, but it's also worth noting that responses can be variable, and each one should be tested a few times spread out. (It seems like stress or uncertainty can help shut down responses. Cats are very cagey about showing inner state.)

It's worth trying again after some time has passed. I have one cat that had no interest in catnip for years, but later developed a love for it.

tolerance break? Haha

Uhm why are you trying to get your cat addicted to something ;-) you drug pushers you!

or perhaps your cat was on dead tour in the 90s and needs something a bit stronger to get its kicks nowadays

From what I understand, catnip doesn't make cats "high" so much as it's an aphrodesiac. When I adopted my cat, she used to go absolutely nuts for catnip. It turned out that the shelter's information that she was spayed was wrong, though, and I ended up getting that done. Since then, her reaction to catnip has been much more subdued; she'll roll around in it a few minutes, but then basically settle down and ignore it afterwards.

tl;dr your cat might just not be horny enough to care about catnip

For the record, I tried catnip on most of my cats during the years, and all of them enjoyed it a lot. They were all neutered indoor cats.

Yep, I didn't mean to imply that fixed cats wouldn't be interested, just that it is at least partially dependent on libido. It's possible for a non-neutered cat to still not be interested, as it is for neutered cats to be super interested.

I think valerian is another one they react to.

Anyway here's a video of a monkey covering itself in tobacco (probably same idea) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKPCm78Iu5g

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