Does Your Cat’s Butthole Touch Everything It Sits On? One Middle-Schooler Devised an Experiment to Find Out

While humans have butt cheeks, clothing, and a sense of modesty to prevent their buttholes from being on display all the time, cats just have tails (which they love to stick straight up in the air). As a result, you probably see your cat’s anus pretty often—and all that exposure might make you dwell on a certain distressing question: Is my cat’s foulest orifice brushing directly against my pillow, my kitchen counter, and every single other surface my cat perches on?

According to sixth-grader Kaeden Griffin, the answer is probably no. As PopSugar reports, Griffin launched an innovative experiment to find out just how much contact a cat’s butthole actually has with its surroundings. First, he and his mom, Kerry, covered the buttholes of their two cats—one medium-haired and one short-haired—with red, nontoxic lipstick. They then directed the well-trained pets to sit on sheets of paper placed over different surfaces and perform a series of actions, including sitting still, lying down, and jumping.

“They were compensated with lots of praise, pets, and their favorite treats, and the lipstick was removed with a baby wipe once we collected our data in just under 10 minutes,” Kerry Griffin wrote in a Facebook post.

The results of that data will likely provide some relief to easily grossed-out cat owners. The Griffins found no traces of lipstick after their medium-haired cat sat on the hard surfaces (nightstand and tile floor) or the soft surfaces (carpet, mattress, and pillow). The short-haired cat didn’t leave any lipstick on the hard surfaces, either, but there was a “slight smear” on the white bed sheet they had placed over the bed—definitely more of a problem for people who don’t wash their sheets as often as they should.

The experiment was for a homeschool science fair project, which Kaeden’s mom gave him an “A++++++” on. It’s too small of a sample size to draw any overall conclusions about feline butthole surface contact, but we’ll keep an eye out for any large-scale studies on the topic.