Apparently there isn’t much of a difference between a human brain freeze and a cat brain freeze. Except maybe humans can always do that tongue-on-roof trick to ease it, but cats aren’t that smart.
Moving on from the ‘cats afraid of cucumbers’ craze, humans are using another method of feline entertainment: cat brain freeze.
Technically known as sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, brain freeze happens when you ingest something fairly cold, and it lowers the temperature of key blood vessels near the back of your throat. These vessels then rapidly contract in order to conserve their heat, then slowly dilate when the surrounding temperature increases.
It’s a sudden movement that pulls on the tissues surrounding these nerves. As a result, those nerves can’t distinguish the location of the original pain trigger, your throat, so you often feel pain rush up to your head.
If you can’t handle the pain from a monster slurpee brain freeze, no doubt your cat can.
So please, have mercy on your cats.
