Did I make an electric circuit with my cat? This is definitely the dumbest question I've asked, but I'm curious. My cat was resting her head on my left hand while I pet her with my right. Suddenly, my left hand began receiving regular static electric shocks. Was I pulling electrons from her fur with my right hand, thus causing them to flow back through my left?
If it really is an example of a circuit, I was thinking it's a pretty hilarious way to explain circuits to students.
 A: Yes, you made a circuit, although, due to the bad conductivity of the contact between your left hand and the fur of your cat, the current was not continuous but concentrated in the sparks.
It was a circuit because your right hand was acting as a generator, where the electromotive force was due to the triboelectric effect. The remaining part of the circuit was your and your cat's bodies (conductors, although characterized by quite a high resistance). The circuit was closed at the contact between your right hand and her fur. This contact is not good and allows for the accumulation of charge until the threshold for a spark is reached. In the case of air, one needs a few kV per centimeter in order to have a spark. Distance between your skin and your cat's fur is less than a millimeter, therefore one could estimate the build-up of the order of tens or hundreds of volts before the spark.
Notice that the same kind of circuit could be obtained by using any static generator. Moreover, in recent years, there has been a strong interest in triboelectric generators based on nano-technologies, as efficient power generators for nanocircuits. See, for instance, this paper.
A: I think you did steal a bunch of electrons from your cat. Hair typically loses electrons very quickly. For more information look up triboelectric series.
