Buddy, cat humor, fake news, viral cat videos

Buddy The Cat Denies Losing Fight To Rodent

MALAGA, Spain — After a viral video showed him furiously back-peddling during a vicious encounter with a rat, Buddy the Cat blasted the media for suggesting he lost a fight to the tiny rodent.

“Fake news!” Buddy told reporters on Thursday. “The fake news media hates me and other cats are jealous of me, which is why they’ve released this heavily edited, out-of-context video that purports to show me ‘losing’ a fight to a rat.”

A witness from Malaga, a municipality on Spain’s southern coast, told MSN that he heard a ruckus when he headed outside and witnessed an “epic battle” between a cat and a rat, with the rodent “leaping in the air and kicking like a real ninja.”

Just a few hours after the video went viral, several users on Twitter identified the feline as Buddy, sparking a torrent of memes and jokes at the tabby cat’s expense.

“A hundred bucks says Buddy would’ve attacked the hell out of that rat if it was a snack,” Twitter user @LosGatos212 wrote.

“lol look at Buddy run from that tiny rat,” wrote user @BuddySucks. “So much for his ‘huge muscles’ and his fierce reputation.”

Buddy, who is known for often referring to his “ripped” physique and bragging about defeating a fly in single combat, accused anonymous “haters” of deceptively editing the video to remove “the epic beatdown” he handed to the rat.

“They cut out the part where I dodged his strikes like Neo from the Matrix, then pulled off a Ryu-style spin kick to send the rat flying,” Buddy insisted. “Probably because my muscles looked huge and I looked badass.”

The uploader also deleted a section of the footage in which Buddy breathed fire and fought off a dozen additional rats who came to the aid of their friend, according to Buddy.

Still, viewers weren’t buying it. One meme creator pasted the rat’s head onto the body of Mike Tyson and Buddy’s head onto the body of Tyson’s hapless opponent in a classic clip from the boxer’s prime.

Buddy the Cat responded by challenging his haters to a fight, “so we can go gato e gato like real cats.”

“We’ll see who the real tough cat is,” he told his haters, “when I’m victorious and eating celebratory turkey, and you’re out cold on the mat!”

Feline Overlords, Movies, pop culture

Cats In Movies: 1985’s ‘Explorers’

When I was a kid, my best friend’s dad had a trove of science fiction on VHS tapes, running the gamut from 1950s flying saucer classics to 80s fare like The Last Starfighter, Flight of the Navigator and Explorers, a little-known Disney film that quietly came and went from theaters in 1985.

The Joe Dante-directed movie attained cult status in subsequent years via home video, and it’s easy to see why: Explorers is the stuff kids’ dreams are made of.

The movie follows three boys who dream of a bizarre symbol — a symbol that, when entered into a computer, spawns self-writing code that generates a floating sphere.

The sphere is an an airtight, transparent, inertia-less magnetic bubble. The boys soon realize they can make the sphere move and manipulate its size. More importantly, they can ride in it.

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Wulfgang (River Phoenix) and Ben (Ethan Hawke) activate the sphere for the first time, before Wulfgang’s cat shows them how to make a space ship out of it.

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The dream symbols from Explorers: Not bad for 1985 computer-generated graphics.

Naturally, they build their own space ship out of junk parts — an old Tilt-A-Whirl ride, a garbage can, a TV screen and washing machine doors for windows — and use the magnetic bubble as its invisible shell.

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The boys build a space ship, which they dub Thunder Road, out of parts found in a junkyard.

After their first flight — in which they lose control of their new ship, crash through the snack bar at a drive-in theater and draw the attention of police — the kids refine their invention, discovering a way to reach outer space.

Explorers is Ethan Hawke’s first movie. He plays Ben, the dreamer of the trio, the kid who lays on his roof at night and gazes at the stars, wondering what’s out there.

The late River Phoenix also made his film debut with Explorers and plays Wulfgang, the proud nerd and young scientist who uses his computer to control the ship-in-a-bubble.

And former child actor Jason Presson plays Darren, the kid who comes from a rough existence with an alcoholic dad, and befriends Ben and Wulfgang when he defends them from bullies at school. (This being the 80s, the bullies are very blond, very stupid and very cruel.)

So where does the cat come in? By showing the three kids the potential of their invention, of course.

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Wulfgang’s cat jumps on the keyboard, sending the sphere zig-zagging through his basement.

Wulfgang and the boys first conjure their magnetic sphere into existence in using a computer in Wulfgang’s basement lab, and marvel at it as it hangs in the air, impenetrable and seemingly immobile.

That’s when Wulfgang’s orange tabby does what cats do and flops down on the keyboard, sending random spatial coordinates to the sphere which then zig-zags throughout the basement. As the sphere tears holes in old junk, punctures a window and comes to rest a few feet away, the boys realize it can not only move, it can be guided.

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Takeoff!

Every boy dreams of exploring space at some point, and Explorers is that dream realized through a child’s eyes. Three kids from the suburbs build a ship that can reach outer space, offering answers to the tantalizing questions about what’s out there.

We’re not the only ones with fond memories of the movie. A Hollywood script-writing duo which includes the director of True Detective has been working on an updated version that would play out as a live-action TV series. Here’s to hoping if their project gets the greenlight, the cat stays in.

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Buddy, cat stories, pop culture

Utopia Avenue: Searching For The Moon Gray Cat

I’ve just finished reading David Mitchell’s new novel, Utopia Avenue.

Not only has Mitchell been my favorite novelist for many years, but part of the fun of reading his books is seeing characters from his other novels pop up, pass through, make brief cameos or even take the leap from minor character in a previous book to major player in a new story.

While the vast majority are human, one of those characters is the Moon Gray Cat, a domestic feline who shows up at the strangest times and has a major impact on Mitchell’s characters.

For instance, a war correspondent character in Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks sees the Moon Gray Cat on a stairwell landing in a Baghdad hotel. He bends down to pet the mysterious feline just as a car bomb detonates outside the building, sending shrapnel, shards of broken glass, dislodged pieces of concrete and other debris through the window.

If the character hadn’t seen the Moon Gray Cat and hadn’t stopped at that instant to pet the little guy, he would have been shredded in the blast.

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Mitchell, left, and the cover of his newest novel, right.

In Slade House, Mitchell’s sole foray into the horror genre thus far, the first chapter’s protagonist notices the Moon Gray Cat laying dead in an alley. It’s the only Mitchell book in which the cat appears deceased, and signals that there will be no magical interventions for the characters this time around. (It is, after all, a horror novel. But don’t worry: Mitchell says the Moon Gray Cat isn’t dead and cannot die.)

Sure enough, the familiar feline shows up again in Utopia Avenue, once again marking a major moment in the book.

Of course, our readers here know of a particular Moon Gray Cat. He may not be as literary as his fictional counterpart (his interests lie more in world domination, the procurement and sale of catnip, and eating as much turkey as possible), but he’s just as magical. Since adopting the little dude in 2014, I’ve come to think of him as the mysterious Mitchellverse meowster.

Moon Gray Cat, we salute you!

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“I’m magic!”

Buddy, cat humor, fake news

Archaeologists Find Ancient Image Of Buddy In Peru

NAZCA, Peru — Archaeologists in Peru have found the oldest known portrait of Buddy carved into a hillside in the Nazca desert.

The image is a geoglyph, one of many renderings of animals and people etched into the arid dry lands between 1,500 and 2,500 years ago by an ancient Nazca culture that occupied the southern region of modern-day Peru.

The image of Buddy is 120 feet long and was created about 2,000 years ago, archaeologists said.

A research team was scouting potential sites for observation platforms near several other glyphs when they realized there was an image almost entirely buried on the hillside. After carefully cleaning away the debris that had accumulated over the millennia, they revealed the triumphant image of Buddy lounging.

“It’s no surprise that the ancient Peruvians would honor Buddy,” said Ferdinand Lyle, lead scholar on the project. “Ancient Nazca prophecies told of a legendary cat with huge muscles and unrivaled charm. Indeed, Buddy looks regal and majestic in this lovingly rendered image.”

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The newly-discovered geoglyph honoring Buddy.

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A Nazca geoglyph depicting a spider.

Even archaeologists believed the lines were merely roads or trail markers until 1940, when American historian Paul Kosok was flying above an area near the southern coast and realized a set of lines depicted a condor.

Since then, scholars have found hundreds of geoglyphs depicting people, mammals, birds and fish, as well as abstract designs. Like Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, Nazca isn’t quick to give up its secrets, and experts who have been studying the ancient art works say there are likely hundreds of additional images covered by two thousand years of accumulated detritus.

The images are considered fragile, as most were made by carving trenches about half a foot deep into the topsoil, revealing a lighter clay layer that contrasts with the reddish-brown soil of the surface.

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One of the largest and most famous geoglyphs depicts a condor in flight.

In the meantime, they’re hoping their newest find will prompt additional research funds to look for more renderings on the Nazca plains.

“The tantalizing possibility of more geoglyphs of Buddy’s handsome visage should compel a wave of new donations to continue this important work,” Lyle said. “This has been the find of the century.”

cat behavior, Cats in Games, Feline Weirdness, pop culture

Real Life Cats Are The Villains of Nintendo’s Newest Game

Nintendo’s newest game has been out for all of one day and already cats are like “Nuh-uh.”

The idea behind Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is clever yet simple and seemingly tailored for the pandemic era: Using a Nintendo Switch, players control a tiny Mario Kart equipped with a camera and race it around courses they design in their homes. Because players are controlling the kart through a screen and seeing things from the kart’s point of view, the game augments the race course by generating obstacles to dodge, coins to collect and opponents to race against.

It’s called augmented reality, because it adds layers of computer-generated imagery over things we can see with our own eyes. It’s the same concept behind smart glasses and floating heads-up displays.

But there’s one wild card Nintendo’s designers may not have anticipated: Felis catus.

Nothing grabs a cat’s attention quicker than a small, fast-moving object, and the little karts have been triggering the predatory instincts of countless cats.

Some cats go all “You shall not pass!” Gandalf-style on the karts:

Others aren’t sugar coating what they think of the invasive little cartoon racers:

Finally, some cats just don’t know what to make of it:

The best part about this is that, from the kart’s eye view, house cats look like furry kaiju — giant, lumbering beasts hell bent on sending the racers careening off course.

It also begs the question: Is there anything in existence that cannot be improved by adding cats?