Dear Buddy,
Why is everyone so racialist towards cats all of a sudden?
I’ve been doing my regular laps around the block even though all the humans are huddled in their houses, and everyone’s acting like I have the cooties!
Pete the Pomeranian, who is usually one of the friendliest of my neighborhood amigos, ran away from me this morning, while my neighbor’s snooty purebred poodles were more snooty than ever.
There’s a parrot who lives two doors down, and I heard her saying “Get away! Get away, you dirty cat! I don’t want your filthy feline viruses!”
Buddy, what the hell is going on? Why does everyone hate us?
– Freaked Out In Fayetteville
Dear Freaked Out,
You don’t read the newspapers, do you? Ever since a cat in Hong Kong and a tiger here in New York tested positive for the COVID, everyone is acting like us cats are zombies from The Walking Dead!
These days you can’t even claw or pee on a tree to mark your territory without all sorts of dogs, birds and squirrels coming out of the woodwork to yell at you about spreading “the cat AIDS,” as if we’re all infected and trying to spread it to everyone else.
There’s talk of rounding us all up and quarantinizing us in local cat cafes for at least a year. This is America, not Chairman Meow’s communist China!
We’re the lucky ones, my friend. Some cats have been tossed out of their own homes by the same humans who are supposed to serve them. It’s an outrage! The purrsecution and meowlevolent spreading of rumors has gotten out of claw!
For now, the best solution is to disguise yourself as another species entirely. Get some floppy ears and buck teeth and pretend to be a rabbit. And if that parrot keeps talking trash, tell her you haven’t eaten since yesterday and you’re wondering if all birds taste like turkey and chicken, then smile real evil-like. That oughta shut her up. 🙂
Chin up!
– Buddy
PS: Feel free to steal your human’s face masks. As you can see, they’re quite fashionable.
Pain In The Bud 
It is terrible what has happened to animals during this crisis.
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Indeed. Some of the stories, especially from China, are heartbreaking. On the plus side there are good people everywhere trying to save pets that have been abandoned in the COVID freak out.
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Tuxie the tuxedo cat says that this is utter nonsense. We try to tell our humans these things, but we are practicing human distancing from them and they are a bit dim witted and slow on the uptake
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Smart kitty!
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Aww, I can’t imagine people dumping their cats over this! I still kiss my Holly every day!
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It’s pure ignorance compounded by misinformation spread via social media. I’m like you, when I read depressing stories about animal welfare, I hug my Buddy and he’s all “Why are you hugging me, dude?”
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Yep! Holly’s usually like “I didn’t ask for a kiss, in fact I don’t want one.” But she gets them anyway. 🙂 Her fault for being so cute!
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Indeed. BTW nice job on the board game post. I love the artwork on that stuff, all of it hand drawn. Have you seen the movie Zathura? IIRC it’s based on a book by the same author who wrote Jumanji, and the premise is that a 50s-era science fiction board game comes to life. The design and artwork of the game is classic 50s pulp SF and retrofuturism.
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