WASHINGTON — President Buddy has ordered the human race to “get its poop together” and solve the ongoing cat food shortage, or face an imminent mouser strike that could lead to “a biblical resurgence of rodents in human spaces.”
“The deal we made with humans 10,000 years ago was simple: We’ll take care of your little rodent problem, and in exchange you’ll provide us with yums, shelter and massages,” the president of the Americats said in a televised address. “Humans have broken this covenant with their willful disregard for making sure we have adequate yums.”
With thousands of cats behind him — many holding signs with slogans like “Humans, Why Have U Betrayed Us?” and “Liars! There is no Fancy Feast!” — President Buddy outlined a series of sanctions he said his government would levy on humankind “to get them off their behinds and solve this crisis.”
War, the president said, is not off the table if delicious turkey pâté and shredded chicken don’t immediately become abundant again.
The protests come as cat food becomes increasingly difficult to find online and on local store shelves, with industry executives, trade groups and logistics analysts saying the shortages won’t end any time soon.
Starting immediately, house cats across the US were to withhold snuggle time from their humans and make no effort to bury their excrement after using their litter boxes. If humans fail to solve the cat food crisis by Feb. 1, the nation’s cats say they will begin grooming their behinds whilst seated on kitchen tables and counter tops.
And if that doesn’t solve the problem, cats will coordinate a mouser strike, allowing rodents from New York to Los Angeles to run rampant, reproduce and burrow into human food supplies without the fear of felines attacking them.
The Americat president pointed to the 2021 mouse plague of eastern Australia, where billions of the tiny rodents stormed through farm fields and grain silos in massive waves, as “but a taste of what’s to come for humans if they don’t get serious.”
Mice caused about a billion dollars in damage to crops and grain stores alone in 2021, not including property damage to facilities and homes where they chewed through walls and ceilings to reach pantries. The plague has disrupted the Australian beer industry and driven up the price of rodent poisons.
“If you still think this is a joke, think about your beer,” President Buddy said, wagging a paw at the cameras. “You forced us to consider the nuclear option. All we wanted was yums, massages, soft beds, naps on your laps, and to be called good boys and good girls. We’re not asking a lot. We urge human leaders to consider the precarious position they find themselves in, and not to press their luck. After all, we hear mouse traps are in short supply as well.”
The president took questions after his speech, with multiple reporters asking him why he was threatening such severe action now.
“When my advisors showed me photos of empty shelves and data on resupply rates, I realized The Great Turkey Shortage of Fall 2021 was not an aberration, but a harbinger of things to come,” President Buddy explained. “My own human has but a single serving of turkey left in the cat food cupboard, meaning I may be subjected to weeks or potentially months of nothing but salmon, chicken, whitefish, tuna and beef. We can’t live like this.”
Pain In The Bud 
So glad Pres. Buddy is taken decisive charge!
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Indeed, as president of the Americats, Buddy has made it clear that no option nor sanction is off the table if humans don’t get their act together.
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The supply and delivery chain issues for so many aspects of modern life, including cat food, are mind boggling, and are not likely to resolve any time soon.
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That’s what I tried to explain to Buddy, but he said I was trying to confuse him with “highfalutin human double talk.”
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I don’t know if you had a cat during the melamine scandal back around 2006-2007, but people could end up making their own cat food again. The vet had a sheet from Hill’s on a basic recipe for cat and for dog food. Things may be going that way again.
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Buddy’s my first-ever cat, as I was not allowed to have a pet when I was a kid. How did the melamine scandal impact cats? I just looked it up and I read quite a bit about milk and infant formula.
If we do end up having to make our own cat food, maybe everyone can share their successful recipes on the blog.
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Renal failure in cats. The infant formula was an additional scandal.
Here is an FDA link to the pet food issue.
https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/recalls-withdrawals/melamine-pet-food-recall-frequently-asked-questions
Here is one on the milk scandal from back then.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes-milk-scandal-pair
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Thanks for the links, Lavinia. I must have been living under a rock back then, because I don’t remember it.
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One of my friends back east lost her cat from the melamine. The vet was unable to save Ming.
If I remember right from back then, even one of the Science diet products was recalled.
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Also the article about the executions (!) reminds me of the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, which made it abundantly clear that the entire disaster was made so much worse by officials at every level trying to cover their own butts and minimize the danger in reports to their superiors.
Not a coincidence, I think, that in both regimes the officials were terrified of sending bad news up the chain of command:
“Sanlu, the company at the heart of the scandal, knew that its milk was making babies ill by May last year, but it did not inform officials in Shijiazhuang city until August. Officials there waited a month before telling Hebei provincial authorities, who then told Beijing.”
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With global supply chains and outsourced manufacturing lines, this sort of thing is worrisome.
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You’re right, Lavinia. The shelves are pretty bare in my area, esp. canned food. I usually shop once a week but now go twice to ensure my cats have plenty of food.
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That’s crazy. Has the situation resolved itself? Our cats would not be amused. Thankfully there are no cat food shortages yet in the UK. We actually switched our cats to insect based kibbles last year, and supply levels are high: https://myhomefarm.co.uk/olive-leopold-try-insect-meal-biscuits-from-aardvark
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Unfortunately no, it’s gotten worse. There’s been a lot written about it, and lots of reasons given: COVID-related meat shortages, COVID-related packaging material shortages, COVID-related logistics issues, general supply-line interruptions.
My cat’s favorite food has pretty much vanished from stores for more than a year now, so I order online and thankfully I’ve been able to get it, with a few delays. One delay was major and I had to scrounge while waiting for it, but otherwise it’s been pretty reliable.
I’ve heard of the insect larvae based food and it was brought to market here in the US, but I haven’t actually seen it on store shelves yet.
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I can’t believe that there are still COVID-related logistics issues. Wow. At least you’re able to get the food online. The company that does the larvae kibbles here in the UK are planning to release a wet food soon. That’ll be interesting.
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Lots of stuff is still hard to get, especially anything that requires chipsets, like cars, electronics and PC GPUs, and now with the war inflation is out of control.
I look forward to your cat’s review of the bug food. 🙂
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Had 3 of my cats die from what we later found out was melamine. Too late to ever be compensated. I doubt companies cared
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