As a cat lover, big time science fiction fan and appreciator of the first two A Quiet Place installments, the very first thing I thought when I saw the trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One was “I hope the cat doesn’t meow!”
My second thought? Bud and I would be so, so dead.
Dead immediately. Dead a thousand times over.
Apparently I’m not the only one, because fans have taken to social media to participate in the “Quiet Place Challenge,” which involves reenacting some of the scenes from the movie with their own cats to see if their furry overlords can stay silent.
As PITB readers know, Buddy never shuts up. He’s got something to say about everything, he often narrates his activities in real time, and he’s got an entire meowing ritual that starts at least a half hour before Food O’Clock, gaining in volume and annoyingness until a fresh bowl of turkey is placed before him. His personal patois, the Buddinese dialect, makes heavy use of trills, chirps, grunts, chuffs and sniffs to elaborate on his meows.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Quiet Place movies, they imagine a world that’s been invaded by so-called Death Angels, dread creatures of extrasolar provenance who are completely blind, but have extraordinarily sensitive hearing. The first movie, about a family surviving on their farm in upstate New York months after the initial invasion, was universally lauded for its taut script, effective tension and novel use of a quiet/loud dynamic that is a marked departure from the usual horror-thriller formula.
In A Quiet Place (2018), its 2020 sequel and the recently-released prequel, Day One, entire minutes pass soundlessly. As a viewer you can’t help but wince and tense up when a character errs and makes noise, knowing the consequences can be immediately tragic.
There’s simply no way Bud and I would survive more than five minutes, and if I had to put money on it, I’d wager we’d probably be dead within 60 seconds of the terrifying monsters showing up.
Indeed, the movie doesn’t dither: the Death Angels make planetfall at around the 12 minute mark. Mild spoilers from the beginning of the film follow:
12:31 – On Chinatown’s ruined Pell Street, within a haze of dust so thick you can’t see more than a few feet in any direction, a man shouts loudly into his smartphone, telling the person on the other end that something meteor-like had landed just a few hundred feet away. He’s pulled suddenly and violently into the smog, his scream ending as abruptly as it began. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d probably meow in protest at the dust and get us both killed immediately.
12:53 – A female National Guard soldier sees Nyong’o’s Sam and shouts at her to take cover. The guardswoman’s radio crackles with the panicked screams of her comrades saying the enemy is everywhere, and then she’s dispatched as quickly as the guy on the phone. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d almost certainly huff derisively at the soldier’s order to take cover, and we’d both be crushed underneath the foot of one of the lumbering beasts.
13:34 – Sam huddles behind a vehicle with another woman when a panicked man screams, drawing the aliens like moths to a flame. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Little dude’s default reaction when he’s scared is to run screaming and hide behind my legs. He’d draw the monsters right to us and we’d die.
13:50 – Sam wakes up inside a theater several minutes after an explosion knocked her out. She’s about to speak when Djimon Hounsou’s Henri clamps a hand over her mouth and raises a finger to his lips. Unfortunately that doesn’t work with a cat. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Attempts to get him to shut up would be fruitless, and while I’d know my only chance for survival would be to throw him like a football so the aliens track his indignant screech, I wouldn’t have the heart to do it. We’d die together.
Frodo, the feline co-star of Day One and “service cat” to Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam, is precisely the opposite. He’s a Good Boy extraordinaire, consistently calm in his mother’s arms and reliably silent when he needs to be.
Without meows to rely on, director Michael Sarnoski gets quite a performance out of Nico and Schnitzel, the two cats who play Frodo. They’re expressive felines who could teach Nicolas Cage a thing or two about how to emote with subtlety, as in one scene when Frodo sees a man emerge gasping from a flooded subway station. Frodo regards the stranger with curiosity, his little face registering surprise at the man’s sudden appearance with just the slightest twitch of his mouth and whiskers.
It’s effective and very cute, but we never forget about the incredible danger that faces Frodo and Sam as they return the One Ring to Mount Doom navigate the ruins of New York City amid blind predators with extraordinarily sensitive hearing.
If Day One’s world was reality — and I’m extremely thankful it’s not — I suppose it’s possible I’d get lucky if we were in a deep subterranean level of a building for some odd reason, and if Bud decided it’s not worth disturbing his nap to investigate the ruckus above.
But the moment his belly rumbles and he starts screeching for yums, or the second he gets it into his little head that he just has to tell me his latest theory regarding entangled subatomic particles, it would all be over, for me at least. I could totally see Bud making noise, then dashing to his customary hiding place behind my legs while a “Death Angel” impales me with one of its giant claws.
What about the rest of you? Is your cat a Frodo, a Bud or another sort entirely? Would you be dead as quickly as we would be, or do you think you could survive with your furry pal?
Pain In The Bud 
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣Yeah. No. My cat would run and leave me behind. Signed. Childless cat lady. Then i would be catless lady. 🤣
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Well at least you’d still be alive. I’m not exaggerating when I say Bud would get me killed in seconds.
“I’M HUNGRY, WHERE’S MY TURK…OH! KILL HIM! THAT GUY, NOT ME!”
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🤣🤣🤣👍
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Both are talkative. But I have one very important question: Does anything happen to the cat in the movie?
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Let’s just say they do put him in danger, but if you’re a cat lover, you won’t be disturbed by anything that happens.
There’s also a funny scene early on when the guy behind the counter at a bodega tells Nyong’o’s character she can’t have a cat in the bodega…while his own cat is just chillin’ on the counter. It’s a nod to the fact that it’s illegal to keep cats in bodegas, but everyone does it anyway.
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Not sure if that law ever gets enforced. As long as they are taken care of then what is the harm? I fixed Muezza years ago at nearby Muslim bodega. At first they were hesitant because thier religion forbade it. But i convinced them it was the right thing to do. He lived for 18 years. Neighborhood loved him.
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Enforcement is pretty arbitrary, and the fine for having a cat is the same as having rats, so the vast majority of bodega owners opt for cats.
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I do not want to spoil anything but i will be seeing it. 😉
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With the number of potential meowers around us, we’d just be sunk …
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Another for Club Dead! Notice how these movies never show the monsters going up against tigers.
I guess “A Quiet Place: Aliens Get Torn To Shreds And Eaten” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
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Yeah! Aliens torn to shreds! It has A ring to me!!! And Spunkmeyer!
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Yup! Dead Dead Dead!!!
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Welcome to the club!
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Our Tuxie Beanie would be great in this scenario. She’s NEVER meowed. Not once. And her purr is so quiet, you have to put your ear right on her to hear it. Orange boy Archie on the other hand, he’s a talker. Not all the time, but when he gets going, you can’t shut him up. And last but not least, Meow Meow. He’s the oldest of the three, a longhair cow cat that’s blind and deaf. If you startle him, he kind of screeches, then purrs. He also makes happy noises when he’s getting loves from Mom. Other than that, he’s quiet as a mouse, sneaking around on his tip toes to find Moms room.
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So basically Tuxie will emerge unscathed while the rest of you would need the equivalent of a well-stocked bomb shelter.
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Oh yeah! Between me and Archie talking all the time, we’d have to be somewhere that you couldn’t hear sound outside. And I have the perfect spot too! There’s a place in Minneapolis the has the worlds only totally silent room. Watched a story about it. I used to drive by the place where it resides and I never had a clue. Unfortunately for me, it still wouldn’t be totally silent. I have Tinnitus and I never have a moment of complete silence, ever.
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Where is that place in Minneapolis? I live here and I’d like to check it out.
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Here’s an article about it I got when I googled it. I think WCCO did a story about it too?
Orfield Laboratories Inc 2709 E 25th St, Minneapolis, MN 55406
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/quietest-places-in-the-world#:~:text=In%20the%20anechoic%20chamber%2C%20speech,noise%20reading%20of%20–9.4%20decibels.
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I read that after a few minutes in the chamber, you can hear your own bones grinding and organs working, which drives people crazy and is one of the reasons no one lasts longer than an hour inside.
Apparently Microsoft built a room that registers -19dB, taking the Guinness record from Orfield, and Orfield made modifications that reduced the level to -24dB to regain the record.
It would be cool to experience for at least a few minutes.
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I can believe the bit about hearing your insides. When I was sixteen, I had water on the brain. I could literally hear the blood flowing through my head. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. It was so bizarre. I could SEE the blind spots that we all have in our vision, which I never knew we had AND I had double vision for a week! They thought I had a brain tumor, but no. I just had a condition that only happens in newborns.
Now, I’ve gone deaf (don’t worry, I have an implant to hear), I can hear our house breathing, but I hear it by feeling it. It hums. I never thought losing my hearing would affect me like that. It’s strange to have 2 things like that happen to me in my lifetime. Both things really suck, but they were/are kind of a gift because I see things differently now with my other senses.
And now I have something that might really interest you. I found the video of the story I was talking about. Here’s the link.
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/finding-minnesota-orfield-laboratories-anechoic-chamber/
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Do you have a cochlear implant? How does that impact your ability to enjoy music? And what about TV and movies? Do you have difficulty understanding dialog?
I watch almost exclusively with subtitles these days because it’s so difficult to catch what people are saying, and apparently I’m not the only one because a major complaint in recent years has been how difficult it is to understand movie dialog. Part of it is the way sound is mixed, but it’s also the trend toward “naturalistic” performances in which actors slur, whisper and fail to enunciate. When I watch old stuff like the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, classic Star Trek and that 60s show with the submarine, I can understand the actors just fine because they enunciate and the sound is carefully mixed.
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I DO have a Cochlear Implant. The sound is different than what I used to hear with my ears. It’s a lot more tinny, like listening to people talking through an old transistor radio. Women with high pitched voices and kids are the absolute worst to have to listen to with it. It can actually hurt when I hear them. I only have one implant at the moment, so I can only hear out of my left ear. So people have to be on that side of me when they talk to me. But of course, that never happens so I’m constantly asking them, What?, and apologizing because I can’t hear or understand them. It gets tiring. Especially when it’s your own husband that you have tell it to! Understanding people on the phone is awful. I have to repeatedly tell people they need to talk louder and enunciate their words if they want me to get what they’re saying. COVID was the terrible. Trying to hear people when they’re wearing a mask is almost impossible. I’d have to take my husband with me everywhere so he could tell me what people were saying.
Music is really hard to understand now. I have to listen to the song really closely (like put my ear right up tot the speaker) to figure out what song it is. I never figure it out until the song’s almost over and that really sucks because it’s usually a song I really like. Even songs that I’m watching the video on YouTube takes me til the end of it to actually pick the music and remember what the actual song sounds like. It’s seriously annoying.
Going to the movies is the absolute WORST!. I have to use that stupid closed caption thing that usually never works and you don’t find that out UNTIL the movie starts. So you spend the first 10 minutes F-ing around to get one that does work and you miss the beginning of the movie (and no, you do NOT get your money back for that). You can’t position the stupid thing right so it’s not blocking the screen (I broke one trying to adjust it! 🤣. Was NOT sorry!) and it’s F-ing tiring having to shift your eye focus up and down from the captioning to the movie. You miss a lot of the film and dialogue because of it. It was NOT designed by someone that has ever had to use it. They need to just put the damn captioning at the bottom of the screen like they do for foreign films,. which no one seems to mind. It’s insulting to have to use it really. They’ll probably start putting the captions on film, but NOT because they give a shit about deaf and hearing impaired people. We’ll get it because of people like you who can hear just fine, but can’t follow the dialogue. That’s just bullshit! Oh, and Netflix is the WORST at doing closed captioning. They don’t sync it to the screen, they don’t put the entire conversation on screen and they change the words that are said. Like we wouldn’t notice? Do they think we’re F-ing idiots?? Everyone else does a passable job, but Netflix are just assholes! And trust me, when the captioning doesn’t sync to the picture, you can’t watch it at all. And trying to get these people to actually go and fix it is a F-ing nightmare. It really, REALLY sucks having no hearing or partial hearing and have to deal with the world.
When you first get the implant, you don’t get to use it for a month. So, you’re totally deaf. That was odd, but not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I bought whiteboards and myself, my Mom and my husband had to get used to talking to me through that. Try having a fight on a whiteboard! 🤣.It’s kind of funny! After that month, they turn it on. Some people cry, I laughed and could not stop! When she turned it on and started to talk, she sounded like Alvin the chipmunk! It was hilarious! That lasted a few days. You know how you put your fingers in your ears so you can’t hear someone? I can’t do it anymore because it doesn’t work. I can crank the volume up to the highest setting and it won’t ruin my hearing. Why? Because it doesn’t go through my ears anymore, so it can’t harm my hearing.
When I first go it put in, I was a little wary going out in public. But that faded pretty fast. I don’t give a damn what other people think of it. They probably think it’s a bluetooth thing (which it is) and it’s weird and funky and I bet they wonder where I got it. It’s great when you really don’t want to engage with the world. Just take it off and boom!, no more world to hear. It’s also a $100,000 piece of equipment and you have to be careful with it. I also have a magnet in my head and probes gong into my brain. Every time I go through a metal detector, I’ll set it off now. I have to get an MRI soon and that’s gonna be something. They can do it, but they have to wrap your head, and I don’t know what else to get it done.
It’s different having the implant. There are a lot of things that you have to do differently and you never think about them until you actually have to face having to do it. I’ve had hearing loss since my entire life All the women in my Mom’s family got it. I got it the worst. I knew I’d have to probably get an implant, but not until I was like in my 70’s or something. I was 59 when I lost my hearing completely. That was a sad day. I had to admit it was really gone forever. If I had to lose my hearing or my sight, I’d take hearing always. They can give you back your hearing. You can’t get back your sight.
Sorry I wrote a book to answer you back. I hope this answers some of the questions you had. If I missed anything or you have any other one, feel free to ask me anything about it. I’m always happy to try and give people an idea of what it’s like for me to live with this. I think it’s great people are interested in it and I’ll always try to answer anything as best I can.
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Thanks for the detailed description. I wrote a story about a young girl who got cochlear implants when I was just starting out as a journalist, but I don’t remember much. I figure the tech has probably improved by now.
Losing music has to be really difficult. If you’re only getting the high frequency sounds, that eliminates a whole range of instruments and probably percussion elements as well. I can’t imagine listening to a genre like funk without the low end. It’s probably like listening to a track through shitty smartphone speakers, but worse.
But more than that, music taps directly into our emotions. Do you still “hear” songs in your head, or have songs get stuck in your head?
As for Netflix, one issue is that the captions could be written off the scripts and not revised, so if an actor improvises a line or a scene is changed, the captions end up off.
Have you tried switching between captions and audio description? I think the latter is supposed to be specifically for people who can’t hear, providing context information in addition to dialog.
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Didn’t realize I could still reply to you right here, but I did write an answer in the regular comments thingy. You’ll find the answer in the lineup of answers. Sorry bout that! I did find them. Link to the article and the Company name and address are in that comment. Sounds like you can take tours, so COOL!
Where in Minneapolis? I grew up out by lake Nokomis in south Mpls. I live in St. Cloud now, but damn, do I miss the city! I’m a city girl for sure.
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Bella would have me dead in 10 seconds.. she is a loud, shouty, very vocal feline with no consideration for anyone around her! Bertie would be fine as he is pretty much silent at all times but has simply moved to a neighbours temporarily whilst we have building work going on. So the concept of our two rescuing anything or anyone from silent predators whilst carrying out a mission is simply not going to happen!! I must watch this – it sounds wonderful!
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There is another cat movie that’s out, it’s called Flow and it looks amazing. I’m hoping to review it, but I can’t find it playing anywhere and it’s not available for streaming yet.
Anyway, welcome to Club Dead, where the loud cats rule!
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Please tell us about where we can see Flow when you find out. 😺
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I looked more into Flow. Looks like Netflix will carry it. Also, Ghost Cat Anzu looks good. Love Japanese anime.
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Unfortunately I think that’s a different movie named Street Flow or something. The Flow cat movie’s writer/director is Latvian and it looks like the primary release was in France, so they may be looking for a US distributor.
It doesn’t show up on JustWatch or similar sites which are supposed to list all streaming availability. I’m keeping a lookout though because I really want to see it. Did you see the trailer? It looks amazing.
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Darn. Thought it was Flow.Not Street Flow. Yes. Saw trailer.
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Nope.
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I’m not really into movies, and that one is one that I would particularly hate, but you’re a great writer.
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Thanks for the kind words, Susan. Being able to write hasn’t done me much good so far but there’s still time, I hope. Why don’t you like movies?
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When I thought about it, I guess that it might have started in my childhood (what doesn’t?) in the 1950s.
My sisters and I were never allowed to go to the movies, while all of the other kids in school went to the Saturday matinees. I just never got into the habit.
I did go to a few movies when I was a young adult, but I was also working nights, so I was busy. Then I had kids and I couldn’t afford a babysitter and the cost of the ticket.
And now I think that most movies are crap, and I don’t want to watch them anyway.
I usually see movies about ten years after they were in the theaters, on someone else’s TV on Sunday afternoon. I have found a few that I liked like that: for example, Baz Luhrman’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
I hope you will be able to make money with your writing. Maybe you need to find your audience/publisher? I’m not the right person to be giving advice.
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It’s true there’s a lot of crap out there, but there are some really good movies too if you do a little digging.
I always tell my mom, instead of browsing through Netflix or Amazon Video without anything specific in mind, to instead Google stuff like “Best thrillers on Netflix in August 2024” and go to sites like Rotten Tomatoes and JustWatch to find recommendations.
I wrote a post about the best indie science fiction films for another site, which I should update and post here. There’s a lot of great cerebral SF out there.
As for writing, I shouldn’t say it’s gotten me nothing. I am blessed to have the ability and it has allowed me to do some good work in journalism and for cats. I’ve just gotta keep pushing forward on the creative front and not get discouraged, and also not allow perfect to be the enemy of good.
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Actually, my son has been the source for many movie suggestions. That’s how I found Vin Diesel. Of course, once again I watched his movies 10 years after they were made.
As for writing, I am trying to be in your camp as a cheerleader. It helps if you have someone at your back. What are you trying to write other than the blog and journalism?
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Have you seen Vin Diesel in Find Me Guilty and Boiler Room? Both movies are 20+ years old now and IMO they’re among his best pure acting performances, the former as a mobster under prosecution and the latter as a kindly stock broker who takes the protagonist under his wing.
I’m sure your son is like me, using Rotten Tomatoes, JustWatch, Reddit etc to find movie recommendations. And book recommendations too. Reddit has all sorts of good subreddits for every genre you can think of where people are super helpful recommending good stuff, if you tell them what you’re looking for.
Anyway, about the writing: Just the two books, some short stories for Writers of the Future, and this blog. Maybe I’ll serialize one of the books here as a work in progress, since it has to do with tigers and animal conservation in a science fiction setting.
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I WAS computer literate… And then they changed them!
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Oh dear! Susan,
It seems that you and I must be close to the same age. I didn’t like movies either and i I still don’t! You can’t get one that’s decent these days unless it’s Walt Disney and then you wonder about Walt Disney too my goodness! There is violence in even Disney flicks! I was born in the 50’s also! We had a wonderful cat who supplied the neighborhood with kittens about every four months! Parents didn’t answer the door if they saw a kitten in our basket! That was before the spay/neuter started! I had kittens n my whole childhood!
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Actually, I was born in 1946. That’s why I said that I grew up in the 1950s.My little sisters were born in the 50s.
I dislike Disney movies except for the early 1930s animated ones like Peter Pan and Snow White, which were truly great. I wonder about the later ones too, and the animated ones like Frozen are terrible art compared to the early ones.
We had many, many pets when I was a child: rabbits, ducks, cats, and dogs for outdoor pets, and hamsters, birds, fish etc. for indoor pets. We didn’t know anything about neutering then either, and my parents wouldn’t have paid for it if they had known.
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Those were true art! The old animations! 200 pictures each a little different so that when you flipped a page, the character would move! Very impressive! I was born in ’51 and loved Sunday night Disney hour! My brother and I were glued to the T.V.! (AND my dad too!)
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To Big Buddy:
“I always tell my mom, instead of browsing through Netflix or Amazon Video without anything specific in mind, to instead Google stuff like “Best thrillers on Netflix in August 2024” and go to sites like Rotten Tomatoes and JustWatch to find recommendations.”
I never thought of doing this! I nnever think to go to Youtube when I want to fix or learn something, I’ll ask my husband and he’s like, “Go on Youtube dumbass.” It just never occurred to me go there for that stuff. I had only been using it to watch videos I had a link to or to play videos for my cat to watch on his computer. The worst part is, I’m pretty savvy about computer stuff. Went to school for 3D animation (no, didn’t finish. I had to drop out because my husband lost his job), so I’m not like some people my age that don’t even know how to turn it on. I will definitely noting this in my head somewhere!
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I know what you mean about not thinking about your phone or PC. There are times when I wish I had a witness but I never think about using my phone’s video.
And I am very computer literate too, unlike the reputation my generation has.
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