Buddy — Er, Budhotep — Is Apparently Descended From Royal Pharaonic Felines

Sheba and a geneticist who specializes in cats are looking for felines descended from ancient Egypt’s royal buddies.

“You may call me Budtum Ra Budhotep Bhufu Amun Buddeses, human. Now serve me!”

Bud’s already enormous ego just got a little bigger after I used Sheba’s Pharaoh Cat Finder to analyze his pharaohness.

The online tool says he’s up to 75 percent pharaoh:

I didn’t do it entirely out of altruism to give the little guy an ego boost. The winner of the Pharaoh Cat contest gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Bud’s been eating Sheba for 10 years. We’ve never endorsed any particular cat food here on PITB, partly because every cat is different, some have special nutritional needs and what works for one furry overlord may not work for another.

But as food motivated as he is, Buddy cannot scarf down more than half a can of wet food at a time, and he’s an enormous pain in the Bud when it comes to leftovers, so Sheba’s Perfect Portions saves me from wasting food.

While the online Pharaoh Cat Finder tool looks like it may be RNG combined with clever marketing,  there’s a genetic basis for the search. The company is working with Dr. Leslie A. Lyons, a geneticist who specializes in the DNA of our furry little friends at the University of Missouri’s Feline Genetics and Comparative Medicine Lab.

The legendary funerary mask of pharaonic feline Buddankhamun Budstet Ra Budshepsut, Buddy’s royal Egyptian ancestor. Credit: The Grand Museum of Magnificent Feline Stuff

Lyons was part of a research team that extracted DNA from mummified cats buried in ancient Egyptian tombs and sequenced their genetic code.

While the project verified that the Egyptians domesticated cats long before they began mummifying them and affording them revered status, Lyons says a DNA sequence from the ancient felines “has only been found in cats in Egypt and the U.S., unlocking even more questions to be explored.”

“We are looking at mitochondrial DNA only found in these pharaoh cats and a few cats in the U.S. So it’s really hard to find these cats, hence this hunt with Sheba pet food,” she said. “We’re on that quest to find the cats that went from Egypt into the U.S. and are the divine cats of the pharaohs. They should be worshiped like they were.”

The Temple of Amun Bud is guarded by gold statues of domestic cats instead of sphynxes. Credit: National Gallery of Buddesian Artifacts

I don’t think there’s any doubt that the aptly named Dr. Lyons is on team cat.

So here’s to hoping Bud gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Dr. Lyons is successful in her quest to find the elusive pharaoh cat lineage. In the meantime, we should probably start work on an impressive new pyramid here in the US, lest we disappoint our new feline pharaoh.

14 thoughts on “Buddy — Er, Budhotep — Is Apparently Descended From Royal Pharaonic Felines”

    1. I completely forgot about that movie until your comment. For a second I thought you meant the one with Brendan Frasier and Rachel Weisz. Agreed, the remake was not good.

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      1. Oh no. Frasier and Weisz movies are great. Never tire of those. Not to mention a sexy and hot mummy. In full form.Not to mention leader who tries to get that mummy back to his grave. 🤣And who can forget the white cat who scares the mummy into dust?😾😾

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      2. I don’t remember a white cat or much else besides Weisz playing a bookish character and Fraser playing the Indiana Jones type, but now that I think about it, I probably haven’t seen it since I was a teenager when it was in theaters. Another one to add to the rewatch list!

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      3. Yes. And Mummy Returns. That cat should of gotten a bigger role. Not sure how they got it to hiss on cue. Good cactor. 🤣

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    1. Yep. Even when people rescue strays from awful situations, once the cats get some meat back on their bones and settle in, they act as if the natural order of the world has been restored. Or so I’ve been told, since my brat, much as I love him, has never known anything but indoor comfort.

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  3. Brilliant! – We have just been to the Ashmolean in Oxord UK, there is an exhibition of Egyptian antiquites https://www.ashmolean.org/ancient-egypt-and-sudan ( its amazing) I spent the entire time trying to find feline statues or references or jewels etc – there was only one which was incredibly disappointing !!!! Clearly Buddy is the “jewel in the crown” that has yet to be discovered by these experts- I will of course write and complain about this oversight on their part!

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    1. Thanks for the link. The gallery page shows that awesome cat statue, and it also looks like there are hieroglyphs of Sekhmet, Bastet or Mefdet. I don’t know enough about hieroglyphs to say for sure.

      That must have been awesome to see in person. Is the exhibit permanent?

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      1. It’s semi-permanent as many items are on loan, yes the lion is the one feline that I could find- it is amazing as you can get right up close to the artifacts, the hieroglyphs are incredible, I cant read them either but there are explanation cards. To see broken parts of jars that are “branded” with tax collectors and makers marks that are thousands of years old stopped me in my tracks.

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    2. Hi John. We have the Brooklyn Museum not too far from me. I chose to do a high school project on Egypt because my favorite mummy movie is the Boris Karloff one. I got an A+ on it. There was one cat wrapped in a dirty cloth. So many years ago.

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