“She’s not showing you her baby because it’s a cat. A feline! A house pet!”
I’m just going to present this here without comment, because nothing I can say can possibly make this any better than it is. If you’re unfamiliar with the original saga of breastfeeding cats at 40,000 feet, read our previous post here.
Watch the four parts from top to bottom in order:
And to think, I was ready to write another post about how Americans are all going crazy on planes. 🙂
Buddy’s got a lot of problems with you people, and you’re gonna hear about it!
“I’ve got a lot of problems with you people, and you’re gonna hear about it!”
Those words have begun the tradition of Festivus, from its inception in the household of Frank and Estelle Costanza in the 1960s to the Festivian celebrations that have spread to all corners of the globe since the holiday was popularized in a 1997 episode of Seinfeld. (The Library of Congress even has a page about it.)
Festivus is celebrated today, December 23.
As Frank Costanza once explained to Cosmo Kramer:
Frank: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.
Kramer: What happened to the doll?
Frank: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born. A Festivus for the rest of us!
Kramer: That must have been some kind of doll.
Frank: She was.
Traditional Festivus celebrations begin with family and friends sitting down at the dinner table, but instead of saying grace and expressing thanks for the meal, the presence of loved ones and health, there’s an Airing of Grievances. In the words of Frank: “At the Festivus dinner, you gather your family around, and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year!”
In the spirit of tradition, we turn to Buddy to kick off our Festivian festivities:
Buddy: ‘Thank you. I’ve got a lot of problems with you people, and now you’re gonna hear about it!
Big Buddy! This is, what, the fourth Christmas in a row that I’ve asked for a Roomba? And yet if I went and snooped through your little stash of Christmas presents, would I find a Roomba? I don’t think so!
And that’s not even the worst part. You let me go without turkey for four weeks this year! Four weeks! Oh I know the excuses. ‘There’s a shortage! The country has big time logistical issues. There aren’t enough truck drivers. Transport ships are sitting off shore, waiting to dock. Store shelves are bare.’ You know what? None of those things are my problem! How could you let me go without turkey for so long?
PITB readers! I got a lot of problems with you people too, and you’re gonna hear about them! How could you allow Big Buddy to write so many posts about other cats and other things? This is my blog. The topic is supposed to be Buddy. Yet you all “lol” and “roflmao” when he writes stories about other cats. Unacceptable! And you made fun of my roar, calling it a kitten meow! I’ll have you know I strike fear into the hearts of cats and dogs alike with my roar!’
Unlike the gaudy decorations of Christmas, the quintessential Festivus decoration is a simple aluminum pole with a high strength-to-weight ratio. It must not be embellished. Said Frank Costanza: “I find tinsel distracting.”
Festivus poles are wonderful decorations for households with cats. Your cat will love attacking it and knocking it over. For even more fun, wrap sisal rope around the pole to provide your cat with another vertical scratcher.
After the traditional Festivus meal and Airing of Grievances comes the denouement of the holiday: The Feats of Strength. Festivus is not officially over until the head of the household is pinned in a wrestling match.
According to FestivusWeb, to avoid injury it’s acceptable — even encouraged — to celebrate with lower-stakes feats of strength, including arm wrestling, board games, a dance off or beer pong.
Buddy has never been defeated in the Feats of Strength, which means Festivus never really ends here. Few guests are willing to put themselves on the wrong end of Buddy’s claws.
Festivus is an intentionally non-commercial holiday. However, Buddy reluctantly accepts gifts of turkey, Roombas, catnip, toys and boxes. For your two-legged friends, a donation to The Human Fund is a perfect Festivus gift! The Human Fund™: Money for People.
To Buddy’s horror, Big Buddy’s two nieces visited on Tuesday.
NEW YORK — Big Buddy’s nieces must vacate the premises or all humans will feel the full wrath of Buddy, the tabby cat warned Tuesday.
The girls, ages 8 and 5, are “ordered to cease any and all activity and return forthwith to your place of origin or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension,” according to a notice filed on official Buddinese letterhead.
Witnesses reported the girls playing with Buddy’s wand toys, sitting in Buddy’s favorite spots, making noise louder than the agreed-on 70dB limit, and distracting Big Buddy resulting in an unthinkable 67-minute delay in serving Buddy’s dinner of beef pate.
“Poor Buddy was forced to retreat to the bedroom,” one source said. “How can he be expected to lounge comfortably when those chaotic, sugar-fueled miniature humans could come for his spot at any moment?”
Buddy “feels his kingship and control over his vast domain is threatened by the presence of the tiny humans,” the source added.
The day started innocently enough, with Buddy enthusiastically greeting Big Buddy’s brother, who works for the State Department and has been living overseas. Buddy, who was not told in advance of the festivities, immediately understood that Big Buddy’s brother was there to celebrate the holidays.
But all was not well.
After greeting BoBB (Brother of Big Buddy), the tabby cat was horrified to see the two little humans walk into the home, accompanied by BoBB’s wife, whom Buddy is indifferent to.
“I don’t think Buddy has figured out that BoBB is the father of the two girls,” another source said. “Certainly if he understood that, he would not greet BoBB as warmly as he has.”
As of press time, Buddy was giving Big Buddy the silent treatment.
“He won’t talk to his human,” the source said. “Not even a meow.”
Cats aren’t dolls or stuffed animals to be posed at our whim for the benefit of online strangers.
I know I’ll probably catch some heat for this, but the below video, which a Newsweek writer gushes over and 8.8 million people favorited, is an example of animal abuse. It may not be violent, it may not be particularly overt, but it’s animal abuse all the same.
I get why people are saying this is “adorable” and think it’s sweet, but anyone familiar with cats can see clearly the kitty does not like being picked up, then placed in a bed on her back. She protests, then moves to get away, but her “owner” clamps her down and presses an admonitory finger to her nose.
Little Pishy’s ears twitch and her eyes dilate. Her owner slides her into position, then holds her down before tucking her in beneath a heavy comforter. Then the woman takes both of the Pishy’s paws, places them deliberately above the comforter just the way she likes them, and finally wags her finger in the cat’s face again before she’s finished, as if to warn her: “Don’t move a paw.”
Just before she steps away, she strokes Pishy’s paw a few times with a finger, an affectionate afterthought on her terms.
Let’s be blunt here: The cat is not enjoying any part of the whole charade. She would almost certainly rather sleep like a cat, and not be treated as an infantilized, anthropomorphized stuffed animal. Her “owner” is dictating everything from the position in which she sleeps to where she can keep her paws.
Of course she does, because she’s probably scared to find out what will happen if she doesn’t. This isn’t a person who considers her cat a living being with her own feelings. She’s a person who sees her cat as a prop and a way to earn the adulation of strangers on the internet.
The same thing applies to all the “cute” videos of cats forced to wear clothing, glasses and hats, and posed in human-like positions. Last week, a short clip of two cats watching an iPad went viral. The cats are snuggled together in a miniature chair, posed like miniature humans. The larger cat has a paw around the smaller cat’s shoulders, and the tablet is balanced between their free paws.
Instead of gushing over the seemingly perfect 8 seconds we see, it’s worth thinking about what we don’t see, and how that manufactured scene came to be. I can assure you it does not involve animals who enjoy being posed like dolls for the benefit of an audience they don’t know exists, on a medium they don’t understand.
I keep coming back to the best advice I ever got about taking care of a cat: The strength of the human-feline bond depends in large part on how much the human takes the cat’s feelings into consideration.
We’re much bigger, stronger and some of us subscribe to the archaic “might is right” way of thinking. Imagine the reverse: Five hundred pound cats as large as tigers, subjecting us to tongue baths at their whim, posing us like dolls and forcing us to sit, stand and sleep in feline positions because it’s “cute.”
I am by no means an expert in cat care, and I don’t pretend to be some sort of cat whisperer or cat guru, but one thing I’ve always done is let my cat decide when he wants affection and interaction. I’ve never grabbed him and held him in my lap, or tried to dress him in miniature samurai armor for social media snaps.
When he meows for a head scratch or lays down on my chest and purrs as he listens to my heart beat, it’s because he wants to be there, and he knows I won’t grab him and force him to stay when he wants to get up.
If I treated him like a doll and tried that tuck-in move with him, he’d claw the hell out of me, and I’d deserve it. He’s my Buddy, not my property or my puppet.
What do you think? Am I overreacting, or are you disturbed by these videos as well?
An office employee demanded ‘sensitivity training’ after a co-worker joked about an orange cat’s smarts.
Humane Societies in California and Indiana hope people have it in their hearts to welcome new cats into their homes this holiday season after 110 cats were rescued from two different hoarding situations.
In Pasadena, Calif., the Humane Society rescued 52 cats who were living in a nearby home and in a crawlspace under the house. They’re calling the rescued kitties “Christmas Cats,” have given them names like Jolly, Merry and Jingle, and will offer discounted adoption fees in addition to spaying/neutering and microchipping the kitties before they’re sent to their forever homes.
Meanwhile, local authorities rescued 58 cats from a hoarding situation in Evansville, Indiana. The kitties were crammed into a single-wide trailer and many of them were in poor health, according to Kendall Paul of the Vanderburgh Humane Society.
“I think it probably started innocently enough, with the person trying to take care of just a couple of cats and then things got out of hand,” Paul said. “Most of these cats are ill with upper respiratory infections, some with more serious issues.”
The organization is calling its holiday cat adoption event “Deck the Paws,” and adopters will be able to choose from “presents” from beneath a Christmas tree, each containing discounts on adoption fees.
“We’re certainly hoping people will step up and help us,” Paul told the Evansville Courier & Press. “If you want to adopt a cat, we have lots here that are ready for new homes.”
A Redditor sought the sage advice of the always-hilarious “Am I The Asshole?” sub-Reddit, explaining her dire situation. She works in an agency with two office cats: Jean, a tortoiseshell, and Jorts, the new cat on the block who is an orange tabby.
Jorts isn’t the sharpest claw on the paw.
The Redditor explains that Jorts is “kind of a simple guy” who can’t open doors and gets himself locked into rooms and the closet where he and Jean have their food nook. When kitty Jean can’t rescue Jorts (she can open most of the doors in the office, the Redditor wrote), Jorts meows until one of the employees rescues him from his predicament.
A co-worker named Pam decided Jorts should be more independent and “has been spending a lot of time trying to teach Jorts things.”
The Redditor favored a more simple solution and put a doorstop against the closet door so Jorts wouldn’t get himself stuck every time he went for a bite. That angered Pam, who insisted using a doorstop was depriving poor Jorts of a “chance to learn.”
Then Pam went full Karen, drawing up “a series of special learning activities for Jorts, and put the tasks on the whiteboard of daily team tasks.”
The Redditor tried to put the entire thing to rest by installing a cat flap and tried to diffuse the office tension by joking that they couldn’t “expect Jean’s tortoiseshell smarts from orange cat Jorts.”
The joke made Pam “furious”: “She started crying and left the hallway, then sent an email to the group (including volunteers) and went home early. In her email Pam said I was ‘perpetuating ethnic stereotypes by saying orange cats are dumb’ and is demanding a racial sensitivity training before she will return.”
The Redditor followed up with a second post after HR stepped in and — unlike many HR departments — had some level-headed people bring much-needed sanity to the kerfuffle. They told Pam to chill out and to stop assigning “Jorts-related tutoring” tasks to her co-workers. They also told her it was inappropriate to compare a co-worker installing a helpful doorstop to ethnic insensitivity.
During her little chat with HR, Pam also admitted she’d taken the tutoring thing too far:
“Lastly, and this made us both laugh so hard we can’t deal with it in person and will be said via email: Pam admits that she has been putting margarine on Jorts in an attempt to teach him to groom himself better. This may explain the diarrhea problem Jean developed (which required a vet visit).”
Speaking as a fellow redhead, I’m outraged! My people (human and cat alike) have been the butt of jokes for too long, and it’s time we organized a Union of Extraordinary Redheads to promote our shared interests, protect our own, and show the brown- and blonde-headed people of the world that we will not take their ridicule anymore! Jorts will receive his invitation in the mail shortly.
Pain In The Bud 