Buddy would like to wish all of PITB’s readers a Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
The Good Boy surprised me with a gift this year, which I unwrapped eagerly:
Buddy is such a good boy! And how thoughtful! He really is the best cat! Forget anything I ever said about him being annoying, picky or demanding.
He is a perfect little guy and any flaws I thought I saw in him were obviously my flaws projected onto him. I see that now. When he shrieks at me for breakfast while I’m asleep, the fault is mine for not anticipating his hunger and not getting up to feed him.
I mentioned how handsome and charming he is, right? Please don’t kill me!
I am very lucky to be Buddy’s human servant and vow to do a better job in all areas in 2022.
Thank you!
Buddy and I would like to thank our readers, who indulge our absurd sense of humor and massage Buddy’s ego.
We’ve gotten lots of feedback, which we always appreciate, from our regular commenters as well as people who have reached out privately with kind words, requests, brutal criticisms and marriage proposals for Buddy.
We hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas and/or holiday celebration with your families, and that Santa brings you something awesome!
“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.
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:
The Airing of Grievances
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!’
The Festivus Pole
Frank Costanza, pictured with Cosmo Kramer, holds the Festivus Pole as he informs his son George and Jerry Seinfeld of the upcoming Festivus dinner.
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.
The Feats of Strength
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 Gift-Giving
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?”
In this file photo from 2015, a young Buddy retreats to the platform atop his scratcher as a miniature humans approaches. This was also The Only Day Bud Wore A Collar.
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.
This is not love. (Still image from TikTok video.)
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.
“She stays in bed like this alllll night ;),” the TikToker brags in the video description.
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.
Cats dressed and posed as Robin Hood, Bob Ross, Spiderman, the monster from Stranger Things, some sort of naval admiral or Founding Father, and a Stark from Game of Thrones. I think.
A cat who doesn’t understand what a costume is, not enjoying his Freddie Kruger outfit.
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?
Pain In The Bud 