thebigbuddy

Cat’s Bedroom Goes Viral

This cat’s got his own bed and his own TV!

Thousands of cat servants are suddenly feeling inadequate after a Twitter user showed off photos of their cat’s own custom bedroom, complete with an appropriately-sized bed, a bucket of toys and a TV.

“He actually goes in to nap and to watch birds on Youtube,” user Cinnamonbear9 tweeted, sharing photos of the unnamed tuxedo lounging on his own bed while watching TV.

Cinnamonbear9 said the project was just finished on April 12.

Thankfully, Buddy seems uninterested. Why would he want to downgrade to a tiny bedroom when my bedroom has essentially become his?

Vet’s Lawyer: He Wasn’t Abusing A Cat, He Was ‘Appearing To Abuse A Cat’

Richard Timothy Logan is accused of abusing a 21-year-old cat in his care.

The Alabama veterinarian accused of brutalizing a cat he was supposed to be treating pleaded not guilty to criminal charges at his first court hearing on Tuesday, but his legal woes are far from over.

In addition to the two charges of animal cruelty lodged against him by the Ozark Police Department, an ongoing criminal probe and an investigation by the Alabama State Board of Veterinary Medicine, veterinarian Richard Timothy Logan now faces a lawsuit from the abused cat’s owners, Richard and Christina Miller.

The 65-year-old veterinarian, who has been practicing animal medicine since 1982, drew the ire of animal rights activists and cat lovers across the country this week after a new video showed a man identified as Logan punching, choking and dropping a cat he was supposed to be treating at the Andrews Avenue Animal Hospital in Ozark, Alabama.

The video shows two separate incidents that happened after the Millers brought their 21-year-old cat, Mimi, in for routine tests and shots in November of 2020.

“(Dr. Logan) is dangling the cat like a hangman’s noose in one video,” said Will Matthews, the Millers’ attorney. “In the other video, he punches the cat as hard as he can punch right in the cat’s mouth.”

The videos, which were combined into one clip, were uploaded by Carrie Pritt, a former employee at the animal hospital.

WTVY, a local news station in Alabama, inexplicably seemed to blame Pritt for the ensuing outrage, saying she “hatched her plan to record Logan after discussing concerns about [him] with friends for several months.”

Hatched her plan? She recorded the vicious abuse of a cat because she was horrified by what she saw. The fact that she was prepared to record the incident strongly suggests it wasn’t the first of its kind.

The natural question is: What had Logan allegedly done in the past that would prompt Pritt to record him? WTVY didn’t ask that question. Instead, at the behest of Logan’s attorney, David Harrison, the station aired a story saying Pritt had taken her own dog in to be treated by Logan months after the November incident with Mimi the cat.

Here’s the bush league lede from the web version of WTVY’s story:

Though her secret recording led to the arrest of an Ozark veterinarian, a woman apparently trusted that vet enough that she later allowed him to treat her dog. However, her attorney said her dog did not receive treatment, though she went to the clinic.

Matthews, who also represents Pritt, said the former employee stopped by the animal hospital to pick up paperwork and was there less than 10 minutes. Her dog was not treated there, he said.

But the TV station ignored that in favor of a headline saying Pritt “trusted [Logan] with her dog.”

Several WTVY stories about the incident also include variations of this line: “Videos posted Facebook on or about April 5 by a former clinic employee shows the incidents, though it is not clear if other circumstances contributed.” [Emphasis ours.]

It’s not clear if other circumstances contributed? Can anyone at WTVY give us a single reason why a veterinarian — a man whose job is to treat animals — would punch, slap, drop and choke a cat in his care?

If the man has been in practice since 1982, as his attorney says, then after four decades as a veterinarian, shouldn’t he know how to restrain a scared cat? That’s a basic, essential part of the job, as is basic compassion for scared and suffering animals.

It turns out the TV station was simply parroting Logan’s attorney, who told the station that the video “shows Logan appearing to abuse a cat, though contributing circumstances, if any, are not known.”

Translation from absurd lawyerspeak: Harrison says Logan wasn’t abusing Mimi, he was just “appearing to abuse a cat,” and besides, the cat must have done something to deserve it.

We’re sure that’s very reassuring to Logan’s clients: “Sorry, we had to beat the everliving crap out of your dog because he didn’t like being on the exam table, you know how it is. That’ll be $250 for the examination and another $125 for the blood work.”

Veterinarians take an oath to relieve animal suffering and to protect animal health and welfare. Allegedly abusing a terrified, screaming cat is nowhere in the job description.

If this nasty mess doesn’t prompt you to take a shower, Logan’s attorney garnishes it with the rotten cherry on top by invoking America’s war dead in an outlandish claim that uploading and sharing the video is unlawful. Harrison — who has already said he’s instructed his client to sue everyone who’s posted the video online — doesn’t seem to understand the difference between due process in court and the public’s right to know a veterinarian in their community is allegedly abusing animals.

“1.5 million Americans have died on foreign soil for us to have the right to be innocent until proven guilty,” Harrison told WTVY.

Can You Tell The Real Cats From The Computer-Generated Kitties?

How can you tell a rel cat from a computer generated cat?

There’s a new tool that uses algorithmic artificial intelligence to create random images of cats, and the results are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

Can you tell which cats are real and which ones are computer-generated? (Kindly share your answers in the comments, numbering them from left to right. The person with the best score gets bragging rights!)

We’ll follow up with the answers after everyone’s had a day to make their guesses or informed choices, as it were.

The algorithm was created by a process called machine learning, which you’ve probably heard at some point even if you haven’t sought out information about artificial intelligence.

In simple terms, machine learning means the creators fed massive amounts of data — millions of photos of cats — to the software algorithm. The algorithm analyzes the data and learns how patterns in the data create accurate images of felines.

Crucially, the algorithm never learns what a cat actually is. It doesn’t know a cat is an animal in the real world. It doesn’t know what the real world is, and it doesn’t know what animals are. All it knows is that data, organized a certain way, produces images that look like the photos it’s been fed.

That’s a key difference because, while we have made huge strides with machine learning, that’s not the kind of artificial intelligence the Elon Musks of the world freak out about when they smoke pot and watch The Matrix. We’ll never have to worry about our cat-generating algorithms rising up and eliminating humanity. 🙂

Artificial general intelligence — or AGI — is the potentially dangerous form of AI, but that’s a whole other piece of business: It involves recreating consciousness and the mind on a machine substrate.

We can’t even define consciousness and we know shockingly little about how the brain works, so that’s not happening any time soon. And even if we could it off, there’s a growing body of evidence supporting the concept of embodied cognition. That’s the idea that the mind cannot be separate from the brain, and the brain cannot be separate from the body, as well as a recognition that everything from pain signals to gut flora has an effect on our cognitive routines.

The bottom line: “AI” can get pretty good at making pictures of cats, but it’s not taking over the world any time soon.

Meet Bowie the Cat!

Bowie is a handsome Siamese mix from Los Angeles.

Cat name: Bowie, a Siamese mix with tabby markings

Cat’s age: 14, will be 15 on May 7

Cat’s human servant: KC from Los Angeles

Bowie’s origin story: “I’d been without a pet for a couple of years, and woke up on a particular morning with the idea that ‘I’m going to find cat today,'” reader KC says. “I’d thumbed through no more than just three or four listings, and at the sight of a single pic I knew I’d found the one!”

KC knew such a beautiful kitten wouldn’t last long on Craigslist.

“From the time stamp on the post I could see it had only been up for ten minutes. I called the number and the woman on the other end said, ‘Man, you’re fast!'” KC writes. “As it turned out, though, one person was even faster, and the four month old kitten had already been promised — on the condition that the woman called back in the a.m. to confirm. If she didn’t, he’d be mine.

“As luck would have it, I picked him up the next morning, and the love fest is still on fifteen years later!”

Bowie the Cat — Bowie with his sister Phoebe, left. Phoebe is a rescue who was almost put down due to a bad infection. Credit: KC

At that point, Bowie was Chloe: The family adopting him out thought he was female, then decided to part with him when they realized they were wrong. KC, who was a fan of David Bowie, named the young kitten after the king of glam rock.

“I figured something that sounded similar would make no difference to him, so, I almost went with Joey. Once Bowie occurred to me, though, I knew that was it!”

Bowie’s favorite things are his human, his sister Phoebe, eating delicious yums, napping, and getting massages fit for a king — the little guy likes to purr, knead and have his ears rubbed at the same time.

Adopting the furry little Ziggy Stardust felt like fate.

“My favorite part of the story is also the craziest,” KC writes. “When the owner mailed me some paperwork with her vet’s info., etc., a few days later, I was shocked to read that my new pal and I actually shared the same birthday!!! Icing on the cake, really, that only served to confirm the match was meant to be.”

Would you like to see your cat featured on Pain In The Bud? Get in touch here and tell us all about your feline friend.

What Kind Of Cat Is This?

Domestic kitty or some kind of wildcat?

A reader in Alabama sent this image to the Bangor Daily News and asked for help identifying the cat.

Like many other states, Alabama is home to bobcats and cougars, but we can cross them both off the list: The long tail eliminates the possibility of a bobcat, while the coat pattern and build of the cat rules out a puma.

Aside from puma, bobcats and the lynx, almost all other species of wild cat in the western hemisphere are found only in South America.

The cat in the photo is muscular and looks like it’s taking a leisurely stroll, but something in the wooded area has caught its attention. The dipped tail may indicate uncertainty. Its tabby stripes are well-defined but broken, a trait often seen in domestic cats.

Finally, although Bangor says there’s not much to help put the cat’s overall size in context, it’s almost certainly smaller than it looks, judging from the barrel in the background. In fact, if you expand the image and look closely at the barrel, you can see there’s an arched entry cut out of it, and it’s secured to some kind of foundation. Who knows, maybe someone converted it into a small shelter for this cat and other strays.

I took the image, cropped it close, tried to enhance the details as much as possible without ruining the data, and got this:

My verdict: It’s a domestic cat.

The proportions, tail and gait are all consistent with a domestic cat, as is the coat pattern. The cat in the photo doesn’t resemble any local wild cats, and the cat isn’t as large as it may initially appear.

What do you think?