Folks, this has terrifying implications for the Budster. Whatever you do, don’t show him this video!
The short clip shows Olive, a tuxedo kitty belonging to Beth Belnap of Oregon, prying open a sliding glass door that leads to a porch outside. Olive was able to get the door open by jumping, grabbing onto the door handle and pressing her little feet against the door frame to give herself enough leverage to slide the door open a crack.
The setup here is similar, and Bud is already well-versed in the “feet against the frame” trick because he’s used it to open my bedroom door from inside. Thankfully I believe the sliding glass door is too heavy for Buddy to push, but we’re talking about the same cat who pulled a 20-pound mirror off a wall when he was a kitten weighing no more than three or four pounds. You never know.
Here’s Olive doing her thing:
Bonus: Check out this little guy’s technique:
The judges awarded him style points in addition to praising his door-opening technique.
The four kitties had been abandoned on a doomed boat that had caught fire and capsized.
Four terrified cats learned humans are good for more than just opening tin cans, fluffing pillows and providing massages when they were rescued from a sinking, burning ship by a Thai navy officer.
The ship caught fire in the Andaman Sea — a popular area for fishing and commercial shipping bordering coastal Thailand and Myanmar — on Tuesday, and the human crew were rescued and taken to safety by a passing ship.
But four ginger cats remained aboard and their time was running out. When a Thai navy vessel was ordered to the site of the capsized vessel to check for a potential oil spill, First-Class Petty Officer Wichit Pukdeelon saw the domestic kitties huddled together on a small wooden beam. Most of the ship was below the water line at that point and the cats didn’t have anywhere else to go.
The cats were miles off shore and had retreated to a wooden beam as the ship sank. Photo credit: Wichit Pukdeelon
“I used my camera to zoom in to the boat, and I saw one or two cats popping their heads out,” Pukdeelon told Reuters.
One of the officers dived into the choppy waters and swam to the sinking ship, where he took the cats on his shoulders and brought them to the safety of the Thai Air and Coastal Defense vessel. All four cats survived.
The sailors took the cats back to their base on Koh Lipe, an idyllic island on the Andaman Sea known for its beaches and dive sites. The presumably grateful furballs will remain there in the care of the sailors for at least the foreseeable future.
(Note: It wasn’t clear why the original crew abandoned the cats. We’ll keep an eye out for updates and follow up if we learn anything.)
This may be one of the few times a cat didn’t mind getting wet. Photo credit: Wichit Pukdeelon
The sinking ship as seen from the prow of the Thai navy rescue vessel. Photo credit: Wichit Pukdeelon
Many cats distrust Dr. Anthony Meowci and the entire veterinary industry.
WASHINGTON — Citing concerns about “Big Vet” and the industry’s role in the global pandemic, one in three American cats say they won’t get vaccinated, a new Mew Poll found.
Many of the cats who participated told pollsters they’re suspicious of the vaccines, while others latched onto conspiracy theories or insisted “natural” remedies would yield better results.
One veterinarian’s Facebook post went viral after detractors insisted there was nefarious intent behind it.
“Come on in and get your kittens vaccined, neutered and microchipped,” the post read. “Plenty of appointments available!”
“I knew it,” one feline user responded. “Gill Bates wants to jab us, chip us and sterilize us! They’re not even trying to hide it anymore!”‘
Bates, the billionaire founder of MicroClaw, has been the subject of many conspiracies involving the virus and vaccine. Most allege Bates wants to sterilize all non-breed cats and claim all the world’s futons for himself.
Other versions of the conspiracy claim Bates owns all the world’s cat food manufacturers through subsidiaries and shell companies, and caused the pandemic by placing inert virus particles in kibble.
In a popular Youtube video with more than 7 million views, a feline narrator asks: “Have you noticed dogs aren’t getting sick, but we are? The Mayan calendar predicted this plague, and a famous Nostradamus quatrain warns of ‘a new self-proclaimed king who wears glasses, steals operating systems and rules Friskies and 9Lives with an iron paw.'”
Gill Bates has been pushing cats to get themselves vaccinated.
Other conspiracists alleged Dr. Anthony Meowci, the nation’s foremost infectious disease expert, has been working with the Siamese to install 7G chips in cats who agree to be vaccinated, in an effort to track the population and send subliminal messages directly to victims’ brains.
“Then before you know it you’ll be carrying a copy of Chairman Meow’s Little Red Book everywhere you go,” one prominent anti-vaccination catfluencer wrote on TasteBook. “Ask yourself: What’s Meowci getting out of this? A new cat condo and a lifetime’s supply of ‘nip? A fleet of brand new Roombas?”
Some opportunistic cats have exploited the vaccine skepticism, sensing a business opportunity. Among them is Blinkety Blink, prosperity preacher Joel Osteen’s cat, who is selling “Miracle Catnip Infused Healing Water” online for $89.95 a bottle.
The product can “cure COVID, UTIs, anxiety and even make your coat look smoother,” Blinkety Blink claims in a slick advertisement before jumping into the arms of his beloved human, who praises him for being a shrewd businessman.
“Big Vet doesn’t want you to know about this simple, cheap and effective cure,” Blinkety Blink said. “They want to pump more chemicals into your body, which will make you poop more, which means they sell more litter. It’s all connected!”
Osteen pictured with his cat Blinkety Blink, his private jet and his second mansion in Florida.
Here’s a roundup of amusing cat stories from the past few days:
Pilot Lands After Berserk Cat Gets Into Cockpit
The captain of a Qatar-bound passenger flight was forced to return to Khartoum International Airport in Sudan — his takeoff point — after a berserk cat got into the cockpit and began attacking him, according to news reports.
The Wednesday flight was headed to Doha, Qatar’s capital, and was in the air for about an hour before the cat forced the emergency landing. Flight crew weren’t able to subdue the cat, who likely slipped onto the plane undetected the night before when it was stored in a hangar, according to airline authorities.
The cat-jacking was not the first incident of its kind, Euro Weekly News noted. In perhaps the most well-known incident in 2004, a cat named Gin escaped its carrier mid-flight and snuck into the cockpit while stewardesses were passing meals to the pilots. Gin attacked the captain and co-pilot, forcing them to return to Brussels. Also in 2004, a cat breached the cockpit of a plane bound for Bangladesh and caused havoc. While the plane arrived at its destination without any problems, it took the flight staff another two hours after landing to trap the frightened furball.
Earlier this month, a cat snuck onto a grounded El Al jet at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. On Feb. 21, maintenance staff at the airport discovered the relaxed feline “sunning himself” on the dash after using the pilot and co-pilot seats as his personal scratchers.
The cute shop cats of Cleveland
Cleveland.com’s Anne Nickoloff has a nice write-up about the shop cats of Cleveland who occupy bookstores, record shops, a brewery, a hardware store and a comic book shop, among other businesses. Some of the shop cats serve part-time as mousers, but most of them are really mascots and friendly faces that keep regulars coming back.
The shop cats of Blue Arrow Records in Cleveland. Credit: Cleveland.com
Among them is Saaz the cat, who calls The Cleveland Brew Shop home.
“She’s part-pet, part-employee because we have a lot of malted barley here, and so often if you don’t have a deterrent, it can attract rodents,” Brew Shop owner Darren Cross told Nickoloff. “It’s actually true – the pheromones of the cat will eventually get around the store and mice can detect those pheromones and they’ll stay away.”
“I’d recommend having a cat for any store. People walk into our store just to pet the cat… She comes to the door when people walk in, she’s not shy like you would expect a cat to be, so it works out well.”
Cat is reunited with owner after 15 years apart
While this is a nice story, it’s also a cautionary tale about allowing your cats outside. Along from the anguish of losing a cat, I imagine the worst part is not knowing what happened to the little one.
A Los Angeles man named Charles adopted Brandy when she was just two months old and had her for only a short time before she disappeared. Charles told the Associated Press he searched for her and put up signs, but after his efforts proved fruitless he guessed coyotes may have gotten to the young cat.
“I wanted her back because when I adopted her I made a moral obligation to take care of her for her life,” he said.
On Sunday he received a call from a Los Angeles area shelter who had picked up Brandy and scanned her microchip. The long-lost cat was skinny and malnourished, but “seemed content” and was purring.
“I did break down and cry because I thought about all of the years I lost from her,” Charles told AP.
Charles and Brandy. Credit: Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control
Pet thieves can find easy targets online as owners happily share photos and information about their furry family members.
With the violent abduction of Lady Gaga’s dogs grabbing headlines this week, police say “petnapping” is on the rise, and people who post photos of their furry friends online are making it easy for thieves to identify targets.
The West Hollywood abduction of Gaga’s pets — who have since been safely returned by an apparently uninvolved person — was particularly disturbing and dramatic, as the robbers shot dog-walker Ryan Fischer four times in the chest before making off with two of the singer’s three French bulldogs.
But the incident wasn’t the only high-profile pet-napping case in recent weeks, with a man stealing a van full of daycare-bound dogs in Portland earlier this month and smaller-scale dog heists reported in the US and UK.
“We have two types of crime here. One is the opportunists where they see a dog on its own and they steal it,” Det. Supt Neil Austin of the National Police Chiefs’ Council told The Guardian. “And the other is the more organised element where they target breeders or people who are selling puppies online.”
Thieves have not targeted Buddy, probably because they’ve heard stories about how mighty he is and they’re scared of being disemboweled by his razor sharp claws.
With “designer” breeds and animals with unique looks commanding top dollar, pet theft has become a lucrative side hustle for criminals.
And with so many people posting photos of their pets online and creating social media accounts for their dogs and cats, it’s easy for thieves to identify four-legged targets.
“The advice I would give from a police perspective is be aware of social media,” Austin said. “People share pictures of their dogs and puppies on social media and very often haven’t got their privacy settings set correctly, and they use tags which obviously show where you live which is something to be aware of.”
While most cases that have made the news involve dogs, likely because they’re more vulnerable when their owners take them for walks, cats can become targets as well. Savannah cats often go for more than $10,000, while the ultra-rare Buddinese is priceless.
Which brings us to our next point, a crucial one. Buddy would like everyone to know he does not actually live in New York, and that his true location is a secret.
“I could be living in Rome,” the troublemaking tabby cat said. “I could be Luxembourgish. Maybe I live in Königreich Romkerhall or the Principality of Sealand. You just don’t know.”
“The one thing you can be certain of is I definitely don’t live in New York.”
Pain In The Bud 