thebigbuddy

Real Life Cats Are The Villains of Nintendo’s Newest Game

Gamers want to race. Cats have other ideas.

Nintendo’s newest game has been out for all of one day and already cats are like “Nuh-uh.”

The idea behind Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is clever yet simple and seemingly tailored for the pandemic era: Using a Nintendo Switch, players control a tiny Mario Kart equipped with a camera and race it around courses they design in their homes. Because players are controlling the kart through a screen and seeing things from the kart’s point of view, the game augments the race course by generating obstacles to dodge, coins to collect and opponents to race against.

It’s called augmented reality, because it adds layers of computer-generated imagery over things we can see with our own eyes. It’s the same concept behind smart glasses and floating heads-up displays.

But there’s one wild card Nintendo’s designers may not have anticipated: Felis catus.

Nothing grabs a cat’s attention quicker than a small, fast-moving object, and the little karts have been triggering the predatory instincts of countless cats.

Some cats go all “You shall not pass!” Gandalf-style on the karts:

https://twitter.com/yamanoneko_23/status/1316999872961081344

Others aren’t sugar coating what they think of the invasive little cartoon racers:

マリオカートライブホームサーキットで見守る猫ちゃんのゲロ pic.twitter.com/gDpn0oGxPo

— 吉田輝和 (@yoshidaterukazu) October 16, 2020

Finally, some cats just don’t know what to make of it:

The best part about this is that, from the kart’s eye view, house cats look like furry kaiju — giant, lumbering beasts hell bent on sending the racers careening off course.

It also begs the question: Is there anything in existence that cannot be improved by adding cats?

Little Buddy Was Kung Fu Fighting!

Cats and kung fu are a match made in heaven with these hilarious photos.

Little Buddy was kung fu fighting! That cat was fast as lightning!

In fact it was a little bit frightening, hell yeah
But he fought with expert timing!

There were funky kung fu kitties from funky Chinatown
They were chopping them up and they were chopping them down
It’s an ancient feline art and everybody knew their part
From a feint into a slip, and kicking from the hip

Every Buddy was kung fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning!
In fact it was a little bit frightening, hell yeah
But they fought with expert timing!

There was funky Buddy Cat and funky Mr. Tom
He said: “Here come the tigers, let’s get it on”
We took a bow and made a stand, started swinging with the hand
The sudden motion made me skip now we’re into a brand new trip

Every Buddy was kung fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning!
In fact it was a little bit frightening, hell yeah
But they fought with expert timing!

Photos credit Hisakata Hiroyuki, Pictures of Cats, Wikimedia Commons

Grudge The Cat Makes Her Star Trek Debut

Grudge the Cat makes her long-anticipated debut on Star Trek: Discovery’s third season.

One of the most anticipated new characters in Star Trek: Discovery’s third season made her debut this week, continuing a proud tradition of felines in the Federation.

Grudge the Cat is a Maine Coon and the beloved pet of new character Booker Cleveland, played by David Ajala. (Ajala should be familiar to science fiction fans of his roles as Captain Roy Eris from Nightflyers and Drifter from Kill Command.)

Ajala’s Booker plants a kiss on Grudge’s head as the floofy feline hangs out on the bridge of his starship. Later, when a mercenary courier tries forcing Booker to reveal the location of priceless cargo and Booker refuses, the mercenary threatens Grudge.

“She is a Queen!” Booker says indignantly, clearly more upset at the threat to his cat than to his own personal safety.

Grudge is played by Leeu, a male Maine Coon who was chosen after the producers put out a call for a large domestic cat.

The floofy tabby follows in the paw steps of Spot, Commander Data’s beloved orange tabby on Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as the show’s most prominent species of felid aliens, the Caitians.

Now we just need to get Buddy his own guest spot on Star Trek — preferably as the captain of his own ship.

Cat Unimpressed With Huge Alligator At Its Door

The cat displayed Buddyesque bravery in confronting the massive reptile.

A house cat in Florida looked decidedly unimpressed by a massive alligator that tried to force its way into the cat’s home earlier this month, sitting calmly just a few feet away as the alligator pressed against the front door.

”Hey!” we imagine the cat saying. “This home is taken! This is my house and these are my humans, and if you think you can just break into my territory, you got another thing coming!”

The photo was taken in Sarasota, Florida, where it’s not unusual to see the predatory reptiles waddle their way through developed areas, particularly during storms. In the viral photo — which has been shared more than 104,000 times on Facebook — the alligator’s belly is pressed up against the glass door, which itself is reinforced by wrought iron in a floral motif.

We asked Buddy the Cat whether the sort of bravery exhibited by the Tuxedo in the photo is typical of all felines.

“Ahhhh! What the hell is that?!?” Buddy said, jumping back six feet. “I mean, uh, of course I’m not scared. Us cats eat alligators for breakfast!”

Photo credit Ed Werdell/Facebook.

Spectacular Tigress Image Wins Wildlife Photo Of The Year

An ethereal photo shows an Amur tigress scent-marking an ancient tree in Siberia.

A photo of a tigress hugging a tree in Siberia has won the prestigious Wildlife Photo Of The Year from London’s Natural History Museum.

Photographer Sergey Gorshkov beat out almost 50,000 other entrants with his winning photograph, taken in Land of the Leopard National Park, a large reserve for tigers and leopards in Far East Siberia.

Gorshkov set up his camera facing a tree that already had claw marks, signaling that it’s been used as a territorial marker by at least one of more than 30 adult tigers in the park.

Sure enough, a tigress stopped to claw new marks on the tree and rub her scent on it, which is the same behavior we see with house cats when they rub on objects — and people — in the home. Cats have scent glands on their faces and paws which allow them to mark objects with pheromones. It’s a cat’s way of leaving a “sign” saying “This is mine.”

The photo has an ethereal quality, with the tigress and tree illuminated by shafts of sunlight poking through the canopy of the ancient forest.

An announcement from the park’s staff describes the scene:

The photo titled “Hugs” shows the moment in which the rarest Amur tiger hugs a century-old fir to mark the target tree with its scent. Sergey Gorshkov, with the support of professional guides from Land of the Leopard, took a picture using a professional camera with a motion sensor.

“This is a scene like no other, a unique look at an intimate moment deep in a magical forest,” said Rose Kidman Cox, chairwoman of the contest’s jury.

The photo “inspires hope” for the endangered Amur tiger, Cox said. In addition to the 30-plus tigers, Land of the Leopard National Park is also home to at least 10 tiger cubs and almost 100 leopards.

Gorshkov’s photo wasn’t the only feline winner this year. “When mother says run,” a photograph by China’s Shanyan Li, shows a trio of Pallas’ cubs with their mother “on the remote steppes of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in northwest China.” The photograph won in the mammalian behavior category.