thebigbuddy

Historic All-Feline Hockey Team Forfeits First Game After Discovering Penalty Box

Cats weren’t enthusiastic about hockey until they learned of the existence of the penalty box.

NEW YORK — History’s first all-feline hockey team got off to an ignominious start Tuesday when it was forced to forfeit its first game due to the entire team ending up in the penalty box.

The unfortunate sequence of events began in the first period when Duster Hoggins, captain of the Ice Cats, earned a whistle from the referees for trying to bite one of the opposing team’s forwards.

The members of the Ice Cats’ bench — who had been napping or quietly looking on with detached disinterest — suddenly perked up as the referees announced the penalty.

“Did he say penalty box?” rookie backup defenseman Mittens asked his teammates.

After the referees escorted Duster to the penalty box, mayhem broke loose: The formerly calm felines began a relentless assault on the opposing team by scratching, biting and even throwing themselves at the other team’s players.

A great cheer erupted from the Ice Cats’ bench when Little Panther, their center, was whistled for ignoring the puck and making a beeline for the opposing goaltender, whom he repeatedly struck with his stick.

“Penalty box! Penalty box!” the cats chanted, banging their sticks on the ground as they encouraged their teammates.

A broadly grinning Little Panther high-foured Duster and the two other cats who were already inside when he was escorted to the penalty box.

“Stop it, you idiots!” Ice Cats Coach John Tortorella screamed.

The feline teammates briefly paused, looking at each other for a moment before resuming their cheer: “Penalty box! Penalty box!”

The game was called just 4:52 into the first quarter after the penalty box was crowded with players and the Ice Cats could no longer field a team.

“This is a great sport!” Duster told reporters after the game. “If we’d known the goal was to reach the penalty box, we would have taken to hockey with much more zeal.”

“The goal isn’t to reach the penalty box, you morons!” a visibly angry Tortorella said, cutting into the interview. “We lost today because of your stupidity.”

The Ice Cats are scheduled to take on the New York Islanders on Thursday at the Barclays Center, where Duster vowed his squad would “dominate the penalty box like no other team in history.”

Broken-Hearted After Losing His Cat, Man Goes To Shelter And Finds His Lost Feline

A Maine man reunited with his lost cat when he went to the animal shelter to adopt a new feline friend.

Theron wasn’t exuberant like most people who walk through the door of the Bangor Humane Society looking to adopt a new pet.

The Maine man told shelter staff he’d resigned himself to adopting a new cat after his Cutie Pie, a gray-and-white medium hair kitty, went missing. He told the staff he hoped bringing home a new feline friend would help “heal his heart.”

Staffers showed him to the section where they housed the adoptable cats so he could browse at his leisure.

“As he perused the kennels, he stopped to examine one of our friends a little more closely and when the cat turned to face him, Theron erupted with joy. THIS WAS HIS CUTIE PIE!!” the shelter’s staff wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.

The staff had no reason to doubt him, but even if they did, Theron had ample proof: Like any human who loves his or her cat, Theron’s smartphone was a virtual gallery of photos of the little guy.

“Theron’s camera roll was full of pictures of Cutie Pie,” shelter staff wrote, “leaving no question that this reunion was the real deal!”

For his part, Cutie Pie must have had quite the ordeal and couldn’t wait to go back to his real home with his human.

“Let me just say I’ve honestly never seen a cat so eager to be in a cat carrier!” shelter staff wrote on Facebook. “He was SO ready to go home!”

I really don’t like to think of the possibility of Bud going missing, but if he did and we found ourselves in a situation similar to the one Theron and Cutie Pie found themselves in, the reunion wouldn’t be nearly as happy or tear-inducing.

“Oh my God! It’s Buddy! Buddy, it’s really you! I’m so glad I found you!”

“Get me out of this cage this very instant! These people are crazy! Do you realize they have not fed me turkey once since I’ve been here?!? Not once! And these accommodations! A bathroom and a food bowl within five feet of each other. Unthinkable! They’ve put me in with the riff-raff, as if I’m a common cat and not a king! I demand to speak with the manager! Actually, nevermind…I demand you take me home this very instant, feed me turkey, give me a massage, and then summon the manager so I can give her a piece of my mind! You’re going to have to make this up to me, you know. I expect the treat cabinet to be restocked with all manner of yums, including Temptations. I had to sleep on a pad. A pad! I tried to tell them, I said ‘I only sleep on top of my Big Buddy!’ And they wouldn’t listen. These people are torturous! I swear, when I get home…”

Thundercats Reboot Delayed As Star Buddy Feuds With Producers

Buddy the Cat is demanding to play the heroic Lion-O instead of Snarf, the comedic relief of the show.

LOS ANGELES — The new reboot of beloved 80s cartoon Thundercats was thrown into limbo on Monday after one of its stars, Buddy the Cat, accused studio executives of lying to him about his role.

Thundercats follows a group of “catlike humanoid aliens” who flee their dying home world, Thundera, to settle on a new planet called Third Earth. Led by the heroic Lion-O, the Thundercats encounter a dire threat on their new world — a powerful sorcerer named Mumm-Ra who commands the magic of the Ancient Spirits of Evil.

Buddy the Cat inked the deal believing he was to star as the gallant, brave and muscular hero Lion-O, his agents said. but studio executives said they’d always planned for Buddy to play the doughy and cowardly Snarf, who often serves as comic relief.

“Buddy is a leading man, er, cat,” his principle agent, Ari Gold, said. “When the producers said they loved him for the role, Buddy had no reason to believe they envisioned him as anyone other than Lion-O.”

But the studio and production team had always intended for the gray tabby cat to play Snarf, showrunner Trey Parker said.

“Buddy is the quintessential Snarf: An amusing little butterball whose silly antics bring a touch of humor to the show,” Parker said. “We needed someone believably heroic go play Lion-O, someone who is powerful and ripped. That’s why we went with Maru, the famous Youtube cat.”

maru — *Producers chose Maru for the role of the heroic Lion-O.*

Fan reaction was swift and condemnatory.

“How dare you cast anyone other than Buddy to play Lion-O, or suggest he’s not muscular and ripped enough for the role,” one angry fan said in a voicemail. “I’m totally ripp…I mean, Buddy is totally ripped! He IS Lion-O.”

Production on the new series remained stalled, with Buddy refusing to exit his trailer until the casting kerfuffle has been resolved.

“Buddy has indicated he’d compromise,” Gold said. “He’s willing to play the role of Tygra, if the producers are willing to show flexibility by making Tygra the leader of the Thundercats. The box is in their court.”

Buddy’s PSA: Dudes, You Can Adopt Cats Too!

Buddy’s PSA informs men that cats are very manly companions and aren’t just for women.

Big Buddy: [The Human] Somehow people got this ridiculous idea that cats are exclusively pets for women…

Little Buddy: [The Cat] …which is absurd because we’re basically small tigers. I mean, look at me. Who wouldn’t run in terror if they found themselves on the wrong side of these claws?

Big Buddy: We’re here to dispel the idea that cats are for women, and tell you that caring for a cat is a manly thing to do.

Little Buddy: That’s right! Extremely manly.

Big Buddy: We do manly stuff around here.

Little Buddy: That’s right! We watch football, we drive around in a rugged pick-up truck and we grunt a lot.

Big Buddy: We don’t actually do any of those things.

Little Buddy: But we would, if we cared about football and trucks.

Big Buddy: We’re into other manly stuff, like baseball, basketball, huge starship battles and fight club. We funkatize entire galaxies, facilitate the spread of interstellar funk and blast funky bass lines from black holes.

Little Buddy: We don’t talk about fight club.

Big Buddy: And besides, the most badass canine is a wolf…

Little Buddy: …but the most badass feline is a tiger!

Big Buddy: That’s not even a contest. A tiger is clearly more badass than a wolf.

Little Buddy: Significantly more badass! A veritable fount of badassery. More badass by several orders of magnitude.

Big Buddy: I think they get it, little dude.

Little Buddy: I was just making sure.

Big Buddy: So if you’re a dude thinking about adopting a cat, don’t let dumbasses tell you cats are “feminine” pets…

Little Buddy: …cause then you’d be missing out on having your very own little tiger buddy. RAWR!!!

Big Buddy: Maybe we could do without the roar. You sound like Elmo singing in falsetto.

Little Buddy: I do not! I sound like a terrifying jungle cat.

Big Buddy: Okay, Elmo.

Cat’s Brutal Murder May Be A Hate Crime, Police Say

The cat belonged to a police officer, which may be why he was targeted.

After Josie Saltarelli’s cat, Capone, went missing for a few days, it was her 13-year-old daughter who found him — directly across from the family’s driveway and cleaved neatly in two, as if to send a message.

“I don’t know how anyone could do that to an animal,” Saltarelli told a local TV news channel in Oklahoma. “The last image we have of him is cut in half and gutted. My 13-year-old daughter had to see that and that is our memory of him, and it’s awful.”

Capone had been with the family his entire life, for nine years, and was well-loved, his family and neighbors told local media. He was found on Aug. 20.

Police and a local veterinarian have ruled out another animal, due to the precision of Capone’s wounds and the fact that the cat was placed in front of their home.

capone2 — *Capone in his family’s home.*

Now there’s a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest, and police in Tulsa are treating the killing as a hate crime. They suspect the cat was killed because Saltarelli’s boyfriend is a police officer, and the family flies a “Thin Blue Line” flag in front of their home as a message of support for law enforcement. Like officers in many smaller jurisdictions, Saltarelli’s boyfriend also drives his patrol car home and parks it in his driveway.

“For that reason, investigators believe someone could be targeting the officer and his family,” the Tulsa Police Department wrote in a press release about the case.

The Oklahoma Alliance for Animals is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for killing Capone.

“It is well documented and proven that violence and abuse against animals leads to other major crimes,” the group wrote in a Facebook post about the killing, “including violence against children and elders. We need to find the person who did this.”