We have arrived in orbit around Canis Prime in the Dog 359 system, home to a primitive pre-warp species known as Canis Familiaris.
Despite the presence of a team of interpreters, our diplomats have been unable to get the inhabitants of Canis Prime to calm down and stop trying to hump them.
After presenting the primitive canids with a ball, a recreational object meant as a gift of goodwill, the canids pointedly refuse to accept the gift, insisting that our diplomats throw it, only for the canids to bring it back to them covered in a revolting membrane of canid slobber and demand they throw it again.
Our Interstellar Dog Intelligence and Observation Team (IDIOT) clearly failed to prepare us for these strange creatures and their repulsive rituals.
“Captain, I beg you to beam us up,” my normally stoic first officer, Commander Stryker, implored. “Please. These beings are too primitive and stupid to join the Furrderation.”
A member of the primitive species Canis Familiaris with the desecrated goodwill ball. Credit: Flickr
Tensions reached a boiling point when the members of my away team dug a latrine a few klicks from the primary canid settlement, Good Boyistan, and returned later to find a crowd of canids fighting amongst themselves to consume the team’s eliminations.
Shortly afterward we received a hail from the Canid Welcoming Committee on the surface, formally requesting to tour the ship, with an uncomfortably specific number of questions about our ship’s litter system, as well as how and where our waste is disposed.
I’ve ordered my Chief of Security, Lieutenant Wharf, to post guards at all privy chambers on the vessel. I will not have my ship used as a dining facility by these strange creatures.
I regret having to conclude my report by advising against allowing the Canidae membership in the Furrderation. There’s just something fishy about them, aside from the whole eating our poop and slobbering things. They are too friendly, suspiciously friendly even, and their culture does not appear to have any concept of personal space. In addition, they are embarrassingly easy to manipulate with simple praise, which would create a security risk for our Furrderation member species.
Captain Buddy out.
Lieutenant, have the transporter room recall the away team immediately and set a course for the Fowl 62c system, warp five. It’s time we get the hell away from these filthy, disgusting, smelly…is this thing still recording?
President Buddy said his plan would help Earth “soak up more of those terrific UV rays.”
WASHINGTON — Emboldened by new research that shows UV light and heat have a dramatic effect on the novel Coronavirus, President Buddy unveiled a new plan on Thursday to move the planet closer to the sun.
Leaning against his podium/scratcher, the president pointed a paw toward a large monitor showing an animation of Earth moving closer to the sun on the ecliptic.
“My advisors tell me sunlight is very powerful and does a tremendous job of destroying the virus, so I said, ‘Why can’t we increase the amount of sunlight, like with a brighter bulb or something?’” President Buddy told reporters. “I was surprised to learn that we can’t make the sun brighter, but what we can do is move our planet closer to the sun to soak up more of those terrific UV rays!”
Seeking to use “more of that tremendous sunlight” to combat SARS-CoV2, President Buddy unveiled a plan to move Earth closer to the sun.
The plan drew immediate condemnation from CHOW — Cat Health Organization Worldwide — as well as from the international community, with fellow heads of state maintaining President Buddy could not unilaterally move the entire planet without first consulting with other world leaders.
“This aggression will not stand!” Siamese Chairman Xinnie the Pooh declared during his own press conference.
Asked about pushback from global leaders, President Buddy shrugged and yawned.
“Who’s the leader of the free cats? Oh, that’s right. I am! I say this is a terrific plan, the number one plan, and it’s going to be fantastic, believe me.”
Dr. Deborah Purrx wearing one of her trademark scarves.
The president’s science advisors said the plan was to move the Earth approximately .5 AU closer to its home star, soaking up “all that tremendous UV” to eradicate the Coronavirus.
Dr. Deborah Purrx, who heads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, tried to reassure nervous reporters that all life on the planet would not be wiped out in a great wave of all-consuming fire.
“The President feels the whole country would be more like Florida,” Dr. Purrx said, pausing to lap at a water bowl next to the podium. “The weather’s pretty good in Florida, isn’t it? I mean, that’s where kitties go to retire.”
Stocks in companies that manufacture air conditioners soared after the announcement, with some pawlitical rivals accusing senatorial cats of snatching up those stocks ahead of time before the plan was announced to the public.
“That’s ridiculous,” Sen. Widdle Tiger said in response to criticism after he purchased $4 million in air conditioner manufacturing stocks. “What we should be outraged about is…oh look, someone’s giving out free Temptations!”
Reached later on Thursday at a nursery where he was sniffing the fur of kittens and telling stories about his days as a boxer, former Vice Purrsident Joe Bitin’ — President Buddy’s presumptive opponent in the general election — blasted the president’s plan as “stupid and dangerous.”
“I used to deal with bullies like the president all the time,” Bitin’ said, leaning in to take a deep huff of a six-week-old kitten’s fur. “But this ain’t 1962, it’s 1988, and we don’t put up with bullies anymore.”
The former vice purrsident looked momentarily confused as an aide whispered into his ear, then nodded.
“I misspoke, folks,” Bitin’ said. “That reminds me of the time I ate Coco Puffs in Lincoln, Nebraska back in 1983. Look at these beautiful kittens. Wow. Was it Coco Puffs or Corn Pops? Or maybe Rice Krispies…”
When I was looking to adopt a cat I spent hours on the web reading about cat care, kitten proofing, behavior and, of course, breed.
Run a Google search about looking for the right cat and you’ll get several pages of nearly identical results about different cat breeds, what their personalities are like and what to expect from them.
Yet it turned out advice from a friend — who grew up with cats and has two of his own — was more accurate than anything I’d read online.
“When it comes to cats it’s a crapshoot, man,” my friend told me. “You never know what you’re gonna get.”
I wanted an engaged, friendly pet, and all the breed guides suggested Siamese are the best choice. But what I heard from shelter staffers echoed my friend’s observation: Don’t depend on a breed description because every cat is unique.
In the end I adopted Buddy, a gray tabby domestic shorthair. No particular breed, in other words. (Though he thinks he’s his own special kind of cat, and he’s not wrong.)
Buddy the Buddesian.
Buddy, it turns out, is vocal, bold and friendly. He’s constantly by my side. He’s got a vibrant language of trills, meows and chirps with which he shares his opinion on everything. Where other cats hide when guests are over or a delivery guy knocks on the door, Buddy runs up, curious to see who’s on the other side and if they’re going to be his newest friends.
So why is it so difficult to pin down a cat’s personality, and why don’t cats fit the behavioral profiles of their breeds the way dogs do?
The answer lies in how both animals were domesticated, and their respective paths to becoming companion animals.
Dogs have been working animals for 30,000 years. The earliest dogs helped their humans hunt and guarded their camps at night, alerting them to dangerous situations or intruders. Later, when humans domesticated livestock and developed agriculture, dogs were bred for different purposes: Some herded sheep, some scared off wolves and coyotes, others pulled sleds.
Siberian Huskies were originally sled dogs and require lots of play and stimulation. Credit: Hans Surfer
Today we’ve got dogs who sniff out explosives, drugs and diseases. Police dogs catch a scent and help officers track down suspects. Therapy dogs bring joy to the elderly, sick and injured, while guide dogs make it possible for people with disabilities to live independently.
The point is, human hands have indelibly shaped canis familiaris since long before recorded history. These days dogs are valued primarily for their companionship, but virtually every breed has a lineage that began with practicality, meaning humans shaped them for disposition and ability. A dog’s breed is a good indication of its temperament.
Cats? Not so much.
Cats are famously self-domesticated: When humans developed agriculture and began storing grain, rodents flocked to the abundant new food sources, to the dismay of early human societies.
That’s when cats just showed up, exterminating rodents while showing no interest in grain. Humans didn’t need to breed felines to hunt mice and rats — it’s as natural to cats as grooming and burying their business.
Cats didn’t take on many other jobs in addition to their mousing duties, mostly because they’re famously resistant to following orders, but their hunting skills were so valuable to early societies that they didn’t need to do anything else to earn their keep.
Because of that, no one bothered breeding cats until fairly recently, and the vast majority of cat breeding focuses on changing the way cats look, not how they behave.
Siamese cats originated in Siam, now known as Thailand. The breed is known for being vocal, but not all Siamese are talkative. Credit: iStock/Chromatos
We like to attribute qualities to cat breeds, and some of them are based in truth. Siamese do tend to talk more than other cats, ragdolls really do go limp when they’re picked up, and Maine Coons are famously chill despite dwarfing most other domestic cats.
But without the behaviorally-specific lineage common to dogs, cat breed behavioral attributes are more like broad stereotypes.
Beyond that, a cat’s personality is primarily determined by genetics and how they were raised in kittenhood. That’s why it’s crucial to handle and socialize kittens when they’re just weeks old, and why ferals will always fear humans.
It’s also why you should take stereotypes about cat breeds with a grain of salt when looking to adopt. If you’re adopting an adult, any good rescue will have information on the cat’s personality, likes and dislikes. If you’re adopting a kitten, you’re pulling the lever on a slot machine.
My advice is to put aside preconceptions about breeds, keep an open mind about looks, and find a cat who connects with you. Like people, no two cats are the same, and a cat’s personality is much more important than the color of its fur when it comes to bonding with an animal who will be in your life for the next 15 to 20 years.
Featured image: Natalie Chettle holds Rupert, a Maine Coone.
Footage shows a shadow slowly coalescing into what appears to be a cat curled up on a sofa.
A Redditor believes she caught the ghost of her late cat on camera a year to do the day after he died.
Aw, shit. If this is true, you know what it means, don’t you?
I’ll never escape Buddy and his incessant meowing for more Temptations. I’m condemned to live out my existence hearing “Mrrrrrrrppp! YUMS NOW!” from spectral Buddies who will continue to demand turkey and turkey-flavored treats even in the afterlife.
I shall be a servant forever, scooping phantom poop out of a litter box and serving wet food to a nonexistent cat like a madman.
All jokes aside, people who read this blog know I’m a skeptic, and I don’t think it’s coincidence that every example of allegedly supernatural and extraterrestrial phenomena — from “ghosts” popping up on camera to “UFOs” tracking on military IR — can only be seen in grainy, low-resolution footage.
We are humans, after all, given to superstition and genetically hardwired to see patterns everywhere, even where there aren’t any. That’s precisely what’s happening when, for example, we see faces and familiar shapes in clouds. (We also have a long, repeatedly proven tendency to invent explanations for phenomena when none are forthcoming.)
So it’s with a grain of salt that I present to you this clip, which one Reddit user believes may show her late cat lazing on her living room sofa precisely one year to the day after passing away:
As you can see in the video, one of the woman’s living cats drops down from near the window and pads in the direction of the front door as she walks in. But on the couch a shadow starts to take shape, gaining definition in the dark until the woman flips on the lights and the shape becomes well-defined.
The Redditor says she believes the shape could be Blackjack, her late all-black kitty. As you can see in the footage, she appears to look right at the phantom feline, but she says she didn’t see anything until she was reviewing cam footage from May 24, the day it was recorded.
The shape is certainly convincing, but keeping in mind Occam’s Razor — favoring the explanation with the fewest assumptions, or “entities should not be multiplied without necessity” — what I see is the shadow of an object that, when viewed from a particular angle, happens to look like a cat. The mind looks for a pattern, so we see a cat.
That explanation also makes the most sense with the surrounding context: The shadow didn’t become solid until the lights flipped on, and the woman didn’t notice anything amiss when she was looking straight at the couch in the video. If we’re seeing a shadow that only looks like a cat from the right angle, it makes perfect sense that she wouldn’t see anything strange from her vantage point.
Her kitties don’t react either, which they’d almost certainly do if another cat simply materialized in front of them.
“That most certainly looks like a cat,” one user wrote, “but hey, I’m no expert, I’m just some idiot on Reddit [who] enjoys strange memes.”
Note:Buddy doesn’t have an opinion on this, but he would like you to know he’s absolutely NOT hiding behind my legs while producing faint, terrified mews.
Cats would never dream of overthrowing humans, Buddy assures the world’s humans.
NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat called upon all other felines to join him in condemning “Cat World Domination Day,” which he called “a fake holiday invented by haters determined to sully the good name of cats.”
“Much like television shows like The Sopranos perpetuate stereotypes about Italian-Americans, Cat World Domination Day encourages the stereotyping of felines everywhere by portraying us as opportunistic, scheming little creatures who are planning the overthrow of our human serv…uh, friends,” Buddy said.
Cat World Domination Day was invented by “Sparkle the Cat,” a personality who was “obviously invented by dogs trying to make cats look bad,” according to Buddy.
The June 24 fake holiday celebrates the preposterous idea that cats are plotting the overthrow of human society in favor of a glorious new era of feline rule, an era of boxes in abundance, Temptations growing on trees and the ability to scratch any couch or chair with impunity.
“This idea that we’d want to take over the world is patently ridiculous,” Buddy said. “I want to assure our human friends: We have no intention of usurping your power or your place as the ruling species on this planet. You are totally in charge.”
The tabby cat and catnip cartel leader said it’s long been clear humans run things, and it will remain that way.
“Scooping litter boxes is a fun and rewarding activity,” he continued, “which is why, in every felino-human household, the humans fight amongst themselves for that privilege. We cats could scoop our own litter, but we voluntarily forgo the fun involved and make that sacrifice for our human friends.”
He cited his own close relationship with his human, Big Buddy, as an example.
“Big Buddy can’t sleep unless I’m draped over him like a blanket, so I make a sacrifice and use him as a mattress even though I’d prefer to sleep on my cold cat bed in a drafty corner of the room,” he said. “You think I like having my dinner delivered to me like I’m eating at a Michelin-starred restaurant? I don’t. It’s embarrassing. But my human wants to do it, and he’s completely in charge.”
The New York-based cat’s “Million Feline March” advocates for humans to “stay exactly where they are” on the ladder of power.
Mrs. Barbara Robinson of Salt Lake City, Utah, stood in the rain and shivered, holding an umbrella over her cat, Percy the Persian, as Percy addressed the million-strong felid gathering.
“I love Barbara, and I want to see her and her kind remain in charge,” Percy said, leaning into the podium microphone before he was interrupted.
“You don’t want to catch cold, dear,” Mrs. Robinson said, buttoning up Percy’s little coat and swaddling him in his scarf. “Who wants a snack? Does my little angel want a snack?”
After eating a revitalizing serving of salmon meaty sticks, Percy returned to the microphone.
“So as I was saying — umbrella a little to the left, Barbara, thanks — we will not stand by as humans are relegated to second-class status,” he boomed. “Humans run this world, and that’s how it’s always going to be.”
Pain In The Bud 