The animation studio’s forthcoming movie is about crime cats who rule Venice with an iron paw.
Cats are cute and furry but they’re also tyrants who are ruthless when it comes to getting what they want.
Maybe that’s why they’re perfect as mobsters, something the creative minds at Pixar realized when they decided their next animated feature would involve feline mafiosos.
Titled Gatto, the movie is slated to hit theaters in 2027, but you can see a preview below. In the film’s first trailer, Mark Ruffalo’s Nero, a skinny black cat, assists the local mafia boss cat, voiced by Laurence Fishburne, in interrogating a ginger tabby about a missing can of tuna.
They’re quite serious about the missing tuna until they get distracted in a most feline way:
Which reminds me: it’s been ages since we checked in on Buddy’s sworn enemies, Los Gatos cartel, and the Machiavellian maneuvers of the catnip wars… The cartels vs the meowfia promises to be a catnip clash for the ages!
Buddy cuts a dashing figure in his slick Italian suit.
A historic game and absolute madness at Madison Square Garden as the Knicks take another step toward winning it all.
Things were looking extremely grim last night.
Big KAT, Karl Anthony Towns, was pulled from the game after the refs charged him with two phantom fouls within 65 seconds of the tip-off. Suddenly one of the Knicks’ best players — and the top threat to Spurs star Victor Wembanyama — was sidelined.
The Spurs seized the momentum and charged ahead, splashing a barrage of three-pointers to put them up 27 points by halftime, a lead they extended to 29 in the third quarter.
No team in NBA Finals history had ever overcome such a deficit, and only one other team had done it in the playoffs.
The Knicks were cooked.
But the Spurs forgot they were playing the same Knicks team that erased a 22-point deficit with only 7 minutes to go against Cleveland last round of the playoffs. The same team that rampaged its way to the Finals, winning 13 games in a row against the league’s best teams and winning those games by a margin of almost 24 points each.
So the Knicks came roaring back, erasing the lead as Madison Square Garden shook with thunderous energy.
Jalen Brunson, aka The Maestro, aka The Brunson Burner, aka He Who Breaks Defenders’ Ankles With His Crossover, aka Captain Clutch.
Wembanyama, who has been making dirty plays all postseason — choking, shoving and elbowing other players while the league refused to discipline him — made a spectacle of himself in the first half.
With his team carrying an apparently insurmountable lead, Wemby strutted across the court and mocked the Knicks. He turned to Knicks center Mitchell Robinson, pointed and shouted “I’m in your head!”
As retired NFL player Tiki Barber later observed, Wemby “deserved to get punked.”
And punked he got. He was absolutely helpless in the second half as KAT returned to the game and the twin attack of Knicks guard Jalen Brunson and forward OG Anunoby sank threes, found open teammates with timely passes, drove the lane with authority, blocked shots, forced turnovers, and showed absolute disregard for history, pressure or the taunts of the Spurs.
Finally, with less than 10 seconds remaining and the Spurs up one, Brunson launched a three pointer which clanked off the rim, bounced high in the air … and was tipped into the basket by a skywalking Anunoby, whose perfectly timed leap and gentle touch on the ball won the game.
The winning play: OG Anunoby skies high for the game-winning tip-in. In Ogogua we trust!
The Spurs had possession and enough time to get one more shot off for the game-winner, but the Knicks made sure they didn’t get the opportunity when Big Kat deflected the inbounds pass and the buzzer sounded before the Spurs could get the shot off.
One game.
One game away from a world championship for the first time in 53 years!
Monica McNutt to Taylor Swift during the broadcast: “Go home, girl.” We love you, Monica!
Random notes:
We disown the Knicks “fans” who waited to greet the dejected Spurs in front of their hotel, throwing eggs and insults and doing childish things with laser pointers. You dumb mongos. If you can’t be graceful in victory, you’re not worthy of our team or city. Stay home. We don’t want you around.
Taylor Swift showed up to MSG and sat in courtside seats, which she was given for free, with a backup squad of less famous girlfriends to help her channel her Main Character energy. Swift showed up to a game last round to cheer on the Cleveland Cavaliers against the Knicks, she’s been photographed wearing the jerseys of Lakers, Miami Heat and other teams’ players, but suddenly she was Knicks Fan Number One, decked in orange and blue with a shirt that said “Stevie Knicks.” There are fans who have cheered the team years before I was born when they won their last few titles, and they couldn’t even get in the door when the worst nosebleed seats were going for $8,000 apiece, but Taylor Swift decided to become a Knicks fan at the last possible moment before they win it all, and every few plays were punctuated by the cameras capturing Taylor’s Reactions (Taylor’s Version), Taylor’s Celebratory Dances (Taylor’s Version), and Taylor’s Excitement Era as she savored the victory she’s waited five hours for. When some New York media figures, including the beloved Knicks radio commentator Monica McNutt, expressed annoyance, Taylor’s Minions predictably went after them with all their doxxing, harassing, misplaced fury. Go Taylor! You’ll have a spot on the parade float if you want it. Maybe you’ll even win series MVP, because surely the Knicks would not have made history without you there.
Having Taylor Swift take on Main Character duties was still better than having President Trump at game three. Not only were watch parties around the Garden canceled and a several-blocks-wide security perimeter established, but fans had to show up at least two hours early for “TSA-style” screening, no bags were allowed, and every business within a 5-block radius was deprived of normal foot traffic so Trump could sleep through the game next to Knicks owner James Dolan. The security and logistics nightmare alone is compelling enough reason for sitting presidents to stay away from events like this, and that applies to any president of any political stripe. It’s just not a good idea.
Longtime Knicks fans and New Yorkers on hand included Spike Lee, the Wu Tang Clan, Fat Joe, Tracy Morgan, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, John McEnroe, Mariska Hargitay, and Ben Stiller. Sydney Sweeney and Scooter Braun were bumped off celebrity row, presumably by Taylor Swift, and sat three rows back.
OG Anunoby is a hilariously earnest dude. When asked how he was feeling after the game, he said: “Yeah, I’m happy! Everyone’s happy!” I love that he has no social media presence, seeks no publicity, and reportedly likes to stay home and play video games. Now can we build a statue of him delivering the winning tip-in to greet fans at MSG?
LOL Victor Wembanyama, Mr. Ethical Basketball. If the Knicks close this series out, Wemby will have a long summer to consider the pros and cons of Ethical Taunting, Ethical Villainy, and the wisdom of launching three pointers when you’re 7’4″ and don’t even have to jump to touch the rim. If I were a Spurs fan, that last bit would really bother me. Live by the three, die by the three. They don’t keep on falling forever, as the Celtics can attest. When your shot goes cold, attack the basket!
These NBA Finals have reached viewership numbers not seen since the Michael Jordan era, when there were approximately 10,000 fewer channels, websites and other entertainment options to divide the attention of audiences. That’s impressive and good for the sport. However, we are well past the saturation point when it comes to the league milking every last second of airtime and flat surface for sponsorships. The fact that we have to pay a premium to watch games that already subject us to 120+ commercials is bad enough. Now the logos of gambling platforms and other corporate sponsors cover the courts and jerseys as well as the traditional arena signage, and everything from the starting lineup to the scoreboard and replays is “brought to you by” some corporate sponsor. Enough. The NBA is going to kill its product if it saddles its games with even more stoppages and mandatory ad breaks.
“I could tell his brain was fried! LOL!” Little Buddy the Cat said of his human’s inability to reconcile the feline’s mastery over space and time.
NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat lounged on his back right in the middle of the doorway, making sure his human saw him.
“I did the ‘Meep meep, I’m just a cute kitty cat’ thing, you know?” Buddy explained. “Like I’m so innocently dumb I don’t realize it’s a terrible place to laze around.”
His human, Big Buddy, took an exaggerated stride over him, saying “Bud, you really need to stop …” then looked up.
The feline was 15 feet away and sitting on top of a table, head slightly tilted in amusement as his eyes tracked the confounded human.
“Then I watched him look down at where I was a second ago, then back up at me, and I could tell his brain was fried LOL!” the feline said.
Teleporting is technically banned in Casa de Buddy, but the feline has ignored the ban since he was a kitten. The key, he said, is to “use the ability sparingly, so you drive your human slowly insane as they begin to question reality.”
“It’s so much fun!”
Little known fact: felines have the unique ability to manipulate space-time, which they use primarily to extend their napping hours.
Although human scientists and most members of the species deny the feline ability to teleport, Buddy said it’s actually rather simple to manipulate space-time.
“I just kind of scrunch up my face, try to clear my mind of stuff I normally think about — turkey, being really handsome, turkey — and picture the spot in my head,” he explained. “Then I blink and boom! I’m in a new spot!”
His personal record, he claims, was traveling more than 700 feet when he accidentally teleported himself to the roof of a nearby building after hearing its resident female in heat.
“You know, it was such a charming sound,” Buddy recalled, “but once I teleported there, I didn’t know what to do.”
“A reader suggested it was because I didn’t have Testicles, but I didn’t have Pericles or Socrates either,” Buddy mused. “I’m not sure why I would have needed some old Greek guy. Did the ancient Greeks teleport too?”
A statue of Athenian statesman Pericles. It was suggested to Little Buddy the Cat that he didn’t know what to do when encountering a female in heat because he did not bring any ancient Greeks with him.
The tabby cat said he plans to wait a few days until his human forgets about the teleporting incident, then teleport himself into the passenger seat of the car when Big Buddy is about to drive somewhere.
“I’m thinking of saying ‘Don’t forget your seat belt, mister!’ or something simple like ‘So where are we headed, pal?”” Buddy said. “Haha, he’s gonna freak out!”
Little Buddy the Cat initiating his teleport sequence.
People are intentionally annoying/frustrating their cats and sharing the footage online.
It pays to make people angry.
Rage-baiting has existed as long as the internet has been a thing, but thanks to algorithmically-ruled social media, eliciting clicks through anger has become incentivized and normalized.
Monetized Facebook groups use rage-bait to drive engagement. Advertisers use it to break through the noise with carefully calibrated taunts: “Taylor Swift has an IQ of 165. Think you can beat her in this online test?” Unscrupulous online “news” platforms use it to keep readers in perpetual doomscrolling loops, which is easy to do in a politically charged environment.
But rage-baiting cats? Why would anyone do that?
Apparently some people think it’s funny, and the practice seems to have originated where all of our society’s most brilliant ideas are spawned: on TikTok, that virtual salon where towering intellects advance the causes of humanity.
Of course you can’t bait a cat with politics or culture wars, so the videos of feline rage-baiting compilations demonstrate trolling of a more physical nature: pulling tails, aggressively petting when it’s not wanted, poking cats in their tummies, picking them up and taking an agonizingly long time to place them back on the ground.
If it annoys a feline and provokes a reaction, it’s on the table.
We won’t link to cat rage-baiting videos, but suffice to say stuff like this does not benefit your relationship with your feline bud.
Rage-baiting is just another way to say they’re making their cats extremely frustrated to get a rise out of them.
When the cat reacts, that’s supposed to be the funny bit.
It’s not funny. Rage-baiting your cats, in honest terms, means doing things that make them deeply uncomfortable in their own homes where they’re supposed to feel safe. Arguably worse, the perpetrators are their humans, with whom they’re supposed to feel protected and loved.
As feline behavior consultant Julia Specht of Park Slope Paws told Upworthy, our furry friends are not in on the joke, they’re the butt of it.
“Cats can’t know what your intention is; they’re not capable of that tertiary-level thought,” Specht said. “All they know is that you’re doing something unpleasant that they don’t like.”
I’m not going for virtue signaling points when I say it’s a profound betrayal. I cannot fathom intentionally making my cat feel uncomfortable or frustrating him, let alone to do so motivated by potential attention from online strangers.
Your cat is supposed to be your pal. Your cat lives with you and loves you. Your cat is innocent. Why would anyone damage that relationship to bring a few seconds of misguided amusement to phone-addicted automatons who think messing with animals is funny?
Pain In The Bud 