Pain In The Bud

Baseball’s Best Pitcher Is An Unapologetic Cat Dad

Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin is a big-time cat guy who celebrates all things feline as he dominates from the pitcher’s mound.

Tony Gonsolin hasn’t been shy about his love for cats.

The Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher rocked cat shirts and spoke often about cats during his time in the minors, continued the habit when he was promoted to the majors, then last year kicked it up a notch when he wore cat-themed cleats as a starting pitcher.

Now the 28-year-old Gonsolin has the highest profile of his young career as he leads all of major league baseball with an astounding 1.58 ERA, 0.84 WHIP and a 9-0 record, and he’s continued using his platform to spread love for all things feline.

For our readers outside the US, as well as those unfamiliar with the sport, the numbers above mean Gonsolin has been exceptional and virtually unhittable this year. Pitching is often compared to chess, and for good reason. Being a pitcher is paradoxical — a pitcher’s job is to throw the ball across the plate while at the same time making it as difficult as possible for the batter to actually hit the ball. As a result, pitchers use deception, psychological tricks and a wide variety of tiny physical adjustments to make the ball behave in different ways.

Tony Gonsolin, Filthy 3 Pitch Sequence (all Splitters). ✌️ pic.twitter.com/Eupgp4yamb

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 13, 2020

People with a passing knowledge of baseball think these guys just throw as hard as they can to blow the ball past the batter at 100 mph. While some pitchers are capable of that, it’s not a viable strategy. Throw the same pitch again and again, and hitters will know what’s coming. That’s not what you want to do, unless you enjoy getting clobbered by home runs.

Instead, a great pitcher will follow that 100 mph fastball with an 82 mph breaking ball, throwing the hitter’s timing off and baiting him into swinging early. Or he’ll throw a 12-6 curveball, which drops off by several feet as it crosses the plate.

One of Gonsolin’s go-to pitches is a split-finger fastball, also known as a splitter because of the grip pitchers use to throw the pitch. It combines the speed of a fastball with the drop of a curveball and is very difficult to hit when executed by a skilled pitcher.

In addition to wearing cat-themed cleats, getting his teammates and manager to wear cat shirts and using social media to talk about his love for all things feline, Gonsolin celebrates every “Caturday” with posts about cats.

As he climbed the ladder from minor leaguer to pro, Gonsolin was a cat man without a cat because the uncertainty and travel schedule of a minor leaguer doesn’t leave much time or stability for a pet. In addition to the constant possibility of being dealt to another team, minor leaguers can be shuffled between different levels of play (AAA, AA, single-A, fall leagues, etc) and sent up to their MLB team for short stints if big leaguers get hurt and the team needs a temporary replacement.

Now that Gonsolin is an established major leaguer, and the Dodgers value him so much that it’s very unlikely they’ll trade him to another team, Gonsolin adopted an orange tabby named Tigger. It’s safe to say little Tigger is a well-loved cat who is doted on by his adoring human.

gonsolincattigger — Credit: Tony Gonsolin/Instagram

Note: As longtime readers of PITB know, Little Buddy and I are Yankee fans. I was born and raised here in New York, started watching the Yankees as a child when they were lousy in the early 90s, lived through the glorious Joe Torre Era when Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neil, Mariano Rivera (my favorite Yankee), Andy Pettite et al won four (!) World Series in five years from 1996 to 2000, and have been waiting patiently for the Yanks to win it all again for the first time since 2009. This is our year! The Yankees are historically great in 2022. Buddy himself might not fully understand baseball, but he has a mean mid-20s swipe ball and he likes it when the Yankees win and I’m happy. We wish Gonsolin well, but if the Dodgers and Yankees end up in the World Series this year, well, I’ll be rooting against him, cat cad of not. Sorry, Tony!

Budapest Artist’s Cat Sketches Are Perfectly Feline

Rita Vigovszky captures the essence of cats with her whimsical illustrations.

Rita Vigovszky knows cats.

The Budapest woman, who earns a living as an illustrator, often puts her own cat in her drawings to illustrate confounding and amusing feline behaviors, but she also draws various cats in silly and amusing situations.

Who among us doesn’t sympathize with this? I can give Bud two vigorous play sessions with laser pointers and wand toys, and he’ll still reliably do this at night:

As George Carlin once said: “Cats don’t accept blame.” They also have no shame. At this point, probably every surface except the kitchen counters has been “groomed on.”

Prior to 2020, I would not have sympathized with this. Then the pandemic happened, barbershops in New York were closed for ages, I binged the entire run of Vikings during lockdown, and when I finally made it back to my barber, told him: “Give me that awesome Ragnar Lothbrok haircut!” So now I have a viking man bun (go ahead, laugh at me) with shaved sides and back, and Bud has many new hair band toys that tend to disappear under couches and in crevices:

Do they fits? Of course they do:

Check out Rita’s artwork on Instagram and Patreon.

Guess Who Attacked His Cat Sitter? (Again)

Pretty soon no one will want to watch the little guy. 😦

I’ve been in Washington, D.C. the last few days and have left Buddy in the care of his long-time sitter, a friend who has known him since he was a kitten.

You may recall I wrote about howhe attacked her back in the summer of 2020, but she’s such a nice person that she continued to look after him, including during my trip to the Outer Banks earlier this year and my current absence.

If she won’t care for Buddy in the future, I can’t blame her. Bud attacked her this time for the unspeakable crime of…playing with him! (She’s had several cats of her own, so it’s not like she doesn’t know how to interact with a feline.)

I fear I am going to have to hire men armed with tactical gear and ballistic shields, who will breach the apartment, refill Bud’s bowls under the protection of a phalanx of shields, and then make careful egress without taking their eyes off him.

Either that or board him, which probably won’t go well.

Ah well. I’ll see him tomorrow. He’ll probably run to the door to greet me and rub up against me, then remember he’s supposed to be mad at me. He’ll give me a dismissive “Hrrrrrrmmmmph!” and pad off to ignore me for as long as he can before returning to his normal behavior.

Got A Rat Problem? Get A Cat To…Befriend It And Groom It?

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em?

Cats and humans began their grand partnership some 10,000 years ago, when kitties handled humans’ pesky rodent problem and people repaid the felines with food, shelter and companionship.

Now the deal’s off, apparently.

Yesterday a Reddit user shared a video titled “When you get a cat hoping it will help you get rid of the big rat in your yard.”

The video shows the user’s new cat, a tortoiseshell/calico, “solving” the rat problem by befriending the rodent, playing with it and even grooming it.

The video has amassed almost 86,000 upvotes in 24 hours.

The odd friendship between feline and rodent is not without precedent. Studies have shown that cats are not effective rodent hunters in urban settings where rats have gone unchallenged for so long that they rival or exceed the size of most members of Felis catus.

In certain neighborhoods of New York City, for example, researchers observed cats essentially ignoring massive rats and in some cases eating trash side by side with them. The largest rats, apparently aware of the truce, are equally unconcerned by the presence of the cats. Other rats were more cautious around kitties.

The scene reminded me of the time my brother wanted me to bring Bud over to handle his rat problem. At the time he was living on 88th St. in Manhattan, less than a block from Gracie Mansion. His apartment had an unusual perk for Manhattan living — it was a spacious ground floor flat that opened up into a private, fenced-in backyard with grass and a few trees.

Mighty Bud — Tremble before him! Buddy the Mighty Slayer of Rodents!

In fact, it was one of the first places I took Buddy after adopting him. He was just a kitten, maybe 14 weeks old, and I brought him with me on a warm summer day when my brother had a few friends over for a barbecue.

Buddy made fast friends with my brother’s Chihuahua-terrier mix, Cosmo, and spent the day playing with his doggie cousin, frolicking in the grass and chasing bugs around the yard. Then he got a treat: Steak from the grill, chopped into tiny Buddy-size pieces.

Having a backyard in Manhattan was awesome, but there was a downside. At night the yard was like a stretch of highway for marauding rats who ran across it in numbers with impunity, probably en route to raiding the garbage bins of a bodega on the corner of 88th. The rats were so emboldened and so numerous, you could hear them scurrying across the yard at night.

My brother proposed bringing Buddy over and letting him loose in the yard after dark, letting his claws and predatorial instincts thin the rodential herd.

I declined, using the excuse that Bud could pick up diseases from going to war with the rats. That was true, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have come to that: At the first sign of those rats, Buddy would have run screaming!

(We don’t acknowledge that around him, of course. Officially, Buddy was not set loose upon the Manhattan rats because it would be grossly unfair to unleash such a meowscular, brave and battle-hardened feline warrior upon them.)

It’s one thing if Buddy won’t kill rats. He’s a wimp. But as the Reddit video illustrates, we are apparently closing the chapter on 10,000 glorious years of human-feline partnership, and officially entering the Era of Zero Reciprocity.

We do everything for our cats, and in return they nap, eat and allow us to serve them. From their point of view, it’s a fine deal.

Meowscular Buddy! — Just look at those meowscular guns and vicious claws!

Critics Rave: The Great Buddini Is ‘An Unrivaled Master of Sleight of Paw’

Buddy finds success as a magician who makes all manner of delicious foods disappear.

NEW YORK — A thousand people are engaged in lively chatter inside the 42nd St. Illusionist Theatre when a tiny figure appears at the periphery of the stage and a hush falls over the crowd.

The lights dim and a drum roll echoes up from the orchestra pit.

“Is it him?” a man in the balcony asks.

“It’s him! It’s him!” a woman seated near the front answers, waving her handkerchief. “The Great Buddini!”

The crowd erupts into rapturous applause and the orchestra plays an excitingly mysterious tune as the Great Buddini pads across the stage, illuminated by a green spotlight.

“Thank you! Thank you!” the tuxedoed feline says, doffing his top hat. He touches a paw to his heart. “You’re too kind! Thank you!”

A whimsical melody drifts up from the pit and the Great Buddini produces a bag of Blue Buffalo Bursts from a pocket in his tuxedo. He presents it to the crowd, turns it over and tears it open theatrically.

“For my first trick, I’m going to make these Bursts disappear,” Buddini says, tossing the treats into the air and gobbling them all in quick succession.

The crowd loves it. Women clap, men stomp their feet and enthusiasts near the back whistle in appreciation.

An advertisement for one of The Great Buddini’s shows.

“For my next trick,” Buddini says, “I’m going to make this entire turkey disappear!”

Two calicoes in bedazzled gowns emerge from behind the curtain, pushing a cart with a large turkey on top of it. They turn the cart 360 degrees, lift the black table cloth so the audience can see there are no hidden compartments, and stop just before the Great Buddini launches himself at the turkey and consumes it like an insane Pac Man, wolfing the entire bird down in less than eight seconds.

A drum roll begins anew, the Great Buddini turns, bows with a flourish and issues a massive belch that reverberates around the hall. Once again the theater shakes with the roaring approval of the crowd.

“He’s a genius!” a woman yells out later as Buddini, balanced on stilts, makes pieces of cheese vanish into his mouth. “He’s mad! He’s mad!”

The Great Buddini’s show, in which the famed magician makes 17 different kinds of food disappear, has been sold out for more than three weeks running since he arrived in New York.

A review in the New York Times called Buddini “an unrivaled master of sleight of paw” and noted kittens from as far away as Delaware were arriving in New York, hoping to apprentice for the master feline. The New York Evening News was equally flattering, writing that the Great Buddini “blurs the line between ho-hum magic and astonishing feats that border on the supernatural.”

Among the few negative reviews was a scathing piece in the New York Post, which chided enthusiasts for “falling for” Buddini’s “obviously mundane tricks.”

“He’s not ‘making the food disappear,’ he’s just eating it!” the Post’s critic seethed. “Am I going crazy? I can’t be the only one to notice this. People are paying to watch a chubby cat pig out on snacks on a stage. What has the world come to?”