Pain In The Bud

Survey: 7 In 10 Americans Say They Sleep Better With Pets In Bed, Obviously Haven’t Met Buddy

We’ll assume people who like to snooze with their furry buddies have normal cats. Buddy is not a normal cat.

Do you sleep better with your cat or dog in bed?

A significant majority of respondents in a recent survey said yes. British polling and survey firm OnePoll asked 2,000 Americans that question, with about 70 percent saying they get better rest with their furry friend next to them.

Most said having their cat or dog snoozing with them made them feel safer and more comfortable, while 58 percent admitted they sleep better with their pet in the bed than their significant other. While most people like having their animals sleep in their beds, some said pets could disrupt their sleep.

Of course if you’re like me, you never really had a choice. There was no adjustment period when I brought Buddy home for the first time. He didn’t hide under the bed and refuse to come out, or dash for the nearest small space.

That’s pedestrian behavior for a cat of his stature. Instead, the little guy came striding out of his carrier like a feline Genghis Khan and immediately started conquering territory.

“So this is my new bedroom, huh?” Buddy the Kitten seemed to say as he mewed excitedly. “Oh, look at this bed. Mine! Hey, that’s a sweet chair. Mine! I’m just gonna climb up onto your desk and survey my new territory if you don’t mind. The desk, by the way? Mine!”

He decided from the very beginning that my bed was his bed, and while I was to be his butler, waiter, masseur and personal groomer, I would also make a fine human mattress.

Thus our nightly routine: Buddy watches me impatiently as I get settled in bed, then makes himself comfortable either by draping himself over me, or wedging himself between my legs.

Readjusting and changing sleeping positions are severely frowned upon. I swear I can hear the annoyance in Bud’s voice, and his impatience as he waits for me to turn over so he can attend to what’s really important — his comfort.

buddy_bed — “You should be deeply honored that I have deemed you acceptable to sleep upon. Now stop moving and don’t toss and turn during the night. I need my beauty sleep!”

Do I sleep better with him there? Mentally, yes. Physically, no.

Recently I wrote about his new habit of getting “sleep scritches,” which came about after he realized he could get me to raise my hand while I sleep. It took me a while to realize it was happening: At most I was dimly aware until I had a dream I was petting him, woke up and realized I was holding my hand up while Buddy was rubbing his face against my palm and purring happily.

He doesn’t wake me up for food, since I set aside a bowl of dry kibble and a bowl of fresh water for him before bed every night. If he gets hungry, he slides lazily off the bed, pads over to his little dining nook and quietly munches a snack before going back to sleep.

The little stinker’s proximity, and his tendency to meow in his sleep, also means he gate crashes my subconscious while I’m sleeping and appears in my dreams.

I can’t get away from him, but that’s okay with me.

The OnePoll survey was commissioned by Sealy, the mattress company.

Do your cats sleep in your bed? Does their presence make your quality of sleep better or worse?

Buddy Successfully Completes 412,377th Gravity Experiment After Swatting Phone Off Table

Following in the scientific footsteps of Sir Isaac Newton, Buddy seeks to understand a fundamental force of reality.

NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat recorded the results of his 412,377th gravity experiment on Tuesday after successfully swatting his human’s smartphone off of a nightstand.

The silver tabby, who is a longtime enthusiast of experimentation with gravitational forces, said his most recent experiments were opportunistic.

“Usually my human secures his phone and his glasses before going to sleep, because he’s jealous of my scientific exploits and seeks to impede my progress,” Buddy explained. “But he must have been really tired the night before, because I noticed the glasses and phone were just sitting there unattended. They were calling out for me to swipe them onto the floor.”

It would have been rude not to take advantage, Buddy said.

buddyportrait_saturated2 — The scientist: Buddy is committed to unlocking the mysteries of gravity.

Gravity experiment #412,377 went as predicted with the smartphone landing on the floor with a satisfying slap, the scholarly feline reported.

Gravity experiment #412,376 was equally successful, with an added bonus — the glasses ricocheted off the nearby wall and became wedged between the mattress and the wall.

“My human, Big Buddy, was very angry when he woke up and couldn’t find his glasses,” Buddy admitted. “It was fun watching him fumble around like he was blind. He came close a couple of times and I considered meowing to let him know he was getting warm, but decided it was crucial to the experiment to see how long it would take him to find them. After all, what is a scientist without his integrity?”

Buddy the Cat said he expects a Nobel Prize at some point in the future for his groundbreaking work.

“Gravity is remarkably consistent,” the feline scientist noted. “No matter how many times I swipe things off of flat surfaces, they always fall to the floor. But I haven’t even tried 500,000 times yet. I feel I need at least a million attempts to have a really robust dataset, and my experiment could benefit from more variety as well. Maybe I’ll try the TV next, or maybe the dishes in the kitchen cabinet. The possibilities are endless!”

Buddy Thinks This Treat Is A Toy

Buddy: “Must dip my head into the food! Yes!”

Cats love ’em, they said. It’ll be a great bonding experience, they said. You’ll have to stop your cat from eating too much, they said.

I had high hopes for the “squeeze” treats and was looking forward to getting home and giving Buddy a snack he hadn’t had before.

The problem? The Budster cannot get it through his stubborn little head that the squeeze treats are food.

He thinks they’re some sort of toy and every time I try to give him some, he head bunts the lickable chicken paste like it’s something he’s claiming with his scent, along with his plushies and wands.

After wiping the stuff off the top of his head for the umpteenth time, I squeezed a little bit of it on a paper towel and set it down for him, reasoning that he must finally understand it’s food.

Nope. Bud approached it, sniffed it, then dipped his face in it!

Bud praying — “Please grant me turkey, so that I might eat more delicious yums!”

I’m not sure if this result means the stuff is so processed it doesn’t register as food, or if Bud’s just dense. After all, other cats love it, and we’re talking about a cat who whose idiosyncratic behaviors range from folding both front paws together and raising them as if in prayer, to spending months in late kittenhood engaging in boxing matches with the Bizarro Buddy in the mirror.

(I always knew when Bud was participating in a boxing match because I’d hear “Mmmmrrrrppp!” followed by THWAP THWAP THWAP! as his little paws hammered the glass. Then I’d gently pick him up off the table and set him down on the floor, praising him for his pugilistic skills while redirecting him to a less potentially destructive activity.)

Maybe I’ll try mixing some of the paste in with Bud’s wet food. Will he understand if it’s served with his beloved turkey? Or will be smoosh his entire face into the bowl and leave me with another mess to clean up?

Stay tuned until the next installment, same Buddy time, same Buddy channel!

Amazing Cats: The Rusty-Spotted Cat

The rusty-spotted cat of Asia shares the title of world’s smallest cat species with the black-footed cat of Africa.

Stalking the jungles, wetlands and forests of India and Sri Lanka are exceptionally skilled hunters, cats who are as swift as they are deadly.

They’re nocturnal, with large eyes that allow them to see motion and detail in almost complete darkness, and spectacularly sure-footed. Their agility, grace and natural climbing ability not only help them get to prey, but also aid them in avoiding predators.

But unless you’re a lizard, bird or small mammal, you have little to fear from the rusty-spotted cat — unless you get in its face.

The striped-and-spotted felines are as fierce as they are tiny, and they are truly diminutive — at two to three-and-a-half pounds fully grown, rusty-spotted cats are rivaled only by the black-footed cat of southern Africa as the world’s smallest felines.

Although the little guys are elusive, cat enthusiasts were treated to rare close-up images of rusty-spotted kittens when a litter was born at Porfell Wildlife Park and Sanctuary in Cornwall in 2020. It was an extremely rare occurrence, as there are only a few dozen rusty-spotted cats in captivity worldwide. Like most other wildlife, the species is threatened by habitat reduction.

For context, the tiny feline is only a third the size of a typical house cat, felis catus, and would be dwarfed by the gentle giant Maine Coon.

Little Buddy’s take: These guys are awesome and I’m seriously considering moving to their territory and living among them. Do you know why? At 10 pounds I would be a giant among them, striding meowscularly through the jungle with my own personal army of felines. They would make me their king, naturally, and sing songs about Buddy the Colossal Cat. I would have their most desirable females bathed and brought to my tent, where we would dine and I would regale them with stories of my adventures in America. Sadly, though, there are no turkeys in India or Sri Lanka. Could I live without turkey?

You might also like:

Amazing Cats: The Jaguar, ‘He Who Kills With One Bound’
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Amazing Cat Breeds: The Buddinese

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

A rusty-spotted cat at Rostkatze Zoo in Berlin. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

A rusty-spotted kitten, born in 2020. Credit: Porfell Wildlife Park and Sanctuary in Cornwall

Study: 83% Of All Zoom Participants’ Screens Display Cat Butts

Perhaps cats are reminding people that they rule the world.

More than four out of every five Zoom feeds are taken up by feline posteriors, a new study has found.

The research, “Felis Catus Rears In Online Meetings” was published this month in the Journal of Cats and Technology.

“With so many people working from home during the pandemic we had a wealth of data, including more than 400,000 hours of recorded Zoom meetings,” said Mo Muntervary, the study’s lead author. “Using a proprietary AI to analyze the data, we found that in approximately 332,000 hours of that footage, the Zoom meeting participants were either partly or completely obscured by the rear ends of their cats.”

Between March of 2020, when the US and Europe went into lockdown, and July of 2021, virtually every meeting in the information industries was run by participants looking at the behinds of their co-workers’ cats, the study found.

“I can pick my co-workers’ cats’ butts out of a police lineup,” said Yuzu Daimon, 32, a hospitality executive in Tokyo. “If I see a screen dominated by the behind of a chonky tuxedo, I know AI Imajo from creative has joined the meeting. If I see orange and black Bengal butt, I know it’s Hirotaro Tanaka in accounting.”

Some say they prefer the view over the normal dour expressions of colleagues working from home.

“Some of my best creative ideas of the past two years have come from staring at a screen full of cat butts,” said Luisa Rey, a writer for Spyglass Magazine in New York.

Conventional wisdom holds that cats park themselves in front of web cameras because they’re trying to draw the attention of their humans, but that may not be the case according to some experts.

“We have to consider the possibility that this is intentional on the part of felines,” said cat behaviorist Selina Kyle. “They may be trying to tell us they’re tired of people infringing on their alone time, when people were in the office before COVID changed everything. They may be looking to annoy us in retaliation for us annoying them, and if this is indeed a battle of annoyingness, then I’m afraid it’s a battle humankind cannot win. We are simply outgunned.”