Pain In The Bud

Buddy Acquires Chariot From Which To Lead His Armies

Little Buddy dreams of becoming a military general.

NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat came a step closer to achieving his dream of becoming a powerful feline warlord on Saturday with the acquisition of a glorious chariot, sources confirmed.

“From this chariot, adorned in full battle dress, I shall survey the fields of conflict and lead my forces, bringing to heel all who would oppose me,” Buddy said, excitedly jumping onto his new vehicle of conveyance.

“Perish in the flames of my righteous fury!”

Sources familiar with the militant tabby cat said that after completing the HBO series Rome, his past several days have been consumed with talk of “raising fresh levies,” and constructing a campaign map out of cat food, with clumps of kibble representing legions and treats representing generals.

Warrior Bud — Buddy in his battle armor.

Several felines familiar with his thinking said he’d assembled a plan to capture and conscript the strays and ferals of his immediate neighborhood before turning toward the next realm, which is ruled by Lord Lorenz Macaro, a powerful shorthaired Chartreux.

From there, Buddy would set his sights on conquering the fabled Store of Groceries.

The aspiring warlord cat had his human take him on a test run and was surprised to see several human infants in their own chariots.

“Excuse me,” Buddy asked a young mother pushing twins. “I didn’t know human babies rode war chariots.”

The woman laughed.

“War chariot, is it?” she laughed. “May I say, you look so adorable in your own little kitty pram!”

As of press time, sources close to Buddy said the enraged tabby cat had refocused his ire on Big Buddy for lying to him and telling him a baby stroller was a war chariot.

Cats in Mighty War Chariot — “On my mark, unleash hell!”

Oh, The Horror!

Mitzy the Cat has serious piano skillz.

Mitzy the Cat has a bright future in scoring horror movies if she wants to. Check out her eerie, tension-building keyboard work here:

Her technique is far superior to Bud’s, which consists mostly of running across the keyboard to create stabs of discordant noise. If Mitzy’s horror music is a tense, slow burn, then Bud’s is a cheap jump-scare.

Perhaps Mitzy’s score could be put to use if anyone ever reboots the 1988 cat-centric horror cheese, The Uninvited. Yes, this is a real movie:

Cops Need Help Identifying Woman Who Stole Cat

A Postmates driver stole a customer’s cat while making a delivery.

Police are looking for help from the public as they try to identify a delivery driver who stole a Colorado family’s cat.

The woman is a driver for Postmates, an Uber-owned company that delivers food and other items from restaurants and shops that don’t offer their own delivery services.

Footage from a nearby surveillance camera shows the woman pulling up to the Adams County, Colorado home at 10:27 pm on March 9.

She delivers the package, then bends down and picks up the customer’s cat — an 11-month-old ginger tabby named Simba — before taking off in her white SUV.

Simba had a collar but was not microchipped, police say. Unfortunately, the suspect’s license plate number was not visible in the surveillance footage.

Unbelievably, Postmates hasn’t told detectives who the driver is. It wasn’t clear from a tersely-worded police statement whether the company has been uncooperative or it simply doesn’t have information on one of its own contractors. Neither potential explanation looks good for the company.

The Postmates app is also supposed to provide customers with basic information about their delivery drivers. It wasn’t clear why that information was apparently not available.

After police posted their plea for help identifying the alleged cat thief, several users warned of ongoing scams involving people who steal pets and demand ransom.

Simba’s case is also reminiscent of a late 2019 incident near Minneapolis in which a delivery driver stole a much-loved cat from a customer.

A doorbell camera caught the driver touching the cat and picking him up, but the angle obscured the view of the man actually stealing the cat. After months of denying to police and the cat’s owner that he stole the friendly feline, the driver finally confessed in a rambling letter to the cat’s devastated owner, admitting he tossed the cat out of his truck’s window shortly after stealing him. Because of weak animal protection laws that treat pets as property, the driver was charged only with a pair of minor misdemeanors.

In the case of the Postmates driver in Colorado, because they haven’t had any luck finding the driver, nor any identifying information from her employer, police are appealing to the public and hoping someone will recognize the woman.

They’ve released stills from the surveillance footage, as well as this description: “The woman is a Hispanic female with brown hair in a ponytail, a cloth face mask on, a gray long-sleeve shirt, black pants, and black shoes.”

Anyone with information about the woman or Simba’s whereabouts can reach police at 303-288-1535.

Watch A Firefighter Use CPR To Revive A Cat

The cat was trapped inside a garage when it caught fire and suffered from smoke inhalation.

A firefighter in northern Italy used an improvised form of CPR to revive a cat who was trapped in a blaze last week.

A family in Montebello Vicentino — a rural town of rolling hills, vineyards and Roman ruins not far from Verona — noticed smoke coming out of their detached garage and called the local fire department.

Firefighters arrived within minutes and were able to bring the fire under control before it could destroy a car and a motorcycle parked inside, but when they went in to assess the damage they found the family’s tabby cat near death from smoke inhalation.

Cat Revived In Italy — A firefighter rescucitates a cat who was trapped inside a garage when it caught fire. Credit: Montebello Vicentino Fire Brigade via SkyNews

The cat had become entangled in wires in its desperation to escape the flames and had inhaled smoke. Kitty stopped breathing after a firefighter carried it to the garden outside, but thanks to the fireman’s quick thinking — applying a child-size oxygen mask to the cat’s face and performing an improvised form of CPR — the big tabby was revived, to the relief of the family.

We’re unable to embed the dramatic footage, but you can watch the 56-second clip here via SkyNews. (Obvious warning: The footage shows an animal in distress.)

The cause of the fire was likely electrical and wasn’t suspicious, according to Eco Vicentino, a local newspaper.

Cases involving animals revived with CPR aren’t especially common, but they do happen. Here’s a GoPro video of a firefighter in the US resuscitating a kitten who similarly suffered from smoke inhalation in a fire:

Top image credit Alpha Fire Company in Ferguson Township, PA, during a 2019 rescue of a cat trapped in a home during a fire.

Free Clinic Honors Veterinary Nurse Who Died Trying To Help A Cat

Kaitlyn O’Hara dedicated her life to helping cats. That’s how her family and friends want her to be remembered.

Kaitlyn O’Hara was just doing what she always did on the night of Feb. 3, trying to help a cat who was injured and all alone after a snowstorm had pummeled the northeast with heavy snows.

O’Hara had stopped her car on the shoulder of a state route in Cherry Hill, NJ, and was trying to coax the cat to come out of hiding when she was hit by another car and killed. The driver, a 24-year-old man, hasn’t been charged in the collision and there’s no indication he was impaired.

O’Hara, who was known as a “cat whisperer” for her calming influence on cats — as well as her years of work fostering shelter cats and raising orphaned bottle babies — was just 27 years old. Her family and friends, who describe her as a woman with a bubbly, outgoing personality and a relentless dedication to animals, spent her life helping cats — and that’s how they want her to be remembered.

“She took on so many animals over the years that no one else would — bottle babies, old grumpy kitties like Eloise whom she adored (and the feeling was mutual), kittens with broken legs, the defeated and sickly — but her favorite and possibly best work was with the shy, timid and feral,” a staffer with New Jersey’s Randall’s Rescue wrote. “She adored the feral babies from our orchard project and was truly our kitty whisperer.”

Randall's Rescue: Kaitlyn O'Hara — O’Hara with one of the many cats she’s helped over the years.

Now two local animal welfare organizations want to honor her memory:

On May 23, Randall’s Rescue of Mount Laurel, an animal rescue organization where O’Hara was a longtime volunteer, and HousePaws, a veterinary service in New Jersey and Bucks County where O’Hara had worked, are cohosting a free clinic for area rescues to bring in feral felines for spay/neuter services. They’ll also be administering feline AIDS and leukemia tests and looking for foster homes where some animals can be socialized for adoption. The organizers would like the event — which they have christened Kaitlyn’s Mitten Mission, a play on O’Hara’s nickname for cats and kittens — to become an annual occurrence.

If you want to know more or donate to the cause, visit Randall’s Rescue on Facebook or make a donation directly to the rescue here.