Pain In The Bud

Viral FB Post Claims Cats Have One Emotion: Contempt

Factchecking a Facebook post claiming cats feel a single emotion: Contempt.

You have to feel sorry for the people still stuck in the Zuckerbergian cesspit that is Facebook, spending their days wading through tedious political arguments and “SHARE IF U AGREE” shitposts written for the paste-eating crowd.

Unfortunately, the platform’s rampant misinformation is not limited to politics. Here’s one of the latest viral posts:

Facebook Derp — Derp derp derp! A derp a derp derp derp!

And this is what it looks like now, to protect people like your aunt who keeps sending you email forwards about Pizzagate:

Whenever I encounter stuff like this, my first instinct is to dismiss it as nonsense no one would actually believe. Then I remember our dubious track record when it comes to critical thinking: a third of millennials are flat-Earthers, one in four Americans thinks the sun orbits the Earth, and more than 16 million Americans believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

Some futurists and ethicists thought the world wide web would bring an end to conspiracy theories and outlandish beliefs, with the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips and the disinfectant power of the truth. But falsehoods have remarkable staying power, and the internet is happy to oblige any conspiracy theory no matter how far removed from reality, with sites like this one that says it offers “no-bullshit truth”:

So at the risk of stating the obvious, purring has nothing to do with a cat’s heartbeat, and cats experience all the same primary emotions we do (happiness, sadness, fear, excitement, nervousness) as well as quite a few secondary emotions, like jealousy, disappointment, contentment and confidence.

The idea that animals like cats and dogs are emotionless automatons went out of favor more than half a century ago, and modern technology has made it possible for scientists to peer into the minds of our domesticated friends and witness brain activity that mirrors our own when we process emotions. There is no debate: Cats have very real emotions, which is another compelling reason to treat them well.

Buddy In A Box!

Thanks to our patented Silky Smooth™ technology, your new Buddy’s fur will feel velvety and softer than ever when you pet him!

A very special package came in the mail today:

Buddy: The Unboxing — FRAGILE: “Hmmm. Must be Italian.”

Amazon gave me free shipping on my brand new Buddy, which is supposed to be a vast improvement on the original first-generation Buddy. This Buddy is “more delightful than ever,” according to the marketing materials:

“The amazing Buddy 2.0 is 15 percent cuter, 0.003 percent more brave, and is better than ever at impressing your friends with his vast knowledge of poultry and useless trivia! Thanks to our patented Silky Smooth™ technology, your new Buddy’s fur will feel velvety and softer than ever when you pet him! IMPORTANT: Do not feed Temptations to your new Buddy. Doing so will void your product warranty.”

Buddy In A Box — This model must be plugged in 12 to 16 hours a day to recharge. Indicator lights (his eyes) will glow when fully charged.

“This Is The Creepiest Cat I’ve Ever Seen!”

A Cornish Rex named Pixel is turning heads with his unusual features and bizarre-looking expressions.

Meet Pixel the cat, whose dread visage is so terrifying it prompted Buddy to run screaming and hide behind the TV:

Buddy isn’t the only one to recoil in horror after seeing photos of the two-year-old Cornish Rex.

“All the time people say ‘this is the creepiest cat I’ve ever seen’, ‘my sleep paralysis demon has come to life’ and if they saw him in the middle of the night they’d have a heart attack and it would scare them to death,” said Alyson Kalhagen, Pixel’s human. “People say all the time that he’s a ‘demon cat’ who ‘must be possessed’ and that the devil’s taken control of him. It’s kind of a recurring theme.

“I think it’s pretty funny because I usually just say ‘imagine coming face to face when you’re trying to scoop the litter box.'”

Kalhagen even heard from a self-described exorcist after she began posting photos of her wide-eyed feline, who favors making weird faces that accentuate his freakiness.

The “exorcist” suggested caging Pixel and praying over him, cautioning that the cat was possessed by an entity.

It probably goes without saying, but for the benefit of our readers who aren’t familiar with Catholic belief and customs, exorcists are longtime priests who must complete a great deal of instruction — on top of the usual nine years of education including a post-graduate theology degree — before they can become exorcists. It’s not a job you can seek out or volunteer for, and exorcists are rarely publicly identified.

So it’s a safe bet to say the person who contacted Kalhagen is a self-proclaimed exorcist at best. Still, the person’s conviction that the cat is possessed is amusing:

Pixel, who has a thousand adoring fans on Instagram, is having the last laugh:

Buddy the Brave — “Is he…is he gone? You sure?”

Now There’s A Mail-In DNA Test For Cats

A company offers DNA tests for cats, similar to the ancestry tests offered to people. What can you learn about your cat?

Ever wonder about your cat’s parentage, breed and potential health problems? A mail-in DNA test for cats promises to fill you in on the details.

Basepaws, a Los Angeles company, offers a kit not much different from the human mail-in DNA tests: You swab the inside of your cat’s mouth for a few seconds, secure it according to the provided instructions, and mail it to the company, which processes the results.

Screenshot_2020-12-16 Basepaws-cat-kit-sample jpg (WEBP Image, 974 × 731 pixels) — The basepaws kit.

In four to six weeks you’re notified that your cat’s results are ready, and you’ll get a report with a breakdown of genetic identity, associated breeds and potential health issues to watch out for.

This presents a problem for me, of course. Buddy thinks he’s descended from a long line of legendary warrior felids. I took a regular Q-tip, made a big show of swabbing his cheek for his DNA, and told him I was mailing it away for analysis.

Then I cooked this up:

You’ll notice the results don’t come close to adding up to 100 percent. The company’s founder says that’s because the more people test their cats, the more accurate the results will be, with fewer unknowns as the overall database expands.

Each cat’s report is updated indefinitely as the company continues to test. Checking back over subsequent months and years will yield updated information on your cat, the company says.

All jokes aside, it would be interesting to find out more about the Budster’s background. All I know is that his mom was an indoor cat who wasn’t spayed. She went into heat, she got out, she came back and the rest is history.

Because he’s a big talker, I’ve always wondered if Bud might have a bit of Siamese or one of the other chattier breeds in him. His coat is pretty short, extremely soft and all grey/dark grey in a tabby pattern, except for a single white tuft on his chest.

Interestingly, most of his tabby stripes are unbroken, a trait usually seen in hybrid cats.

He’s comically incapable of certain things, but almost frighteningly intelligent in other respects, and he wears his emotions on his sleeve…er, paw? Maybe there really are secrets to unlock in his DNA.

Cat DNA analysis is in its infancy

On the downside, Basepaws DNA tests don’t come cheap — with two packages priced at $129 and $99 — and, as a review in Wired notes, cat ancestry reports are always going to be more vague than reports on human or dog DNA.

That’s because the practice of dog breeding is a lot older and more common than creating pedigree cat lines, and most cats are not a specific breed. Unlike dogs — whose roles range from hunting and shepherding to assisting the blind and pulling sleds — cats have always had one job, and occasionally two. Kill rodents and snuggle with their humans, cuddly killers that they are.

Historically humans haven’t felt a compelling need to interfere with cat procreation. The last century or so has been an exception, but breeds still represent a small minority of cats.

If you’ve had your cat’s DNA analyzed, we’d love to hear from you about your experience.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to tell a certain Tiger-Manticore-Jaguar about his impressive felid lineage.

The Very Reverend Buddy: ‘Let Us Pray’

An odd, unexplained cat behavior caught on video. Why do cats make this gesture?

I managed to film a brief clip of Buddy enthusiastically “praying.”

This gesture is also called cat pleading or begging in various corners of the interwebs, but as far as I can tell it really doesn’t have anything to do with asking or pleading. I’ve seen my cat do the same motion while he doesn’t think anyone else is around, while he’s at the window looking at birds, and at other random times.

The gesture is so random that this is the first time I’ve managed to get a decent clip of it. Usually by the time I’ve got my phone pointed at His Grace and begun recording, he’s finished his “prayers.”

I have no clue what it means or why some cats do it. All I know is that it’s a fairly rare thing. Perhaps a cat behaviorist somewhere could offer some insight.

Reverend Bud — “Dear Lord, provide me with turkey.”

Also: Happy Adoptaversary to Holly B, Retro Dee’s cute furball. Holly is named after Buddy Holly, so she’s a little buddy too, and she’s been with Dee for two years now. We wish Holly good health and many more years with her loving human, Dee.