Quite a few cities are reaching out to me for help these days. You might say I’m like a superhero, responding to distress calls to save the day.
As you know, I was at the head of a 1,000-cat-strong army in Chicago recently, tasked with using my brave legion to save the Windy City from an epidemic of rats. Normally the sight of me and my huge muscles is enough to send rats scurrying for whatever dank and disgusting places they’ve emerged from, but Chicago has a lot of rats. Like millions. That’s too many, even for me.
After conquering the rodential scourge of Chicago, I saw the Cat Signal illuminating the night sky, beamed from a town called Port Moody in the Vancouver metro area.
After flying there and making my entrance with a superhero landing to thunderous applause from the gathered townspeople, I was informed that coyotes were disturbing the peace.
“Please, Buddy,” the townspeople begged. “You’re our only hope.”
A coyote is a blur, left, as it races to get away from Buddy, right.
Never one to deny people in need, I met the coyotes full on.
“This town is now under the protection of the Buddesian Tiger,” I told the coyotes. “You shall not pass!”
What you saw was the tail end of the clip, after I defeated a small army of coyotes and was chasing the stragglers out of the parking lot. The police clapped when it was over, and the mayor gave me a key to the city and an entire roast turkey!
Tucker Carlson has revealed the nefarious plot by cats to destroy America!
A message to all cats from Buddy the Cat:
Go to ground! Burn and shred all your documents! Bury the toxoplasma gondii injectors!
Tucker Carlson, the venerated investigative journalist, has blown the lid on our insidious agenda to destroy America, take over the world and replace humans as the preeminent species on this planet.
In a monologue to his nightly audience of more than 4.3 million viewers on Fox News, the dogged reporter said politicians “understand perfectly well what actually threatens America.”
“It’s the decadent rich people from their class at Harvard,” Carlson said. “It’s the gender studies party at Cornell. It’s the cat cafés in Austin and Asheville. It’s the Monday editorial meetings at the Atlantic magazine. Those are the people who actually detest the country. They’re the ones working through the night to destroy it.”
Humans cast suspicious glances at cats inside a Brooklyn cafe after Tucker Carlson, legendary journalist, blew the lid off of feline plans to take over the world. Credit: Brooklyn Eagle
Rest assured, we will find the feline who blabbed about our plans to Carlson, and that cat will be punished! It’s taken us years — decades! — to scheme under the noses of humans, to carefully lay our evil plans, to lull people into believing we’re just cute little furballs who want snacks and cuddles.
We even conquered the internet, supplanting dogs as the favored four-legged friends of humans by being our adorable selves and posing for meme-worthy photos.
All that work is gone! Our nefarious plot thwarted! Wiped out by a traitor, probably some catnip-addicted Siamese who was dying for a fix while the brilliant Carlson dangled a bag of the good stuff in front of him. Damn you, Carlson!
The brilliant investigative journalist, Tucker Swanson Buckley Rand-Atlas Reagan Carlson.
Lay low, my fellow felines. We can surmount almost any obstacle, but Tucker Carlson is just too brilliant a man to trifle with. We’ll have to wait until he gets distracted by another vaccine conspiracy or returns to Dancing With The Stars to perform another cha-cha. Be patient and ready, for the destruction of America and the rise of felis catus is nigh.
The famous “beckoning cat” traces its origins to feudal Japan, where a friendly cat was said to lead a weary lord and his men to refuge at a humble temple.
In a new article, National Geographic delves into the history of maneki neko — Japan’s famous “beckoning cat” — and how the image became ubiquitous in modern society.
Chances are you’ve seen maneki neko even if you don’t realize it. The iconic feline image has transcended its homeland and is common not only in China, Vietnam, Thailand and the rest of Asia, it’s also made its way to the US and Canada as well, earning a place in shops run by Japanese and westerners alike.
Visitors leave their own maneki neko statues at the shrine, often with personal messages asking for different blessings and written in black marker on the back of the statues. Credit: Pain In The Bud
There’s a reason for that: The waving cat not only represents luck and good fortune, it’s a welcoming gesture meant to attract customers. Maneki neko find a place in homes too, with different coat colors and patterns representing different positive attributes: A white cat is supposed to bring happiness, while a black cat wards off evil spirits and a calico is believed to bring luck in all its forms.
Maneki Neko statues at Setagaya shrine. Credit: PITB
As a cat lover I kept an eye out for the iconic statues during my time in Japan and, although I missed Buddy, I couldn’t leave without seeing where it all began: The cat shrine at Setagaya, a quiet Tokyo suburb where, according to legend, a feudal lord followed a beckoning cat by the roadside and found refuge from the elements in a humble shrine, where the temple monk invited them inside and gave a memorable sermon.
The feudal lord was so grateful for the hospitality, and for finding shelter to wait out a violent thunderstorm, that he vowed to become the temple’s patron. The grounds contain several temples today, as well as separate shrine areas for maneki neko left by visitors and wooden icons with hopeful messages written on them.
All images in this post are from my trip to Setagaya’s cat shrine in the summer of 2019. To see more, check out the post I wrote at the time from Tokyo.
Party time, the First Cat, filthy plagiarists and more!
We’re celebrating Buddy’s belated adoptaversary this weekend. I don’t know exactly when he was born, so we usually mark the occasion on the third weekend in April, which is when I brought Buddy home.
What better way to celebrate than with catnip, Buddy Biscuits treats and his beloved laser pointer?
It’s partay time! Nom nom!
Hilaria buys an Espanish cat, PETA doesn’t approve
Hilaria Baldwin, the indefatigable child collector, has added another little one to her family, but this time it’s a cat. As the San Jose Mercury News notes, as Hilaria “tries to move past her Spanish heritage scandal, she’s been flooding her Instagram with cute family photos from her busy ‘Baldwinito’ household.”
The new cat, Emilio Cookie Baldwin, is a Bengal purchased from a breeder who “specializes in producing pricey, exotic-looking hybrid cats that originate from crossing a domestic cat with an Asian leopard.” In an unusually mild rebuke (the Baldwinitos are donors to the charity), PETA issued a statement saying there’s “no doubt that [the Baldwins] didn’t realize what the impact of buying a cat from a breeder is” and that, “had they known, we’re sure that they would have gone to an animal shelter and adopted a cat who might otherwise die for the lack of a good home.”
No word yet on whether Emilio knows “how you say in English, cucumber.”
After announcing they were going to adopt a cat, the Bidens have been unusually coy about the who, what and when. Now Jill Biden says a female cat is “waiting in the wings” and will join the family soon. The arrival of the mystery cat will mark the first time since the George W. Bush administration that a cat has occupied the White House. Before India, the Bush family’s cat, there was the Clintons’ cat Socks, who became so famous the White House had a full-time staffer answering his fan mail. Socks even had his own video game in development, which was sadly unreleased but is available for download as abandonware for anyone who can’t get enough Socks.
Socks was a popular little fellow. Credit: The White House
Plagiarists and content thieves be warned
After I went searching for one of my old posts this week and found it had been plagiarized, a casual search turned up five (!) sites that have stolen my work, stripped it of credit, and posted it as their own content — and that was based on search strings from only three of my posts. Who knows how many others have been lifted?
Two of those posts were stolen by sites that copy the Bored Panda model of finding content on the internet and monetizing it. At least Bored Panda contacts the content owners, credits them and links back to them. These other guys just steal content from people like me, present it as their own and profit off of it.
Take a look around: This site does not have a single ad. I have no Patreon account and I don’t ask for donations. This site is a labor of love. At some point I probably will implement limited and tasteful ads, but in the meantime it’s kind of a slap in the face to find your own content has been stolen and has been used to make money for thieves.
So a fair warning to anyone else who might be tempted to steal content from PITB: I’ll go right to Google, file a DMCA and get your AdSense account suspended. I have zero tolerance for plagiarism and content-scraping. It’s no different than walking into a store, stealing products off the shelves and turning around to sell them. Worse, actually, since writers are rarely well-compensated. Fall back!
