Pain In The Bud

Buddy’s PSA: Dudes, You Can Adopt Cats Too!

Buddy’s PSA informs men that cats are very manly companions and aren’t just for women.

Big Buddy: [The Human] Somehow people got this ridiculous idea that cats are exclusively pets for women…

Little Buddy: [The Cat] …which is absurd because we’re basically small tigers. I mean, look at me. Who wouldn’t run in terror if they found themselves on the wrong side of these claws?

Big Buddy: We’re here to dispel the idea that cats are for women, and tell you that caring for a cat is a manly thing to do.

Little Buddy: That’s right! Extremely manly.

Big Buddy: We do manly stuff around here.

Little Buddy: That’s right! We watch football, we drive around in a rugged pick-up truck and we grunt a lot.

Big Buddy: We don’t actually do any of those things.

Little Buddy: But we would, if we cared about football and trucks.

Big Buddy: We’re into other manly stuff, like baseball, basketball, huge starship battles and fight club. We funkatize entire galaxies, facilitate the spread of interstellar funk and blast funky bass lines from black holes.

Little Buddy: We don’t talk about fight club.

Big Buddy: And besides, the most badass canine is a wolf…

Little Buddy: …but the most badass feline is a tiger!

Big Buddy: That’s not even a contest. A tiger is clearly more badass than a wolf.

Little Buddy: Significantly more badass! A veritable fount of badassery. More badass by several orders of magnitude.

Big Buddy: I think they get it, little dude.

Little Buddy: I was just making sure.

Big Buddy: So if you’re a dude thinking about adopting a cat, don’t let dumbasses tell you cats are “feminine” pets…

Little Buddy: …cause then you’d be missing out on having your very own little tiger buddy. RAWR!!!

Big Buddy: Maybe we could do without the roar. You sound like Elmo singing in falsetto.

Little Buddy: I do not! I sound like a terrifying jungle cat.

Big Buddy: Okay, Elmo.

Cat’s Brutal Murder May Be A Hate Crime, Police Say

The cat belonged to a police officer, which may be why he was targeted.

After Josie Saltarelli’s cat, Capone, went missing for a few days, it was her 13-year-old daughter who found him — directly across from the family’s driveway and cleaved neatly in two, as if to send a message.

“I don’t know how anyone could do that to an animal,” Saltarelli told a local TV news channel in Oklahoma. “The last image we have of him is cut in half and gutted. My 13-year-old daughter had to see that and that is our memory of him, and it’s awful.”

Capone had been with the family his entire life, for nine years, and was well-loved, his family and neighbors told local media. He was found on Aug. 20.

Police and a local veterinarian have ruled out another animal, due to the precision of Capone’s wounds and the fact that the cat was placed in front of their home.

capone2 — *Capone in his family’s home.*

Now there’s a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest, and police in Tulsa are treating the killing as a hate crime. They suspect the cat was killed because Saltarelli’s boyfriend is a police officer, and the family flies a “Thin Blue Line” flag in front of their home as a message of support for law enforcement. Like officers in many smaller jurisdictions, Saltarelli’s boyfriend also drives his patrol car home and parks it in his driveway.

“For that reason, investigators believe someone could be targeting the officer and his family,” the Tulsa Police Department wrote in a press release about the case.

The Oklahoma Alliance for Animals is offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for killing Capone.

“It is well documented and proven that violence and abuse against animals leads to other major crimes,” the group wrote in a Facebook post about the killing, “including violence against children and elders. We need to find the person who did this.”

thinblueline — *The pro-law enforcement flag in front of the family’s Tulsa home.*

Buddy The Cat Discovers Terrifying Haunted Room

The haunted room, called an “elevator” by humans, eats its occupants.

NEW YORK — Cursing “those infernal humans and their sorcery,” Buddy the Cat tried to fall asleep on Monday night while forgetting the horrors he saw earlier that day.

The normally happy, outgoing cat slipped out of his own apartmental realm as his human was entering it and resumed exploring and charting the strange land outside, known only as The Hallway.

Buddy rounded a corner, exploring further than he’d ever been when he discovered a large room at the intersection of three corridors. The smells were alien to him. Set into the wall was a shiny metal door, wider than the others. A tone chimed and it opened briefly to a small empty room before closing again.

Buddy could hear a deep rumble and feel a trembling beneath his paw pads.

“That’s when the doors opened again, and a tall woman in a blue dress walked out,” Buddy recalled. “The room was conjuring people!”

elevators — Portals similar to the haunted room discovered by Buddy near his own realm.

But the foul sorcery that can create a human can also undo one, the cat confirmed gravely.

“The room is hungry and devours as much as it creates,” he said. “I saw humans enter and the next time it opened, they were gone!”

As of press time, the gray tabby cat was brainstorming ideas for luring dogs into the deadly chamber.

gangnamelevator — *Another haunted room used for evil human sorcery.*

President Buddy Begs Cats To Join Navy, Marines: ‘Don’t Be Scared of Water!’

Everyone knows cats hate water.

WASHINGTON — Looking to solve what he called “a major military crisis,” President Buddy addressed the nation on Friday night and begged young cats to consider the Navy and the Marines.

While the Army and Chair Force remained well-staffed and trained, the infamous feline aversion to water has made it all but impossible to recruit new sailors and marines, the president of the Americats said.

“We have, like, six guys in the Marines and one or two old mousers living in ships in dry dock,” Buddy said at a news conference. “That leaves us without naval power at a time when the Siamese threaten us at every turn and the Persians continue to pursue mewcular technology.”

Slick new advertisements created by a New York ad agency are designed to catch the interest of younger demographics and spark interest in naval careers.

“WATER: IT’S NOT SO BAD!” declares the first ad campaign, while “MARINES: YOU GET COOL GUNS!” is the tagline for the second campaign, which will be rolled out nationally with commercials and print/online advertisements.

The Purrtagon approved the recruiting ads after their allies in the United Katdom saw a significant uptick in enlistments and commissions following a similar campaign.

The Americat military was inspired by a series of patriotic recruiting posters designed by the United Katdom, which helped drive recruitment up more than 130 percent.

At the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at South Carolina’s Parris Island, jaguar drill sergeants were helping reticent cats overcome their fear of water.

“Get in there, you whiny little kittens, or I’ll throw you in myself!” barked Sgt. Junglestalker.

“What we’re doing is retraining our recruits so they don’t hesitate to jump into the water, whether it’s a calm lake or a roiling sea,” Junglestalker told reporters. “We do that with compassion, by recognizing the fear our recruits have, calling them scared little wimps, and ultimately tossing them into the pool if they refuse to jump.”

Asked how boot camp instructors handle cats who can’t swim, Junglestalker said: “They learn pretty quickly when you throw them in.”

Officials hope the new recruitment efforts will yield results before the brand new Turkey-class cruiser, the USS Delicious, is formally commissioned. Featuring .50-caliber hairball guns, a quick-launch claw grappler and cucumber missile launchers, the formidable new vessel needs a crew before it can deploy.

Purrtagon brass are also considering commissioning M4 Schroedinger tanks for the Marines. The box-shaped tanks have been very popular with cats in the Army, and feature a “play dead” mode, so enemies cannot be sure if tank crews remain alive inside until they open the hatch.

“Prepare the cucumber missiles!” (Source)

Dennis Quaid The Actor Adopts Dennis Quaid The Cat

Double the Quaids, double the fun.

“Hello, Lynchburg Humane Society, how may I assist you?”

“Hi, This is Dennis Quaid. Is Dennis Quaid the cat still available?”

…CLICK!…

“Hello, Lynchburg Humane Society, how may I assist you?”

“Yeah, hi, this is Dennis Quaid again. I think we got disconn–“

“We’re a very busy shelter, sir, and we don’t have time for prank phone calls…”

“No, seriously, this is Dennis Quaid. I’m Dennis Quaid!”

“If you’re really Dennis Quaid, then which film is your greatest regret as an actor?”

“Oh that’s easy: Jaws 3D.”

“I’m sorry we doubted you, Mr. Quaid. Now how can we help you?”

That’s how we imagine the initial call went when Dennis Quaid — the actor — saw photos of Dennis Quiad — the cat — and called the shelter, whose staff were initially suspicious, adoption manager Danielle Ulmer said.

“I was like there is no way this is real, like, someone is pranking us,” Ulmer told WSLS, the local ABC affiliate.

Quaid is co-founder of the podcast company Audio Up, which produces a cast called The Pet Show. Jimmy Jellinek, who hosts the show, worked with the shelter to set up a Zoom call so Quaid could meet his feline counterpart — and the shelter could see they weren’t dealing with an elaborate prank.

“It took us a while for them to actually believe us,” Jellinek said.

Jellinek is expected to fly to Virginia this weekend to pick up Dennis Quaid the Cat and bring him to his forever home in Los Angeles.

“It was really off the wall, but I just couldn’t resist. I had to,” Quaid told WSLS. “I’m out to save all the Dennis Quaids of the world.”