Mistaking her for a stranger, Buddy ambushed his cat sitter while his human, Big Buddy, was away.
I’m up in the Catskills this weekend, which means a friend has been looking in on Buddy and feeding him while I’m away.
He knows her and she’s helped me out by cat-sitting in the past, but it didn’t occur to me that it’s been quite a while since the little guy saw her.
Most cats would run and hide if their humans were away and a “stranger” suddenly entered the house. Not Buddy, apparently.
My friend unlocked the door, stepped inside and was greeted by all 10 pounds of the Budster in attack mode. Little man calmed down when he recognized her and realized she was there to feed him.
I’m sure he also gave her an earful, including “Where’s my servant?! This is unacceptable!”
For all our progress in communicating with our pets, learning body language and other non-verbal cues, we humans still don’t have a way to help them understand what a weekend getaway is, or ease their anxiety by reassuring them we will be home in a few days.
I expect I’ll get the cold shoulder when I walk through the door. It’ll last a minute or two until Bud’s resolve breaks down and he celebrates my return by meowing happily and getting his scent all over me.
Got a few hundred bucks to waste? KingPet would like to take your money.
Buddy has been declared the handsomest cat ever after winning the KingPet cat contest!
Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t enter him in the contest. Didn’t upload his photo, didn’t make a profile for him. I’m merely declaring him the winner because the people behind KingPet wasted 2.5 minutes of my life by enticing me with a Youtube ad to visit their “pet contest” site.
What is KingPet? Here’s how the site’s owners describe it:
KingPet is a Free Photo Competition for dogs, cats and all sorts of other animals! Participate and vote to win up many gifts each month!
You mean we can win up many gifts each month?!? Why haven’t I been told about this before? Many gifts! I’m in!
That bit of mangled English is just the first indication that something shady’s going on here. On the front page I saw a photo of an adorable kitten with zero votes, so I upvoted the little one and was immediately taken to a page that gave up the goods.
My first vote was free, according to the generous people who run KingPet, but if I wanted to keep voting past a certain point I’d have to buy vote packages ranging from $3.99 for 150 votes all the way up to $189.99 for 20,000 votes.
KingPet vote packages.
Now you can see where this is going:
Join the site and enter Fluffy in the contest.
Get upset because no one’s voting for Fluffy, without realizing that because you haven’t paid any money, Fluffy’s photo is just sitting on the KingPet server, not being displayed to anyone.
Indignant that lesser pets (!) are coasting to the grand prize of “winning up many gifts,” you exhaust your free supply of votes on Fluffy, reasoning that everyone else probably upvotes their own cats and dogs. (Of course they do.)
That failed to move the needle! Okay, let’s make a purchase — just a small one! — to get Fluffy moving up the charts. You can by 150 votes for $3.99, but 2,000 votes for only $12.99! Who wouldn’t do that? You’re saving money!
Now things are moving! Fluffy’s up from 2,612nd to 579th! Now you’re trading votes with other people who have been sucked into the competition, making IOUs until your next vote purchase and running up the charges on your credit card.
OH SHIT. Look at how adorable Little Princess is! She’s ranked 4th, her profile says she was found crying in a gutter, and she’s probably going to die soon because she needs risky veterinary surgery to fix a condition you’ve never heard of, but are totally sure exists. How are you going to compete with this sob story? Might as well give up now, which is a shame because you’ve already purchased $92 worth of votes this month.
Wait a second. Mr. Socks was also found in the gutter as a crying kitten and needs life-saving veterinary surgery? And Oreo just wants to win this contest until he’s put down? If you didn’t know better, you’d swear there was a trend: All the top pets are suffering from dangerous or untreatable conditions, have been photographed professionally, and belong to heartbroken humans who just want to win to have a great memory of their pet before it’s time to lead them to the Rainbow Bridge. Pass the tissues!
Okay, screw this! You’ve purchased the $189.99 vote package, you’re locked and loaded, and you need a new profile for Fluffy to compete in the sympathy vote category: “I found Fluffy when he was four weeks old. His fur was matted, he was covered with fleas, and he was crying as dogs bullied him and a bigger cat took away the only morsel of food he could find. The doctors tell me Fluffy has only weeks to live after he was diagnosed with COVAIDS-19. Fluffy told me his dying wish is to be declared King Pet. Vote for Fluffy to make his dying wish come true!”
What happens from there? A review on SiteJabber fills us in on the endgame, courtesy of a user named Rozina B:
“I shared the link on social media and to my family and friends, i told them to keep voting 10 times a day. My brother bought votes for my kitten and she ended up in 1st place. Everything went down hill after that. The second place person bought votes and became 1st again. They were trying to get money for their poorly pet but they were using their own money to buy votes so it made no sense, plus i dont like people trying to get sympathy votes there is a vast amount of people with luxury cats that they apparently found and was about to die etc all for votes basically. I then bought votes and we both ended up in this race to win, i bought votes they bought votes and it continued to the last minute of the competition till they gave up. I just wanted to be 1st for once as the 2nd place person had already won 1st place with their other cat. It was unfair. I must have spent a good £500 or more and they must have too.”
Five hundred pounds is the equivalent of $615 USD at the moment, for my fellow ‘Mericans reading at home.
So KingPet has the top five or 10 vote-getters, who have already opened their wallets, in a credit card arms race to boost their cats to the top of the list, along with an indeterminate number of other users spending lesser amounts to climb the charts. (It’s also possible that the “2nd place person” in the SiteJabber review was an account operated by the site’s owners, leapfrogging the others in the votes so they’d feel compelled to spend even more money.)
And that’s just for the cats. The same thing is happening simultaneously with dog owners determined to win a meaningless contest.
Widdle Jimmy only has two months to live. His dying wish is to win the KingPet contest. Won’t you buy 3,000 votes for him?
For what it’s worth, KingPet’s Facebook page is followed by almost 800,000 people, and a thread promoting the contest has 21,000+ auto-generated comments from people who entered the contest via Facebook.
The site’s About page says it’s part of a New York-based company called Playground Inc that runs half a dozen online contest sites with a combined 2 million users.
Not fair.People have to buy 10,000 votes to put their pet at the top, seriously? What’s the matter you don’t have enough confidence in your pets beauty that’s real nice. You have to buy votes or trade votes with people?can’t this contest just be one on sheer honesty and your pets beauty?
total scam on King Pet contests … im in the cat contest was leading all along and someone who won the prior contest come out of NOWHERE and buys up 30,000 votes every time a freind would buy more the 1st place cat suddenly buys 10000 more … either they are very rich or this is a total scam and rigged you decide ive spent more than enough !!!!
You people are running a scam. My mother is an elderly lady that is spending her lifes savings on your scam website. I have reported you to the Department of Justice for elder abuse. I have documents to back up my claims.
Notice also that many reviews complain that KingPet allegedly failed to reward prizes or cash to contest winners.
To be clear, I’m not saying KingPet is illegal, and I’m not saying it’s a scam. The FTC and courts would make that determination if enough people complain to trigger an investigation. (And from the site’s reputation scores and reviews on external sites, it certainly looks like there are lots of complaints.)
What I am saying, however, is that KingPet is a waste of time and money that employs a strategy of pitting users against each other to generate revenue. KingPet isn’t providing any value by selling meaningless votes for a contest that allegedly hands out prizes only sometimes. It exists to enrich its owners, preying on the insecurities and obsessions of the people who get caught up in it.
The only cat capable of winning without buying a single vote. Obviously.
The good news is there’s a great way to feel good about your pet, it doesn’t cost any money, and it will mean a great deal more to your kitten or cat than an email saying he/she won an online contest: Spend time with the little one! Set aside time to play, surprise them with a random treat or a bit of catnip, and give them a little extra affection.
If you still feel you need recognition, print out a certificate declaring your cat or dog the winner of a pet contest. It’ll be just as “official” as KingPet and you’ll save yourself at least $500.
And so, in the spirit of all things Buddy, I once again declare Buddy the King of all Pets, or the King Pet, if you will. And it cost me nothing!
WASHINGTON — In an escalating war of words between the White House and the nation’s top infectious disease expert, President Buddy criticized the CDC’s Dr. Anthony Meowci on Tuesday, telling reporters Meowci “is a treat-hogging fearmonger who doesn’t even bury his own poop.”
Despite insisting he and Dr. Meowci “have a terrific relationship,” the president unloaded on the head of the Cat Disease Center (CDC), reading down a list of bullet points critical of Meowci.
“We’re talking about a cat who puked on the carpet in 2015, knocked over a priceless vase in 2012 and peed outside the litter box in 2009,” President Buddy said. “We’re gonna trust him to tell us when we can open our businesses and send our kittens back to school?”
Dr. Meowci addresses reporters during a briefing last month.
A White House aide added fuel to the fire on Monday night after sharing a tweet from game show host Chonk Woolery, who floated a conspiracy theory claiming Meowci was telling everyone to stay indoors “so he could keep all the snacks to himself.”
“Meowci tells cats to stay inside, then he makes a circuit to all the homes in the country, gorging on the food left out for other cats by humans,” Woolery claimed.
Political observers say President Buddy has shifted the focus to Meowci after his previous plan to fight the Coronavirus — by moving the entire planet closer to the sun — failed to curb the spread. Earlier, the president pointed the finger at Siamese cats, who he said knew about the virus but didn’t warn fellow felines around the world.
C-Anon, the feline conspiracy group, quickly latched onto the new claims and invented their own, accusing Meowci of participating in a kitten smuggling ring operating out of the basement of a pizza parlor.
At the press conference, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh MeowcEnany pointed to a chart showing White House estimates of economic growth while following Meowci’s advice, and while ignoring it. The latter graph showed exponential growth and riches for every Americat beyond their wildest dreams.
Still, President Buddy insisted there was no tension during daily Coronavirus briefings at the White House.
“Dr. Meowci is a tremendous cat,” Buddy said. “A terrific cat. We have a very good relationship, a beautiful relationship.”
For anyone unfamiliar with Assassin’s Creed, it’s a series of games that imagine eras of history as digital theme parks filled with grand adventures, with the player as the hero in the middle of it all.
In Origins you’re an Egyptian warrior marauding through a landscape of pyramids, sphinxes, temples, crocodiles and lions. In Odyssey you’re a Spartan-born mercenary sailing the Aegean with Herodotus by your side and Aspasia as one of your BFFs.
These aren’t recreations of the ancient world so much as they’re simulacra of what people living in the 21st century think ancient Egypt and Greece looked, sounded and felt like.
The latest installment, due to arrive in December, is Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, which leans heavily on History Channel’s Vikings and Netflix’s The Last Kingdom for its visual style. The game covers the same territory as those shows as well, taking place during the Viking era when invaders from Norway, Denmark and Sweden relentlessly pillaged the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England.
The male version of Evior, the player character.The female version of main character Evior.
The vikings were low-tech raiders — they didn’t have a real writing system, they left no enduring mark on architecture, their smithing techniques were inferior and their technological contributions to humanity were limited to shipbuilding and seafaring.
They raided the Anglo-Saxons, in short, because they wanted to loot shiny shit. Gold and silver chalices, precious gems, crucifixes, woodwork, iron weapons, anything of value worth hauling back to Scandinavia.
In Valhalla, players will assemble their own raiding parties, and apparently they can take cats. The video below shows the player character recruiting a “raider cat” for his longboat. There’s a short sidequest involved. From there, the cat accompanies the player and his vikings across the sea. Like a typical feline, the game’s cat likes to sleep and is usually found curled up in the front of the longboat, but don’t expect kitty to help out when the fighting starts:
Because we never miss an opportunity to do spectacularly stupid things here in good old ‘Merica, we’ve politicized the act of wearing a mask, the simplest and most effective way to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.
Since mask-wearing has become a meme as well, a historical photo that apparently shows a cat wearing a mask has been making the rounds. It shows a California family — mom, dad, two boys, two girls and a cat — standing together for a group photo, with each of them wearing a facial covering.
It’s become something of a go-to on social media, used in response to those who believe the virus is a hoax, a minor threat overblown by the US media, or an invention of evil Big Pharma who infected the world — while cackling evilly, presumably — in order to rake in enormous profits from selling the vaccine. (How “Big Pharma” is making billions off a vaccine that doesn’t exist is never explained by the conspiracy theorists.)
The photo was archived by the Dublin (CA) Heritage Park and Museum, and it’s dated from 1920, the third and last year the Spanish Flu spread to every corner of the globe. Between 50 and 100 million people lost their lives to that virus, historians estimate, and it wasn’t until several decades later that scientists understood what they were dealing with.
Snopes spoke to Tyler Phillips, who coordinates the archival material for the Dublin Heritage Park and Museum. Unfortunately, Phillips said, not much is known about the photograph other than that it was taken around 1920.
“The fun thing about this photo is that it does appear that even the cat is wearing a mask, but unfortunately we cannot prove that. The staff here at our museum go back and forth on that same question,” Phillips said. “My personal belief is that it is an optical illusion. I cant imagine any cat staying that calm with a tight fitting mask on their face. Also if you zoom in real close you can start to see the faint features of the cats face (nose and mouth). Since the original photo is pretty small and very old its not much easier to tell looking at it.”
So Snopes says the claim that the cat is wearing a mask is “unproven,” and Phillips thinks it’s an optical illusion.
We here at PITB think it’s a legit mask: We don’t see whiskers or even visual artifacts that would result from pixelated or blurred whiskers at the low resolution of the photo. In addition, it’s perfectly normal for a mask to follow the contours of a face, so that doesn’t rule out a mask. A coat pattern that happens to look exactly like a cloth mask, however, isn’t common.
Lastly, cats are individuals. Some will tolerate masks, some won’t. Buddy would probably try to claw me to death if I made him wear a mask, but your average Maine Coon would probably think, “Yeah whatever is cool, bro!”
One thing’s for sure, though: You won’t see any cats confusing the small inconvenience of wearing a mask with “tyranny” or “oppression,” and you won’t see Kitty Karens pulling the snowflake card in grocery stores, insisting the rules don’t apply to them. Those are uniquely human behaviors.
Pain In The Bud 