I see you are a cat of taste and culture. Join us in our effort to practice prolific laziness!
There’s this thing Buddy does when he’s been napping on my legs or in my lap and he wants to get down.
Whereas the vast majority of living creatures would simply stand up and hop off, Buddy doesn’t bother with that. He yawns, stretches and shifts his weight forward until he’s hanging off me, then allows himself to sag into a ponderous drop, letting gravity do all the work as he practically oozes onto the floor. He’s like water taking the path of least resistance, committing absolutely no energy to the “effort” of moving.
The sequence is complete when he plops down on the floor like sentient slime — paradoxically furry yet gelatinous — then finally picks himself up to pad toward his bowl, his litterbox or the kitchen, where he’ll stand yowling in three second intervals until I give him a snack just to get him to shut up.
It’s horribly manipulative behavior, and I shouldn’t reward it, but sometimes I do because damn, he’s really, really good at being annoying when he wants to be.
If there were an Olympics for being lazy and annoying, Buddy would be its Michael Phelps, pioneering spectacular new ways to do things without expending a single millicalorie more than is absolutely necessary.
And yet, like all cats, he’ll randomly decide it’s time to release all that hoarded energy at once, trilling an enthusiastic “BRRRRUPPP!” before rocketing around the house, ricocheting like a bullet in a sensory deprivation chamber.
Of course I wouldn’t have it any other way. These quirks are part of Buddy, just like his kitten voice, his unintentionally hilarious behavior and his big heart.
We salute you, dear Buddy, for elevating laziness into an art form.
The last “Can You Spot the Cat?” we posted was pretty challenging, we thought, until a bunch of people said they saw the well-camouflaged kitty right away.
This one is a bit more difficult because the nature of the image throws off pattern recognition. Can you find the cat?
Still having difficulty?
Need a hint?
The cat you’re looking for is a tortoiseshell. If you still can’t find the hidden feline, click here to see the same image with the cat’s position circled.
As stray cats suffer, their plight has been mostly overlooked. Cat lovers in cities across the world are trying to keep them fed and safe during the pandemic.
Years ago I worked with a guy who started a food pantry from scratch.
This man, a retired software engineer, approached the biggest restaurants, bakeries and food distributors in the area, asking them to donate their leftover/unused food so his pantry could distribute it to the poor.
Many obliged, but they all had the same request: “Don’t tell anyone we’re participating,” they told him.
The request wasn’t prompted by humility. These businesses didn’t want the public to know how much food they waste, and they waste a lot of perfectly good food, a dirty little secret of the restaurant, hospitality and food industries.
The reason I bring this up is because there’s another demographic that depends on the food those businesses toss out: Stray cats.
With restaurants shuttered because of the Coronavirus, stray cats are going hungry and dying for lack of the scraps they scavenge from rubbish bins, dumpsters and sidewalks. It’s happening here in New York, across the United States, and in countries like Turkey, India, Greece and Morocco.
For animals who already live difficult lives, the pandemic made things worse.
“The strays have no means of feeding themselves as all offices, restaurants [and] roadside eateries are closed,” an animal rights activist in India told the environmental news site Mongabay, in a story headlined ‘Slim pickings for strays and pets during COVID-19 lockdown.’
Cats aren’t the only animals suffering. One particularly dramatic example was caught on video in a Thai city where thousands of long-tailed macaques live and depend on food given to them by tourists.
Hundreds of starving monkeys stopped traffic in a chaotic brawl over a single piece of food, shrieking, clawing and pushing each other aside to get at it.
As if things weren’t bad enough, stray cats are now competing with former house pets for the little food available.
In India, where bad actors have been spreading false information about COVID-19, animal rights activists are finding abandoned pets — including pedigreed cats and dogs — on the streets after their caretakers abandoned them.
“A lot of this is happening because of misinformation that went viral earlier about pets being carriers of the virus in China. It turned out to be fake, of course, but a lot of damage has been done now,” People For Animals’ Vikram Kochhar told Quartz.
Much of the damage has been done on social media, where conspiracy theories and rumors about contracting COVID-19 from animals are rampant. In China, where pet owners abandoned cats and dogs en masse during the first wave of Coronavirus, some social media users on Mandarin-language platforms called for the “extermination” of cats after a pair of studies conducted by Chinese research labs suggested cats are susceptible to catching the virus.
It isn’t easy to combat waves of viral misinformation, even as health authorities across the world stress cats cannot transmit the virus to humans.
In Greece, abandoned pets — many with their collars still on — are following strays to food sources, especially in larger cities like Athens.
“We are seeing an increase in the numbers of cats in areas where we feed, some appear to have been abandoned, while others have roamed far from their usual spots in search of food,” animal welfare advocate Serafina Avramidou told Barron’s.
In feline-loving Turkey, where taking care of street cats is considered a cooperative responsibility, the central government has told local officials to make sure strays are well fed and taken care of. By making it a government responsibility, their thinking goes, citizens who normally care for the cats will be much more likely to stay inside during the pandemic.
“There are lots of cats on the side streets where there are only closed businesses,” a Turkish Twitter user wrote. “I haven’t seen food anywhere for days. The cats are running after us [looking for food].”
In Istanbul, Muazzez Turan fed some 300 stray cats daily before the pandemic, but said she’s had to stay home: Not only has her country been particularly hard hit by COVID-19, but she has pre-existing medical problems that make her susceptible to complications should she contract the virus.
Still, she said, her mind “was always with the cats,” and she told Turkish news agency Anadolu that she was relieved to hear the strays hadn’t been forgotten.
“I will sleep peacefully for the first time today,” Turan said.
LaTonya Walker of Brooklyn feeds a stray in Canarsie. Credit: 24 Cats Per Second
Here in New York, some animal lovers are picking up the slack for closed restaurants as well as at-risk people who normally feed strays.
Among them is Latonya Walker, who told the New York Post she normally spends $600 a month feeding several colonies of strays but expects her costs this month will be “way more since there’s less restaurant garbage they can eat from, and more hungry cats walking around.”
“The cats have no clue what’s going on because nothing has changed for them,” Walker said. “It’s not in my DNA to see a cat suffering and not do anything about it. I’m equipped to make a cat’s life better, so I’m going to.”
Participate in our reader survey and tell us what you’d like to see on Buddy’s site!
Hello and welcome to our Spring 2020 reader survey! We here at Pain In The Bud (littlebuddythecat.com) appreciate our readers, all four million of them, and we’d like to know what kind of content YOU want to see on this illustrious blog.
So without further adieu, here are the reader survey questions:
1) How often would you like to see new photos of Buddy?
a) Daily
b) Twice a day
c) Every hour!
2) How much should Buddy charge for his pawtograph?
a) One bag of Temptations turkey flavor.
b) One bag of Blue Buffalo moist turkey treats.
c) A whole turkey.
d) Two (2) cans of delicious turkey pate.
3) Are you interested in stories about other cats?
a) Nope, I just want to read about Buddy!
b) Maybe, but not if that means fewer Buddy stories!
c) Yes. I love all cat stories, but Buddy is my favorite.
4) How would you describe Buddy if you were recommending his site to friends and other cat lovers?
a) He’s roguishly handsome.
b) He has big muscles.
c) He’s roguishly handsome, he has big muscles and he’s incredibly charming.
5) What’s your favorite thing about Buddy?
a) He’s a mastermind! He always comes up with brilliant schemes that never, ever backfire.
b) He’s astonishingly brave! Most cats are terrified of vacuums, kitchen blenders and garbage trucks, but Buddy isn’t like most cats.
c) He’s possessed of exceptional intuition. His powers of deduction, such as his investigation linking Coronavirus to Corona beer, are second to none.
d) He’s remarkably humble. He has the body of Cadonis, the strength of a tiger, the roar of a lion and the stealth of a jaguar melting into the jungle, but he never brags.
6) Have you told your friends and family about Buddy?
a) Does a bear poop in the woods?
b) I never stop talking about him! He’s so dreamy!
c) I have been derelict in my duty to inform others of how delightful he is. I apologize and will correct my error!
Thanks in advance for your answers! Your responses constitute valuable data that we’ll use to improve this blog, and have absolutely nothing to do with massaging Buddy’s ego. Cheers!
The Los Gatos gain an edge while feigning concern for their customers. Meanwhile, Buddy has disappeared.
NEW YORK — Touting its concern for catnip junkies and the nip-slingers who deal to them, the Los Gatos criminal gang became the latest organization to issue social distancing guidelines on Thursday.
The new guidelines represent the gang’s effort “to find new and innovative ways to deliver quality narcotics to our customers,” the gang said in a statement after veterinary authorities announced cats are susceptible to COVID-19.
“The safety and health of our drug dealers is of the utmost importance in the trying days ahead of us,” said the cartel, which deals almost exclusively in catnip and silver vine. “However, our dealers serve a vital function in our communities, not unlike pharmacies, and must remain in business for the benefit of cats who need the good stuff.
“That’s why we’ve implemented contact-less nip transactions, allowing our customers to get their fix without exposing themselves to the possibility of infection,” the notice read. “Users can visit our website or download our app to place orders. Use promo code BUDDYISAWIMP to get 20 percent off your first order of Meowie Wowie or Purrple Haze!”
The Buddy Organization, Los Gatos’ primary rival in the catnip distribution industry, has yet to respond or offer its own social distance policy.
Sources inside the organization say Buddy himself has been missing for days, with rampant speculation that the gray tabby has been hiding under his human’s bed since learning cats can contract the Coronavirus.
“That COVIDIOT has left us high and dry while the Los Gatos are muscling in on our territory,” one exasperated source complained. “Sales are down 73 percent over the last week and he’s nowhere to be seen!”
A spokescat for Buddy denied the reports.
“That’s ridiculous and frankly offensive,” the spokescat said. “Buddy is absolutely not scared of garbage trucks, paper bags, vacuum cleaners or toddlers, and he sure as heck isn’t scared of Coronavirus. He doesn’t even drink beer.”
Sales of catnip have been booming as cats and humans alike self-isolate and self-medicate.
Pain In The Bud 