Pain In The Bud

This New Cat Movie Looks Incredible!

There’s huge buzz around Flow, which follows the journey of a cat through a flooded world where humans are curiously absent, but their former presence is felt everywhere.

Happy Friday! We don’t have any sarcasm, Big Buddesian wit or photos of the sexy beast himself, Little Buddy, for you today.

But we do have a trailer for what looks like an amazing cat movie! The buzz around Flow started in earnest in late spring, but I held back on writing about it because there was no information about when or where people could see this film.

Now it looks like Flow, after getting universal praise from critics and a triumphant release in the creator’s home country of Latvia, is finally poised to reach the rest of the world. Behold:

There’s so much going on here, from the sheer beauty of the world the trailer shows us, to the strange absence of humans after an apparent cataclysm, to the snort of the confused Capybara as our heroic void wriggles his way aboard a small sailboat and catches a ride with a motley company of stray animals.

The cat animation is perfect, capturing every nuance of feline movement, and the faces of the animals are expressive, telling us everything we need to know about their thoughts and moods as they survive in this strange new world.

There’s no real explanation for what happened other than the apparent biblical flood, and we’re hearing there isn’t a single word of dialog in the entire 85 minute film. Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis is already well regarded for his 2019 debut, Away, and the reviews for Flow have been glowing.

While Variety reported Flow will begin its run in theaters on Nov. 22, and Rotten Tomatoes has the same date listed, Fandango says the debut is slated for Nov. 12. Whether that’s a typo or there’s some other reason for the discrepancy, we’re not sure, but we’ll update as more information becomes available.

Flow (2024 movie) — A still from Flow, a 2024 animated movie about a black cat navigating a post-human world of danger and beauty.

Edit: Okay, fine! Here he is:

Buddy the Beefcake — The sexy beast himself.

And The Award For Most Popular Cat Name In The US Goes To…

Unfortunately, Lord Fluffybutt III did not make the list.

U.S. News and World Report compiled a list of the top cat names in America by looking at pet insurance registrations, and a bunch of familiar names topped the list.

Luna is the current most popular name for female cats, followed by Bella, while Milo edged out Oliver for the most popular male cat names. The data is current for the year 2024, the report said.

While other lists use different ways of calculating the top names, including registrations on pet-related sites and listings on PetFinder, the U.S. News list closely mirrors the others.

The name “Buddy” was named “most badass” for the 27th year in a row, since pet insurance companies began keeping statistics. (Okay, we made that up, but it’s probably true.)

Here’s the full list:

1. Luna
2. Milo
3. Oliver
4. Bella
5. Lucy
6. Simba
7. Charlie
8. Loki
9. Kitty
10. Leo
11. Lily
12. Max
13. Coco
14. Buddy
15. Oreo
16. Nala
17. Pepper & Smokey (tie)
18. Willow
19. Tiger
20. Mochi
21. Jack & Shadow (tie)
22. Cleo
23. Toby
24. Momo & Ollie (tie)
25. Daisy & Mia (tie)

(*) Most badass, most awesome, also most popular name for really, really ridiculously good-looking cats.

You’ll notice Kitty is number nine, and there really aren’t any surprises here. Perhaps cat servants aren’t the renegades we think we are!

Buddy Cast As Richard Parker In Life Of Pi Remake

The famous feline embraces the role of a beloved tiger in a reboot of the Academy Award-winning film. Critics praised the casting, noting Buddy’s strong resemblance to Richard Parker.

LOS ANGELES — Buddy the Cat will star as the main antagonist in an upcoming remake of Life of Pi, Variety reported on Monday.

The silver tabby cat will pad into the role of Richard Parker, a Bengal tiger who finds himself sharing a small boat with a teenage boy named Pi after they survive a storm that sinks their ship.

Alone, hungry and scared, Pi and Richard Parker must learn to trust each other as they drift west with no land in sight.

In one memorable scene from the 2012 original, a gluttonous Richard Parker hoards hundreds of fish while refusing to share with Pi.

“A lot of people think Richard’s being greedy,” Buddy said, “but put yourself in his paws. You can’t get turkey out there. Pi isn’t exactly volunteering to open cans of the good stuff. It’s a cat eat fish world.”

(Above: Buddy the Cat as Richard Parker is “indistinguishable” from the original character, the movie’s casting director says.)

One of the most memorable sequences involves the duo drifting toward an island paradise under the stars as the ocean glows a bioluminiscent blue. The scene takes on a trippy quality as boy and tiger hallucinate tasty, juicy fish paddling lazily through the night air.

“As an actor, you embrace the challenge of imagining all these scrumptious, decadent fish and, you know, your stomach just rumbles,” Buddy told an interviewer.

The silver tabby said the film is helping him grow as an actor.

“When my agent sent me the script, I thought ‘Life of Pie?’ You know, I like pie. Shepherd’s pie, chicken pot pie, paella, steak and guiness pie,” he said. “So to prepare for the role, I ate a lot of pie.”

Crumbs The Corpulent Cat Is Already Enduring Treadmill Sessions

Crumbs was rescued from a bad situation where people fed him without regard for his health. Now he’s got a lot of work ahead of him as his new caretakers help him lose weight so he can walk on his own again.

Crumbs, the morbidly obese tabby who was rescued from the basement of a Russian hospital last week, is already putting in the work to melt pounds.

That means he’s enduring two things most cats hate — exercise and water. You’ll recall from our earlier post that Crumbs weighs 38 pounds and cannot walk under his own power, so his new caretakers at Matroskin animal rescue in Perm, Russia, have him on a special waterproof treadmill where he gets the benefit of buoyancy while he gets his steps in.

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A post shared by Приют для Кошек Пермь (@matroskin_prm)

The big guy is not a happy camper in the video, but he’s doing his best.

I’ve heard horror stories about the hospitals in Russia and Ukraine, so if it sounds strange that the staff at a hospital would feed cookies, soup and other inappropriate food to a cat, well, let’s just say it’s not the kind of environment most of us picture when we think “hospital.” (Which is another reason to be grateful for living in the west, where we have it much better than most of us generally realize.)

Hindustan Times article — Non-native English speaking staff at the Hindustan Times may have confused Whiskas the cat food brand with whiskey, the alcoholic beverage, or there may have been a translation error.

Interestingly, a Hindustan Times story about Crumbs claims the hospital employees served whiskey to the obese cat in addition to the junk food, a claim repeated in the headline and article.

That would add another wrinkle to an already ridiculous story, but thankfully it’s not true. Your intrepid friends here at PITB checked the original text and with the help of translation software, determined it used the Russian word for “Whiskas,” as in the cat food, not whiskey. (It probably goes without saying, but never give alcohol to your cat. As little as a teaspoon of whiskey could be fatal.)

So if there’s some small comfort here, it’s that the people who fed Crumbs for so long weren’t completely ignorant to his needs, and it appears he got at least some species-appropriate food.

Crumbs the Cat — Crumbs shortly after he was rescued. Credit: Matroskin animal shelter

Rescued Cat Gorged On Cookies Till He Was ‘Too Fat To Walk,’ Now He’s On A Diet

The abandoned cat found his way to the basement of a hospital in Russia, where staff members provided him with inappropriate food — and way too much of it.

Animal rescuers in Russia have their work cut out for them after taking in a mega-chonky cat weighing 38 pounds.

The orange tabby, named Crumbs by his rescuers because he leaves none in his wake, is so overweight he can’t walk and has been placed on a strict diet to meet his first goal of becoming ambulatory.

After that, his rescuers said, the real work begins as they try to get Crumbs down to about 10 pounds, which they believe is a healthy weight for a cat of his original size.

Staff at Matroskin Shelter in Perm told Russian media that Crumbs was abandoned by his owners and was living in the basement of a hospital in the city.

It wasn’t clear if Crumbs was already obese when he was surrendered, but hospital staff were not providing him with the kind of protein-rich meat cats need to stay healthy. Instead, they plied him with cookies and calorie-dense soups, apparently putting no limits on his food consumption.

“Kroshik’s story is an extremely rare case when someone loved a cat so much that they fed him to such a state,” shelter volunteers said.

Crumbs is in for a shock as he adjusts to his new diet, but the more difficult challenge may be the treadmill sessions that await once he’s able to move under his own power.

Screenshot_2020-11-15 barsik-cat-2020-1-1 jpg (WEBP Image, 915 × 610 pixels) — Barsik suffered the indignity of being labeled “The Fattest Cat In New York” and even made the front cover of the New York Post, but the former chonkster and his new human had the last laugh:

The problem of overweight cats has received more attention in recent years, with veterinarians warning people not to intentionally overfeed their cats. Unfortunately, some people have taken to fattening up their felines for the sake of social media success, looking to copy others whose extraordinarily “chonky” cats have earned equally massive online followings.

In Poland, Gacek the cat was removed from his street-side tiny house and taken indoors because visitors to the city of Szczecin would not stop feeding the overweight celebrity chonkster, despite signs pleading with them to stop. (It also didn’t help that people tried to steal Gacek after he became internationally famous.)

Above: After Gacek went viral for being the top-rated attraction in his home city of Szczecin, Poland, a steady stream of admirers made the pilgrimage to see him in person, offering tribute in the form of snacks.

Here at Casa de Buddy, I had to put His Grace on a diet because he was pushing about 12 1/2 to 13 pounds, up from his natural weight of about 10 or 11 pounds. That might not seem like much, but Bud isn’t a very large cat despite his belief that he’s a hulking tiger. Two pounds is as much as 20 percent of his ideal body weight.

As you might imagine, the little guy was not happy about his significantly reduced snack allotment and made sure to communicate that to me loudly and often.

chubbybuddy — “I am NOT chubby, I am meowscular!”

There have also been success stories. Barsik, once dubbed “The Fattest Cat In New York” after tipping the scales at an astonishing 41 pounds, made a second round of headlines after he shed a significant portion of his weight. Nowadays he’s looking happy and healthy as he’s able to run and jump like a cat should.