The challenges of getting a lazy cat interested in play time and toys again.
Buddy is friendly, outgoing and incredibly vocal, but he’s always been a bit lazy.
His preferred method of getting down from the couch isn’t jumping — although he does jump sometimes — it’s slowly oozing off the cushion like he’s liquid, taking the path of least resistance and letting gravity do all the work until he drops down and lands with a “Mmmrrrrrppp!”
When we wake up, the first thing he does is demand a snack, then he lays down for First Nap, apparently because the act of chewing and swallowing is so demanding.
“Now’s an excellent time for a nap.”
While he used to chase the laser with a fury and jump several times his own height to paw at it — even after figuring out it’s light fired out of a pen held by me — nowadays he can’t be bothered. At best he halfheartedly chases it for a bit and then loses interest even though I make an effort to move the laser like prey, as I do with his wand toys.
Worst of all, catnip makes him even lazier because he doesn’t just sniff the damn stuff, he eats it. I try to get him interested in his favorite wand toy when he’s buzzing on a heady combination of ‘nip and silver vine, but he won’t chase it. He just rolls onto his back and paws at it lazily, maybe getting in a few “rabbit kicks” if he’s feeling feisty.
All of this would be funny if he wasn’t about to turn 10 years old and if he didn’t tip the scale at about a pound and a half to two pounds above his normal body weight when the vet weighed him a few months ago.
“Hey fat boy!” I tell him, getting the familiar “Brrrrrr!” in response. (He’s a big time triller. Feline linguists estimate at least 60 percent of the Buddinese dialect consists of trills of various pitch, length and intensity.)
Fat Boy lost most of the excess weight during a particularly brutal stretch when he screeched at me for snacks constantly and I had to deny him most of the time. At least with kids you can explain things to ’em. I’ve got no way of communicating to the Budster that he’s a Chubster.
Since then he’s put some of the weight back on, so I’ve gotta do something.
Here’s my plan:
Training him to do new tricks. He already knows come, stop, sit and high-five, so we’re gonna have to try something new, like teaching him to roll and maybe teaching him to jump on my shoulder and “ride” around with me. Training is mentally stimulating, it should be fun for him, and it lays the groundwork for more challenging tricks.
A cat obstacle course! I can rig something up with his tunnel, some boxes and some “hazards” that he must traverse in order to get his paws on some catnip.
Snacks dispensed via puzzle feeder only. None of that free-feeding when he gavones the stuff down like he’s starving.
Rotating toys. Admittedly I haven’t been very good about doing that. Almost every guide mentions rotating cat toys so your little buddies don’t get tired of them.
A mirror so he can see how ripped chubby he’s gotten. He really needs to see himself loafing. It’s not pretty.
Okay that last one is a joke, mostly because I’m pretty sure he’ll just admire his “meowscles” in the mirror. Cats are masters of self deception. Bud is scared of rustling paper bags and absolutely terrified of vacuums, yet he still thinks he’s a hulking tiger. That’s impressive cognitive dissonance.
This is by far the fattest-looking photo of Buddy I could find. He’s in a super-meatloaf pose here, looking like a chonkmaster.
So we shall embark on this grand endeavor, and I’ll report back here to catalog successes and failures. Hopefully more of the former.
Buddy will always be like a baby to me, and I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that he’s now a “senior” cat, but he is and it’s on me to make sure he remains active so he hopefully lives at least another 10 years in good health. There are many adventures yet to be had, many more schemes for world domination to hatch, and more turkey to eat.
This momentous occasion marks only the second time PITB has participated in the daily writing prompt via WordPress, and the reason we’re participating is to bring more awareness to the meowscular and powerful Buddinese Tiger — and its threatened cousins, the majestic tigers, jaguars, lions and leopards.
Known in scientific nomenclature as panthera tigris muscularis handsomus, the Buddinese Tiger is an apex predator who rules over his natural habitat, the living room, with an iron paw. No one is safe from the Buddinese Tiger’s charms or its rage when sufficient snacks are not provided.
You can’t tell the difference, can you? I mean, they’re virtually identical!
All jokes aside, I’d compare myself to tigers and jaguars because they’re awesome and they’re my favorite cats, aside from the above-mentioned panthera tigris muscularis handsomus. Cats are solitary hunters, they don’t like to be disturbed when they’re sleeping, and they appreciate the value of a good nap as well as a good snack. They are creatures of extraordinary taste!
Most of all, we need more people to appreciate big cats because the future doesn’t look good for them if we don’t do more to save them. Although tiger numbers have rebounded somewhat thanks to concerted conservation efforts in places like India (Bengal) and Russia (Amur), they’re still extremely vulnerable to habitat loss, poaching and revenge killing by farmers and rural villagers who often blame the big cats for being cats and going after livestock.
Likewise, while jaguars were once the sole success story in the big cat world thanks to their isolation deep in the Amazon rainforest and their elusive nature, they face a massive threat to their existence from deforestation and from the Chinese presence in countries like Brazil and Peru, where Chinese nationals poach the majestic felids to fuel the destructive Chinese traditional “medicine” market.
Just as TCM has devastated tiger, lion, elephant, rhinoceros and pangolin populations, it’s moved on to jaguars. Even vast “tiger farms” in places like South Africa, which cater to canned hunts and the TCM market, aren’t enough to meet the demand for big cat parts for use in folk “medicine,” in which ground tiger bones, fur, claws and other body parts are included in various elixirs people believe will cure everything from baldness to sexual dysfunction.
Check out Panthera for more information on conservation efforts and how you can help.
As the masterminds behind the genius heist, Buddy and his associates stand to become extraordinarily wealthy in cardboard boxes, making them the envy of all felines.
NEW YORK — Crammed into a small, smokey room, the felines huddled around a table laden with cocktails, cigars and architectural schematics for a large arena.
Seated at the table was Salvatore “Carniclaws” Catzarelli, Tomasso “Tommy Two Times” Felinzano, Jimmy “Little Jim” Fitzpawtrick, Desmond “Sensimeowla” Neville, a group of junior associates and Buddy the Cat.
“This here boxing is a goldmine, fellas,” Buddy told the other gangster cats, pointing a paw at the original building plans for Madison Square Garden. “The humans, they don’t want to share their boxes, which is why they guarded the secret of boxing from us cats. They want us to be satisfied with one lousy box every week or two. But we’re onto ’em now, see?”
Thousands of glorious boxes litter the central court at Madison Square Garden in New York. Now that cats are wise to the human sport of “boxing,” humans won’t be able to hoard all the boxes to themselves anymore.
Neville licked the edge of his rolling papers, carefully adding potent catnip as he meowed without looking up.
“Mi finna be down wit da heist, mon,” he said, wrapping the paper tight around a generous portion of ‘nip. “Long as di score gonna be split equitably, ya hear?”
“That’s right,” Catzarelli nodded, digging into the pockets of his trench coat for a lighter, which he passed to Neville. “Youse guys know, there’s five of us so we split it nice and even, 15 percent each!”
A smile barely crinkled the corners of Buddy’s mouth before it vanished.
“Of course, my friend,” he said. “You’ll all walk away with 15 percent of the proceeds. If I’m right and this ‘boxing match’ is the goldmine I think it is, we’ll be richer in boxes than we ever imagined! Boxes for every mood and sleeping position. Boxes for your friends and guests. Boxes inside boxes inside boxes!
Felinzano and associates refine plans for the first boxing heist in the history of catdom.
One of the junior associates, a kitten named Crispy, raised a paw.
“Uh, sirs, with all due respect,” he said, “I don’t think boxing is what you think it is. There are two humans in a ring and…”
Buddy cut the kitten off with a wave of his paw.
“Crispy?”
“Yes sir?”
“Who’s the criminal mastermind in this room?”
The kitten looked unsure of himself. “You, uh…you are, sir.”
“That’s right. And who pulled off the legendary turkey heist of 2018?”
“You did, sir, it’s just…”
Buddy held up a paw.
“Unless you wanna be known as Extra Crispy from now on, I’d pipe down if I was youse,” Felinzano told the kitten.
As of press time, the feline criminal ring was putting the final touches on the genius heist, so close to being unimaginably wealthy in boxes that they could almost taste it.
Making his debut in 1979’s Alien, Jonesy is one of the most famous felines in cinema history.
There’s a popular meme among Alien fans that depicts Jonesy the Cat walking nonchalantly down one of the starship Nostromo’s corridors with his tail up, carrying the corpse of the recently-spawned alien in his mouth like he’s about to present a dead mouse as a gift to his humans.
The joke is self-evident: if the crew of the Nostromo had allowed Jonesy to take care of business from the get-go, the alien would have been disposed of before it had the chance to grow into the monstrosity that haunted the decks of the Nostromo and the nightmares of viewers.
“Who’s a good boy? Who just saved his crew from certain violent death at the claws of a ruthless alien predator? That’s right, you did!”
Of course then there’d be no movie. No ripples of shock in theaters across the US as audiences were confronted by something more nightmarish and utterly alien than popular culture had ever seen before. No indelible mark left on science fiction.
Despite the film’s retrofuturistic aesthetic, it’s difficult to believe Alien first hit theaters almost half a century ago.
That’s testament to director Ridley Scott working at the height of his powers, the carpenters, artists and set dressers who created the starship Nostromo’s claustrophobic interior, the design of the derelict starship where the alien was found, and the bizarre creature itself.
The alien ship and creature designs were the work of Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger, who was little-known at the time but floored Scott and writer Dan O’Bannon with his hyper-detailed paintings of grotesque biomechanical scenes.
Signourney Weaver and one of the cats who played Jonesy in the first film.
Kane explores the infamous egg chamber in the derelict alien ship.
Fan art of Jonesy
A close-up shot of the retrofuturistic tech used in the series, a design decision that departed from the gleaming visions of the future common at the time.
A set photo showing the first film’s crew on the iconic space jockey set.
Giger’s work, specifically his 1976 painting Necronom IV, was the basis for the titular alien’s appearance. The alien, called a xenomorph in the film series, is vaguely androform while also animalistic. It is bipedal but with digitgrade feet and can crawl or run on all fours when the situation calls for it. It hides in vents, shafts and other dark spaces, coiling a prehensile tail that ends in a blade-like tip.
But it’s the creature’s head that is most nightmarish. It’s vaguely comma-shaped, eyeless and covered in a hard, armored carapace that ends just above a mouth full of sinister teeth like obsidian arrowheads. There’s perpetually slime-covered flesh that squelches when the creature moves but there are also veins or tendons or something fully exposed without skin, apparently made of metal and bone. Maybe those ducts feed nutrients and circulate blood to the brain. Maybe they help drain excess heat from the creature’s brain cavity.
Regardless, it’s a biomechanical nightmare that the Nostromo’s science officer, Ash, admiringly calls “the perfect organism” whose “structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.”
The alien, Ash declares, is “a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.”
The alien, also referred to as a xenomorph, “that thing,” a “dragon,” “the perfect organism” and various other names by characters in the series. Credit: 20th Century Studios
Part of what makes Jonesey so beloved is the fact that, together with the xenomorph and Ripley, he completes the triumvirate of survivors. We see Jonesy scurry into the protection of tiny confined spaces to escape the alien, hissing at it in the dark. We see him dart into the bowels of the ship after sensing the stalking creature, adding another blip to the crew’s trackers. Finally we see him settling into a cryosleep pod with Ripley, like so many other cats with their humans, when the threat has passed.
Jonesy — affectionately referred to as “you little shithead” by Ripley in the second film — appears in the franchise’s two most famous films, his own comic book series titled Jonesy: Nine Lives on the Nostromo, a 2014 novel (Alien: Out of the Shadows), and in hundreds of references in pop culture over the last half century, from appearances in video games (Halo, World of Warcraft, Fortnite) to references and homages in movies and television shows.
A page from Jonesy: Nine Lives On The Nostromo, which tells the story of Alien from the cat’s perspective. These panels depict Jonesy watching Ash and Dallas examining Kane in the ship’s medical lab.
He’s like the anti-xenomorph. Cats are predators, after all, and Jonesy might be the xenomorph to the ship’s rodents just like every ship’s cat in thousands of years of human naval endeavors. But to the crew members Jonesy’s a source of comfort, a warm, furry friend to cuddle with. Unlike the xenomorph he’s got no biological programming urging him to impregnate other species with copies of himself in one of the most horrific gestation processes imaginable.
Xenos are like predators on steroids, gorging themselves on their victims to fuel unnaturally swift cell reproduction and growth. As a result, over the decades some have speculated that the alien simply ignored the cat, deeming its paltry caloric value unworthy of the effort to kill.
The idea that Jonesy was too small to interest the alien is proved a fallacy in later franchise canon when we see the aftermath of a xenomorph consuming a dog. It’s indiscriminate in its quest for energy, feasting on adult humans and animals alike until two or three days pass and it’s a 12-foot-tall, serpentine nightmare the color of the void of interstellar space.
Just imagine sitting in a theater in 1979. Your idea of science fiction is sleek jet-age spacecraft, Star Trek and Stanley Kubrick’s clinical orbital habitats from 2001: A Space Odyssey. You’re expecting astronauts, heroes, maybe a metal robot or an alien who looks human except for some funky eyebrows, green skin or distinct forehead ridges.
Instead you get a crew of seven weary deep space ore haulers inhabiting a worn, scuffed corporate transport ship, complaining about their bonuses and aching for home, family and the familiar tug of gravity.
But home will have to wait. The ship has logged an unusual signal of artificial origin broadcasting from a small planet in an unexplored star system. The crew has no choice but to investigate. It’s written into their contracts, which stipulate the crew will forfeit their wages if they disregard the signal.
So they land, suit up, move out and find a derelict starship. An incomprehensibly massive vessel so strange in detail and proportion that it could only have been built by an alien mind, with unknowable motivations and psychology.
The egg chamber of the derelict alien ship, designed by Giger.
Inside, hallways that look like ribcages lead to vast chambers with utterly bizarre, inscrutable machinery that seems to consist of biological material — skin, bone, joints, organs — fused with metal. In one of them the corpse of an alien, presumably a pilot, is integrated into a complex array. It’s at least twice the size of a large human man. Its elephantine head is thrown back in the agony of its last moment, when something exploded outward from its body, leaving a mangled ribcage, torn papery skin and desiccated organs.
And beneath that, a shaft leading to another horror — a chamber that seems to stretch for kilometers in either direction, where leathery eggs are cradled in biomachinery and bathed in a bioluminescent cerulean mist.
The decision to enter that chamber sets off one of the most shocking scenes in cinema history, leads to the birth of pop culture’s most terrifying monster, and sent millions of theater-goers home with nightmares in the spring and summer of 1979.
It’s almost too much to handle. But take heart! The unlikely female protagonist makes it to the end, and so does the cat. What more can you ask for?
Jonesy grooming himself on the flight deck of the starship Nostromo. Credit: 20th Century Studios
People who were asked to identify feline moods based only on audio of meows fared the worst in the study.
A new study suggests people misinterpret their cats’ moods often, but offers an easy fix.
A group of researchers from Paris Nanterre University split participants into three groups: one that was shown soundless video and images of cats, a second group that heard audio-only recordings of feline vocalizations, and a third group that had the benefit of video and sound.
Participants from the first two groups misinterpreted feline moods as much as 28 percent of the time, the study found, but people who had the benefit of seeing and hearing cats correctly identified their mental state almost 92 percent of the time.
The study also yielded another insight: people are much better at accurately assessing positive moods than they are at spotting an upset or antagonistic cat.
Credit: Sami Aksu/Pexels
The findings indicate we’re better off giving our cats our full attention than, say, jumping to conclusions about what they want based solely on their vocalizations or the position of their tails. It seems obvious, but how many of us have our eyes on a screen or we’re multitasking when our cats want our attention?
Of 630 people who participated in the research, 166 were professionals in animal-related fields like veterinary medicine and animal behaviorism, while the rest were lay people. There was a major gender imbalance among participants, with 574 women, 51 men and five people who didn’t identify with either gender.
It’s not clear how such an imbalance might skew the results, and it would be nice to see follow-up research evenly split between women and men.
