Budd models for a series of promotional photos.
Have you been thinking about linking to Buddy from your blog, sharing Buddy’s wisdom from your social media pages, or simply ordering a small poster-size print of Buddy because he’s so damn handsome?
You’re in luck! Here are some promotional images centered around everyone’s favorite little dude and his many talents:
Buddy wouldn’t tolerate another human being his servant.
Buddy may be demanding and parsimonious with praise, out of the firm belief that the service he receives can always be better, but he’s also a loyal little guy:
Those aren’t idle threats, by the way, not from a cat who attacked his own sitter — whom he’s known for his entire life — in a bratty outburst prompted by his disappointment that it was her and not Big Buddy coming through the front door. She’ll still feed him, God bless her, but she will no longer hang out and play with him, and who can blame her? 🙂
Buddy inadvertently leaves the comforts and love of his home and quickly finds himself in deep trouble.
Buddy licked his lips, belched and rolled over, sighing as he felt the afternoon sun’s warmth on his belly.
It was his favorite time of day and he was enjoying fresh air on the balcony, sitting in his favorite chair and surveying the world below like a little king. If he’d had a belt, he’d loosen it after scarfing down every last morsel of turkey and licking his bowl clean.
He waved his tail, thinking of how he’d pass the time later. Perhaps he would have a nap, then demand that Big Buddy take out the laser pointer. With a little luck, he might be given catnip as well, otherwise he’d have to meow relentlessly for it. Failing that, there was a new plastic bottle ring he’d stashed away for later play, and if Big Buddy were to fall asleep while watching baseball, Buddy could entertain himself by repeatedly waking his human via ambush. That was always delightful.
A squeak interrupted his thoughts, too high for humans to pick up but still well within his own hearing range. He sat up and cocked his head forward as his ears swiveled, trying to pinpoint where the noise had come from.
Sudden movement on his peripheral vision snapped his eyes to the target: Down below, among the cars and trees, a tiny animal scurried from beneath the cover of one car to another.
Buddy wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, but he knew he wanted to catch it.
He hopped off his throne and crouched low, poking his head through the balcony railing as he tracked the rodent.
The light box inside pumped out its usual weekday sounds: The crack of a ball against wood, the cheers of tens of thousands of humans, and Big Buddy alternately celebrating or sighing in frustration.
For all their supposed seriousness, humans were strangely invested in watching other humans play with toys.
Buddy caught movement beneath the rear bumper of a squat SUV. Two rodential faces peaked out from cover, chittering in human-inaudible frequencies.
His tail thrashed against the floor as he watched the diminutive trespassers brazenly moving about on the edge of his territory. They were mocking him, he was sure of it! He would have his revenge by ruthlessly hunting each of them down and jumping around joyfully on his hind legs, which he always did after he won at hunting games with Buddy the Larger.
The rodential duo took off, abandoning the cover of the SUV for the lower-hanging body and bumper of an old Nissan Skyline.
Bud’s tail thumped furiously. The twitchy little interlopers were getting ready to run again.
Buddy leapt from the balcony before he was consciously aware of what he was doing, meowing an “Oh poop!” as he dropped the 14 feet to the ground. He hit the ground hard but shared the impact on all four limbs. He’d be sore later, but the thought was gone as fast as it came, replaced by the primal instinct that had caused him to jump in the first place: The hunt.
His targets were now well aware of his presence, chittering furiously at each other between cars. Bud stalked the more plump of the two, crouching low so he could track its movement.
A distant subwoofer thumped the air, sending vibrations through the ground to his paw pads. The pudgy rodent took off, gunning for the fence at the far end of the lot and the safety of the trees beyond.
Driven entirely by instinct, Bud gave chase without realizing a car had turned the corner and was pulling into the lot, fast.
“Mrrrrrrooowww!” Buddy exclaimed, dashing away from the vehicle.
It was still moving, still coming toward him with that awful, furious thump from its speakers. Buddy ran and ran until he could run no more: out of the lot, away from his building, up the street, past strange houses emanating strange smells and into a park, where he hoped the car couldn’t chase him.
He collapsed on the grass and sprawled out, chest heaving. That was too close, he thought.
Now he had another problem, one he’d failed to consider when he jumped from the balcony: How would he get back inside? He couldn’t just walk into the apartment building. You needed a human to open the front door, then get past a second door that only opened via some sort of human sorcery that involved waving a little piece of plastic in front of the handle. He knew that much from his night walks with Big Buddy, when the stimulation was almost too much to bear — the smell-taste of flowers at nose level, the spiral cascade of water from the sprinklers, the far-off hum of the deathway, where thousands of cars rumbled down endless lanes of hard human-made ground.
If by luck he was able to slip inside as a human was entering his building, he’d have to cross the lobby, walk down the hallway and finally reach the door to his realm and domicile. Could he reach the door bell? If he meowed loud enough, would Big Bud hear him?
“What do we have here?” Buddy had been so lost in his thoughts and worries that he hadn’t noticed the human walk right up to him. He suddenly felt very vulnerable and rolled onto his stomach.
It was a human boy. He wore a dark baseball cap and a wide grin that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Easy,” he said, reaching out.
Buddy hissed, arching his back. The boy took another step forward, hand still extended. Buddy retreated a few steps, cautiously keeping his eyes on the boy as the fur on his tail spiked outward.
“Here, kitty kitty,” the boy said mockingly.
Buddy took another step away, then felt a pair of human hands clamp around his belly.
“Gotcha!” said another human boy, who had approached from behind as his friend served as a distraction.
Buddy squirmed, lashing out with his claws.
“Hey!” the second boy said. “The little fucker scratched me!”
“Bad kitty!” the first boy said, slapping Buddy on the top of his head. “Ohohoho! He’s pissed!”
The boys laughed as Buddy struggled.
“Come on,” the first boy said. “There’s a pair of gloves and some beach towels in my mom’s car. We can wrap the little shit up in the towel.”
“Where we going, Spencer?” the second boy said, holding the still-struggling Buddy tight as they walked toward the car.
“We could take him beneath the railroad bridge,” Spencer said as he opened the trunk. “I’ve got half a bottle of lighter fluid. We could have ourselves a little barbecue.”
The boys wrapped Buddy in a towel, muffling their laughter. He heard car doors closing and a crystalline human voice singing through speakers. Vibrations felt through his captor’s hands told him they were moving.
“Careful,” Spencer said after they had parked. “Just hold him, don’t be such a little bitch, dude. He’s not gonna hurt you.”
Buddy didn’t understand what they were planning to do with him, but he instinctively knew his life was in danger. He went slack.
“S’okay,” Spencer’s friend said. “He’s not struggling anymore. I don’t think he has any fight left.”
“Oh, he will,” Spencer said. He pushed back the towel, uncovering Buddy’s face.
“We’re gonna have some fun with you, you little shit,” Spencer said, leaning in close. “We’re gonna…”
Spencer howled as Buddy chomped on his lip with all his might.
Spencer’s shocked friend loosened his grip, and for a second or two Buddy swung from the shrieking teenager’s face, the latter’s panicked breath radiating in hyperventilating blasts. His smirk had evaporated, replaced by flush cheeks and a mask of pain.
Buddy released Spencer’s lip, tasting blood, and ran for his life. As he disappeared into the trees he could hear Spencer sobbing hysterically.
When he was sure the boys weren’t following him, he crossed a human yard in a blur and scurried beneath a short wooden staircase leading to a porch. A lawnmower droned in a yard nearby. In a neighboring basement, someone pounded out the opening kicks and snares of a song about a prince buying flowers.
“And if you want to call me baby…” a male human crooned over the drums and guitar, “just go ahead now!”
As Bud’s breathing slowed and the fear chemicals subsided, a new kind of dread filled the vacuum. Neither his eyes nor his ears nor his nose could tell him where he was.
Buddy runs from a huge pitbull while the boys journey to the home of Nice Lady, who always feeds them.
Blackie scurried up a tree with impressive speed while Clyde took off like a cat possessed.
That left Buddy, who didn’t know the area, and didn’t know the gaps in fences or under-porch hideaways that would grant him temporary safety from the mountain of a dog barreling toward him.
He ran in the same direction Clyde had gone, hoping to follow the ginger tabby to safety, but he was already out of sight.
Peggy gained on Buddy, huffing like a bellows.
Buddy weaved around a rusting bike and ran for a stand of trees and brush that could afford cover. Maybe. He could feel Peggy’s breath on his back now. His little legs pumped as fast as they could, but a shadow overtook him followed by its owner.
Peggy landed on top of Buddy with surprising nimbleness, pinning him with her huge belly. Buddy’s heart threatened to beat out of his chest. Peggy opened her massive maw. Vicious-looking canines framed a row of smaller teeth like a serrated knife. Buddy closed his eyes, bracing…
…and felt a big wet tongue leave a saliva trail from the back of his neck to his forehead.
Peggy panted as she licked him, her drool shaping his fur until he looked like someone had styled him with an entire bottle of industrial strength hair gel. She barked happily, grinning from ear to ear, then began licking his left paw.
Buddy squirmed under the big pit and meowed at her indignantly.
“Untongue me this instant!” he demanded, but Peggy just kept licking.
Blackie snickered from a branch. A pair of wrens chirped, then took off from a branch above the pantherine cat.
Peggy gave Buddy’s forehead another lick, lathering on so much saliva that he had to close his eyes as it ran down his face.
“Peggy, baby!” a human voice boomed from behind the trees in a playful tone.
The huge dog raised her head, gave Buddy a final gooey swipe of her tongue and hopped off, cheerfully skipping her way home.
Neither Clyde nor Blackie said anything, mercifully. They both looked at him in horror, recoiling at the layer of saliva that almost entirely encased him, but they didn’t laugh or make jokes at his expense. They pity me, Buddy thought.
Blackie led them around a shed, through a hole in a wooden fence just big enough to wiggle through, then into a well-kept backyard shaded by oak trees. Up ahead was a wooden porch. One side of it was built around a huge rectangular depression filled with motionless clear blue water.
“Crazy humans,” Blackie meowed, looking at the pool with distrust.
Nice Lady herself was sitting on the opposite end of the porch beneath a canvas green-and-white awning, her face buried in a book. The human woman didn’t see them approaching and only looked up when Clyde put a paw on the first step and meowed.
“Orange Boy!” Nice Lady said, placing the book on the table next to her. “And Panther!”
Buddy watched as the two hardscrabble strays transformed themselves into harmless little kitty cats. Clyde made a big show of uncertainty, then hopped up on the deck and approached Nice Lady, rubbing himself against her legs. Blackie followed, dropping down and showing his belly.
“Where have you little rascals been?” Nice Lady cooed. “I was worried about…Oh my, you have a friend!”
Buddy crouched a few feet away from the stairs leading up to the deck, watching her silently.
Nice Lady made kissy sounds, then stood up. “You three must be very hungry! Wait here, my little darlings,” she said, stepping through a sliding glass door.
“Ya see, kid?” Clyde meowed, hopping up and helping himself to Nice Lady’s chair.
Cicadas buzzed. A breeze shifted leaf shadows on the deck.
“I hope it’s eggs today,” Blackie said, “otherwise we’re gonna have to visit the red house after this.”
Clyde stretched and yawned. Buddy carefully climbed the porch steps, realizing with horror that his paws were leaving prints of nearly-gelatinous saliva on the wood. He reached the top and crouched, his tail flicking uncomfortably.
Clyde saw the look in his eyes and realized what he was about to do.
“No!” he meowed. “You’re crazy!”
Buddy didn’t care. He shook himself like a dog, sending disgusting little saliva missiles at both his friends — the least he could do as payback for abandoning him to Peggy’s tongue assault — then took off running and leaped into the pool.
He shivered, but his body quickly adapted to the temperature of the water. To his surprise, the water was a comfort, and most importantly he was no longer mummified in a thick layer of gooey pitbull spit.
Nice Lady returned after a few minutes, carrying a stack of paper plates and a steaming bowl covered with a paper towel.
“Okay, boys,” she said, placing the paper plates in a row. “Eat up!”
Blackie meowed with excitement as Nice Lady removed the paper towel and scooped heaps of scrambled eggs from the bowl.
“Careful now, they’re still hot,” she said.
Blackie and Clyde dug in immediately. Nice Lady looked around for Bud and, realizing he was actually in her pool, retrieved one of those black rectangles humans love so much and held it up.
“Cheese!” she said, confusing Buddy. “A cat who likes water! Who knew?”
She retreated a few steps to her chair and resumed her reading, sipping from a wine glass.
Buddy’s stomach rumbled. He paddled to the steps leading out of the pool, then padded cautiously to his plate.
“Oh! Oh! Of all the good eatin’!” Blackie said. “You’ve gotta try this, kid!”
Buddy lapped at the eggs. They were delicious! There was cheese and little chunks of meat that Blackie called “ham.”
The three of them ate in silence except for Blackie’s enthusiastic grunts of approval. Buddy was so grateful to get food in his tummy that he didn’t even realize Nice Lady had approached them. He froze, ready to sprint, but she just crouched down and ladled more eggs onto each plate.
“So good,” Blackie mewed. “Incredible! Fantastique! Superlatives fail me!”
All three cats cleaned their plates, then sprawled out on the deck, grooming themselves with the satisfaction of full bellies.
Nice Lady had gone inside again, and when she returned she brought bowls of water, bags that crinkled and a towel for Buddy.
“I hope you boys saved room for dessert,” she said cheerily.
Buddy licked his lips.
“Why did you slap my paw away when I went for the Temps?” Buddy asked later.
“Because,” Clyde said, “that stuff is the kitty crack.”
“But…”
“Do you have any idea what that stuff has done to our people?” Clyde said.
“Here he goes again,” Blackie meowed, shaking his head.
The trio padded across the short grass of the backyard as the light began to fade, heading for the little shed they’d passed on the way into the backyard, where Nice Lady had installed a kitty door.
“You can’t handle the truth!” Clyde trilled to his friend.
“What truth?” Buddy asked. Blackie groaned.
“The Temps were specifically engineered by humans to get us hooked,” Clyde said, taking on a conspiratorial tone. “See, the humans don’t like how we’re independent free spirits, unlike dogs. No self-respecting cat would run panting to his human the way those eager-to-please idiots do.”
Buddy considered the orange tabby’s point.
“But what does that have to do with controlling us?”
Clyde waved a paw at a house cat watching them from a neighbor’s bay window, her body language broadcasting a mix of curiosity and annoyance.
“You think kittypet over there would ever run off if it meant no more Temps?” he meowed. “They’re all cracked out on the Temps! Those spoiled, soft-living, fat, lazy kittypets are an embarrassment to the feline kingdom.”
He looked at Buddy. “Present company mostly excluded, of course.”
“Of course.”
They filed into the shed, eyes adjusting to the gloom. There was a litter box, two wide bowls of fresh water, a plastic contained filled with dry kibble and, arranged on a small area carpet, a cozy sleeping spot ringed with pillows and blankets.
“Not bad,” Buddy said, feeling like a civilized cat again for the first time in days.
“Not bad?” Blackie asked. “Kid, this is the Waldorf of Westchester! It doesn’t get any better than this.”
After some mild haggling over the best sleeping spots, the three cats settled down. Sleeping on a full stomach for the first time since he’d left home, Buddy’s eyelids grew heavy as he mentally assembled a plan to find his way home.
Buddy the Cat is the new face of MGM Studios, replacing the iconic Leo the Lion.
HOLLYWOOD — One of Hollywood’s most iconic studios has gotten a facelift, replacing its familiar roaring lion logo with a new feline face.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has used “Leo the Lion” as its mascot since the early 20th century merger between three production houses that vaulted the new company into Hollywood’s “big five” studios.
Now 97 years later, Leo has been replaced by a tiger — a Buddinese tiger, to be exact.
“While Leo has served us well for almost a century and audiences have come to love his iconic roar, we felt it was time for something more modern, more hip, to connect with younger audiences,” studio head Marcus Mayer told Variety. “When someone floated Buddy’s name during a brainstorming session with our PR people, it seemed like a no-brainer.”
While Leo’s roar was actually sampled from a tiger and overdubbed in sync with the lion opening his mouth — a little-known piece of cinema trivia — the new logo and title card will feature both Buddy the Cat’s famous likeness as well as his blood-curdling roar.
“The first time I heard Buddy’s roar, I got goosebumps and I almost shat myself,” admitted sound man Mark Mangini, who created the 1980s update of the MGM logo and the 2001 rebrand featuring Buddy. “I knew we had to convey that kind of power and ferocity for our brand by associating it with Buddy.”
Neither MGM nor Buddy’s representatives would comment on compensation for the world famous tabby cat, but a source close to the deal said it was worth “in the seven figures of wet food cans,” presumably all or most of it turkey, the ferocious cat’s preferred meal and currency. The deal would vault Buddy into the top 50 most wealthy cats in the world, with the majority of his wealth held in turkey-related assets.
Movie-going audiences are expected to see Buddy again late this summer with the highly-anticipated release of “Cat On Deck: A Little Buddy’s Bravery,” about a British ship’s cat named Simon who rallied the crew of the HMS Amethyst in 1949 after it was nearly sunk by a volley from a Chinese Liberation Army gun battery.
Pain In The Bud 