Buddy Unscathed After Tour Bus Overturned By Screaming Japanese Fans

The international feline superstar escaped unharmed, authorities confirmed.

TOKYO — Buddy was uninjured after his tour bus was besieged and overturned by a massive crowd of screaming Japanese school girls, the famous cat’s representatives said Sunday.

Buddy, who touched down Friday in Tokyo for his “Got 2 Have Turkeys” tour, was en route to a performance and album signing in Shibuya Tower Records on Saturday afternoon when his tour bus was blocked by a phalanx of paparazzi. A large crowd that had assembled outside the store gravitated toward the street, surrounding the bus and making it impossible for the vehicle to escape in reverse.

“At first it was just normal stuff: The crowd chanting for Buddy, girls throwing their bras at the windows, boys calling out for autographs,” said MC Kibble, who has been touring with Buddy as the opening act and hype cat. “But when I felt the bus lurch, I knew we were in deep litter. The shit hit the sand, so to speak, and we got jolted around pretty good when they shoved the bus onto its side.”

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Ai Imajo, left, Asako Imamura and Yuki Mori react after spotting Buddy surrounded by guards and handlers at Haneda International Airport in Tokyo on Friday night.

The crowd was dispersed by Tokyo Metropolitan Police as paramedics arrived and cleared the bus. One roadie suffered a fractured rib, authorities said, but most of the occupants made it out with only a few scrapes and bruises.

An ambulance took Buddy to an undisclosed hospital, where he was discharged after only an hour.

“It was just a precautionary measure,” said the celebrity cat’s human servant, Big Buddy. “We had to make sure His Grace was in top shape before he continues his tour.”

Buddy is scheduled to perform for sold-out crowds at Saitama Super Arena on Monday and Sapporo Concert Hall in Hokkaido on Tuesday before heading to Hong Kong for the next leg of the “Got 2 Have Turkeys” tour.

Best Buddies: Cat Holds Bowl So His Recovering Friend Can Eat

A recently-neutered cat gets an assist from his kitty friend.

Moofie the cat, who was just neutered, couldn’t get to his food bowl because of the Elizabethan collar which was placed around his neck to stop him from aggravating the incision.

Cat parent Brianna K. Leroux placed Moofie’s bowl on top of his cat carrier, but that caused another problem: The bowl would fall off the carrier as Moofie ate.

Moofie’s best feline buddy, Simba, came to the rescue. In the video below, you can see Simba holding Moofie’s bowl so the on-the-mend little guy can eat in peace:

 

This Music Calms Cats, But It Scares The Hell Out of Buddy

Our usually-brave (lol) hero didn’t take well to feline-centric tunes.

In case you didn’t know, music written specifically for cats is a thing.

I’d heard about it a while back, and the project seemed impressive: “Music for Cats” composer David Teie is a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, and he worked with animal behaviorists and veterinarians to come up with kitty-soothing sound textures and test the music’s efficacy on cats visiting the veterinarian.

A 2019 study in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery concluded “Music for Cats” could help our furry friends relax and ease their stress. Keeping in mind an earlier study that suggested cats prefer “feline-centric sounds,” Teie incorporated audio of events cats associate with happy times, like kittens suckling milk from their mothers.

Using Buddy as my test subject, I went to Youtube, selected the track Cozmo’s Air from “Music for Cats” and sat back, expecting Bud to start nodding his furry head at any moment.

Instead his ears pricked up, did their radar-dish swivel toward the speakers, and his eyes went wide. As the song gained volume and intensity, Bud’s ears and whiskers snapped back and he let out a clearly anxious “yerrrrrrrrrrppp!” I tried to calm him down, to no avail, and a second track didn’t improve things.

He wasn’t having it.

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This pretty much sums up Buddy’s reaction to cat music. Credit: Creative Commons

Teie’s cat music is back in the news with the release of the Kickstarter-backed Music for Cats 2, and there are quite a few imitators on Youtube hawking their own supposedly cat-soothing musical efforts. (Though your cat might think she’s in Guantanamo Bay if you subject her to six-hour videos of “cat lullabies.”)

Should I test some of the new music on Buddy to see if he responds more favorably? And for our fellow readers and cat servants, have you played any of this stuff for your cats? If you have, how’d it work out?

Evil Russian Cats Unleash Purrpaganda Campaign Against Buddy, Sources Say

Russian propagandists are behind an effort to discredit the heroic American cat.

A shadowy group of Russians are behind a complex and nefarious plot to discredit Buddy, sources allege.

The Russian operatives were behind the recent Time magazine snub in which Buddy was ludicrously excluded from a top 10 cat list, several cats with knowledge of the operation meowed on condition of anonymity.

Deep-cover Russian agents have also worked to sully Buddy’s reputation as a heroic American feline by seeding social media with anti-Buddesian sentiment and viral content.

One Youtube video purports to show Buddy running terrified from a vacuum, but a spokesman for Buddy said the Russians used a similar-looking silver tabby to film the fabricated incident.

“The Buddy double was convincing, but anyone can see for themselves the cat in the video isn’t muscular enough to pass for His Grace,” spokesman Purrcy Pressman told reporters. “Vladimew Pootin and the Russians are underestimating the intelligence of the everycat if they think kitties will believe Buddy would run from a vacuum.”

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Credit: Alexander Zavaliy

Allegations of Russian involvement weren’t a surprise to feline officials, who blame the KGB (Kitty Gaslighting Bureau) for most of the salacious rumors circulating in the feline world over the past five years.

Those same KGB agents were responsible for tabloid stories that alleged Streetcat Bob’s name was found in a little black book when the FBI — Feline Bureau of Investigators — raided a purrstitution ring in November, sources say.

“These Russians are dangerous,” National Security Adviser Saul Berenson said. “Just look at what they did to Carrie Meowthison, one of our best agents. Buddy would do well to keep a low profile for the time being.”

Yvgeny Groomov, a spokesman for the Russian embassy, denied the allegations, but nonetheless said the KGB was in possession of kompromat that could destroy the reputations of famous American felines.

“Buddy is like small child, he is insignificant to Motherland,” Groomov said. “Real story is about how Americans are always using Russia as scapecat for all things going wrong. We say to the Americans, thank you for allowing us live in your heads free of rent.”

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Credit: Alexander Zavaliy

Time Mag’s Top 10 Cats List Deemed Illegitimate, Doesn’t Include Buddy

The magazine proved itself out of touch with its latest embarrassing oversight.

Time magazine has published what it calls the “Ultimate Chaotic Cattitude Power Ranking,” and Buddy is not on the list.

“The failing Time magazine didn’t even put me on their top 10 cats list. If they did, maybe they would sell more copies! Sad!” Buddy tweeted after the story was published.

Others expressed their outrage at Time’s snub.

”Time magazine has proven itself irrelevant by failing to include the handsomest tabby in America, and quite possibly the world,” gossip meower Pawrez Hilton wrote. “Do they realize thousands of kittens have posters of Buddy on their walls? He’s absolutely dreamy.”

“No Buddy? Absurd!” Meower user @SexyCalico24 commented. “I mean, have you seen his muscles? RAWR!”

Time’s editors were forced to backtrack after a deluge of angry phone calls and emails, along with a hundreds-strong protest outside the magazine’s Manhattan headquarters.

“It was a grave oversight on our part to exclude Buddy from our list, and we apologize,” the magazine’s editors wrote in a statement. “We know it will take time to win back the trust of our readers, but we hope to make it up to them with a 24-page photo spread of Buddy in our April issue.”

Claws Woodward, a purrfessor of feline journalism at the Harvard School for Cat Studies, said the embarrassing oversight is a sign that Time magazine is out of touch with kittens and young cats.

“Buddy is an action hero, like Snacky Chan or Ahnold Schwarzenmeower,” Woodward said. “With his movie star good looks and his rippling muscles, he clearly should have been on that list. I mean, ‘Jealous Cat’? Real Housewives meme cat? Come on! You don’t put Z-listers ahead of one of the most treasured cats of our generation.”

Still, not everyone was convinced Buddy should have made the list. Pop singer Taylor Swift was among those who clapped back at Buddy for his vanity.

“Buddy who?” Swift tweeted, throwing shade at the Budster. “If any cats should be on that list, my kitties should occupy all ten spots. I’m going to write a song about how they were cheated. Let me finish!”

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