cat adoption – Page 4 – Pain In The Bud

People Like This Should Be Banned From Having Pets

A woman surrendered a cat she’s had since kittenhood. Her reason? He sheds.

The moment Everest the cat was unceremoniously dumped at an Atlanta animal shelter, he freaked out.

The little guy had just lost the only home he’d ever known, his home since kittenhood, and the woman who agreed to be his caretaker for life simply ditched him with a curt “I don’t want this cat.”

No sentiment. No apologies. Just annoyance that Everest, a white cat, was apparently shedding too much for her liking.

Everest the Cat. Credit: FurKids Midtown Atlanta

Shelter employees realized a short time later that the woman had never taken Everest to a veterinarian, had never gotten him shots or had him neutered. Now they’re tasked with rehabilitating a very scared, confused little guy who doesn’t understand why he’s been abandoned.

“We also think he may be deaf but need to conduct tests,” the manager of Furkids Midtown Atlanta Center said in a post on TikTok. “If he is deaf, it’s even more heartbreaking. We don’t think his original owner knew he was deaf, she didn’t seem to care when she surrendered him – she walked in saying, ‘I don’t want this cat.'”

“Karen With A Cat Demanding To See The Manager,” oil on canvas by Buddy the Cat, aka an AI image of what I imagine Everest’s negligent owner looks like. And yes, I used Theresa Caputo in the prompt!

The upside is that the shelter is taking Everest’s health seriously, and they’ll have him neutered and nursed back to health before adopting him out. They’ll also make sure he goes to a home where he gets the love and respect he deserves as a sentient animal with feelings.

Staff at the shelter said they’re determined “to find him the best home. He deserves so much more than the life he’s lived so far.”

“He’s still a little scared,” the shelter manager said. “He is processing what’s happened since now he’s in a shelter where there’s a lot of noises and people.”

This incident, and many others like it, are precisely the reason we need databases listing people who are abusive or negligent to their pets, so they can’t ruin more innocent lives by abandoning cats and dogs when they simply tire of them, or decide they don’t like the fact that they behave precisely the way they’re supposed to as members of their respective species.

It should be done in a way that shelters and rescues in every state can access the database, and contributions should be limited to them as well, with shelters signing their names to the entries. That would prevent people from abusing the list for malicious purposes and ensure that abusive and negligent pet owners can’t simply go to another county or state to evade bans.

“I don’t like Karens.” – Buddy the Cat, The Book of Buddesian Wisdom

Every time I read about a case of cat abuse or an incident like this, I think of Bud and what his life could have been like if he was adopted by someone who didn’t appreciate him. His curiosity, boldness and fire would have been snuffed out, and he would not have been given the love he deserves. Likewise, he would have been deprived of giving back love, and he has a lot to give.

All cats are little buddies, and they all deserve people who love and care for them.

When I ran this by Buddy himself, he agreed.

“That’s right, human,” he said. “Now fetch me a snack!”

‘They’re A Really Dope Companion’: Jordan Poole Is The NBA’s Most Doting Cat Dad

The Washington Wizards’ Jordan Poole loves cats, and he’s showing his fellow NBA players what awesome little buddies they can be.

Jordan Poole finds it difficult to leave the Falls Church, Va., animal shelter where he volunteers.

He likes the staff and fellow volunteers, but most of all he hates leaving while knowing the cats he’s interacted with still need homes.

“Every time I come, it’s: ‘Let me leave with all of them! Give me 14 of them right now!’” he joked to the Washington Post’s Candace Buckner, who calls him “the lead crusader of the Secret Society of NBA Cat Dads.”

Some aren’t so secret: teammate Tristan Vukcevic recently adopted a cat after Poole converted him to the dark side, and a coy Poole says he “may have” convinced NBA superstar Stephen Curry to adopt a feline friend.

Poole with one of his tabby cats, brothers he adopted together from a California shelter when he was with the Golden State Warriors. Credit: Jordan Poole/Instagram

In a 2022 profile in The Athletic, Poole’s mother Monet says her son adopted his first cat when he was in high school.

“And when I tell you he fell in love with cats,” she said. “He loves his cats. … And he’s got some pretty cats too.”

When Poole was drafted by the Golden State Warriors in 2019, his cat stayed with his mom back in Michigan because she wouldn’t have adjusted well to the move to the west coast, as well as an empty apartment when Poole was on road trips with the team. Later that year, the then-rookie adopted brother cats who had been abandoned by their former owner.

Since he was traded to the Washington Wizards, Poole has volunteered at a Virginia shelter.

His enthusiasm is one reason why he’s been able to get teammate and friends interested in adopting. The NBA has other notable cat dads, including twins Brook and Robin Lopez, whose cats hilariously can’t stand each other. But Poole takes it to another level.

“A lot of guys are dog people, but just the energy [and] the way I talk about [cats], the pictures and videos and stuff that I show them, it just gives them a little bit more interest,” Poole told the Post. “So I give them a different perspective. Maybe they’re not as much maintenance, but they’re still a really dope companion and friend to have. You don’t have to really take them out three or four times a day. You can still get your rest. Normally [my peers] like to explore it. I’ve had a lot of friends and teammates who are also cat people.”

Former Knicks center Robin Lopez, pictured with his cat Edward, says his brother’s cat is sneaky and evil for attacking Edward: “The second I lay eyes on him, he’ll act like, ‘I’m a cherub. I’m innocent.’ I’m not buying it.”

The 25-year-old Poole is averaging 20.3 points, 4.8 assists, 3.1 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game this season while shooting an excellent .391 on three-point attempts. The 6’4″ guard spent his first four seasons with Golden State before he was traded to Washington.

Vet’s Urgent Warning Over Laser Toys, Plus: US Now Has 200+ Cat Cafes

People who frequent cat cafes say they feel relaxed among the little ones. Hundreds of thousands of felines find their forever homes via cafes in the US, which are typically integrated with local shelter and rescue networks.

You may have noticed that most journalists don’t actually interview anyone these days, and the majority of “news” stories are either rewrites or lazily-assembled, 300-word virtual birdcage liners about which celebrity or influencer is “clapping back” at haters for “throwing shade” at them, with quotes directly copied and pasted from X or Instagram.

It’s cheap, easy content — far cheaper than funding war correspondents or impactful investigative journalism — and it doesn’t require reporters to leave their desks, speak to sources on the phone, or even fact-check what they’re writing.

“Well, they said it” is good enough for modern newsrooms, which is why we can’t have a national story or a disaster like the wildfires without waves of misinformation getting amplified by press and influencers alike. And the executives of the handful of remaining news companies wonder why trust in media is at historically low levels.

So these days, a veterinarian warning about laser toys via a TikTok video is considered international news. Nina Downing, a veterinarian with UK pet charity PDSA, took to the social media platform to warn about “laser pointer syndrome,” which she says can result in obsessive compulsive behavior in cats and dogs.

Our furry friends can become frustrated that they never actually capture the elusive red dot, according to proponents of the theory, and too much laser pointer play can result in a pet who barks at shadows or tries to tackle anything that moves.

“Cats have a hunting sequence to follow which is replicated in play, however if it doesn’t come to a successful capture at the end, this can cause them to become really agitated,” Downing warns.

Happily, Buddy is impervious to this alleged syndrome because he doesn’t actually have a “hunting sequence.” Born indoors, he’s known nothing but warmth and comfort, and food is something that’s served to him on a precise schedule, not something that needs hunting.

Accordingly, when we play with wand toys, Bud’s version of a “kill” is to grab the plush toy or feathers while dancing around on his back paws. He bobbles the toy while he dances, lets it go and resets the game.

The concept of a kill bite is completely alien to him, and apparently not even his feline instincts are enough to tell him there’s another step to “winning” the game. Still, I tell him he’s a good boy and a fierce little tiger because we can’t have fragile egos getting bruised.

That said, if you find lasers are one of the few reliable ways to get your kitty moving, it’s probably a good idea to wind down by switching to a wand toy. Let the little one simulate a kill, get a few rabbit kicks in and feel like a champ. There’s little or no research supporting the concept of laser pointer syndrome, but it still couldn’t hurt to give your feline overlord something tangible to “kill” at the end of a play session.

Cat cafes are more popular than ever in the US

USA Today has a story today about the apparent ubiquity of cat cafes in the US, and how they’re changing things for the better, for felines as well as people.

Using data from Yelp, the newspaper found there were 200 cat cafes, give or take, across the country at the end of 2024, up from about 75 in 2020.

“When we started, people weren’t quite sure what they were, there was a lot of explaining how they worked and what they were,” said Laura Konawalik, owner of a chain of three cafes featuring felines in North Carolina. “Nowadays people come in knowing the general concept.”

The same data shows searches for strings like “cat cafes near me” have increased 78,700% between February of 2020 and February of 2024, USA Today reported.

Patrons playing with cats at a cafe in Osaka, Japan. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

While cafes in some other countries are populated by felines owned by the proprietors, most cat cafes in the US are integrated with their local shelter and rescue networks, so patrons can adopt if they fall in love with the little ones they meet while having a cup of coffee or tea.

That means some of the oldest cat cafes in the country have facilitated thousands of adoptions and continue to find forever homes for their animals.

About 330,000 cats were euthanized in the US in 2023, the most recent year for which complete statistics are available, according to Shelter Animals Count, a national database that keeps track of shelter intakes and cat/dog euthanasia figures. Data for the first half of 2024 showed a decrease from the previous year’s numbers, but numbers from the latter half aren’t available yet.

Jet Taylor, a regular at Konawalik’s Mac Tabby cafes, says he keeps coming back to destress and feel calm.

“I would be willing to bet,” he said, “you could put a heart rate monitor on me and when I’m sitting there petting a cat, my heart rate goes down.”

Scientists Finally Figure Out Why Some Cats Are Orange, PLUS: Are Street Cats Really ‘Taking Over?’

More Americans say they can’t afford to keep their cats because of inflation, leading to an increase in surrendered and dumped cats in some places.

More than 110 years ago, American geneticist Clarence Cook Little developed a theory explaining why some cats have orange coloring and some don’t.

Now Little has been proven correct thanks to the work of separate teams in Japan and the US, which discovered the mechanism that leads to orange coloring, including fully ginger felines as well as calicos and tortoiseshells.

The explanation may be a bit too heavy on genetics for some readers, but essentially the researchers found the specific gene that leads to the growth or orange fur. They’ve known about the gene for a long time, but didn’t realize the totality of its function. Its official name is ARHGAP36, but for the sake of simplicity, scientists are calling it “the orange gene.”

“The orange gene has a known role in hair follicle development, but scientists didn’t previously know it is also involved in pigment production,” a team of geneticists and biotechnologists wrote in The Conversation, a science publication. “This means that a new pathway for pigment production has been discovered, opening the way for exciting and important research into a basic biological process.”

calico cat relaxing on wooden bench outdoors — In partially orange cats like calicos and tortoiseshells, the blotches of color are the result of imperfect gene copies and a secondary pigment-related gene switching “on and off.” Credit: Mehmet Guzel/Pexels

Ginger cats are usually male, but the pigmant can also appear in female cats due to an error in gene copying which deletes one segment of the orange pigment-producing genetic code.

That’s why calicos and tortoiseshells have orange blotches or mixed orange fur. “[T]he orange gene is persistently switched on in orange areas but is mostly switched off in non-orange areas of a cat’s coat,” the authors wrote.

Are there more strays in 2024?

Time magazine has a story examining the problem of stray cats in America’s urban and suburban population centers, why it’s happening, and what can be done about it.

First, might as well get this out of the way: We don’t know if there are “more” cats. The claim that there are more relies on anecdotes, and there’s no hard data to back that up. You have to be highly motivated to invest the time and money into a proper census like the D.C. Cat Count, and it’s an understatement to say most towns and cities are either not willing to do that, or don’t have the resources.

What we do know is there may be more cats in certain areas, with individual shelters in some places reporting record numbers of surrenders and cats scooped up by animal control.

close up of a stray cat on the metal railing — Rescuers say people who can’t afford food, supplies and veterinary care are surrendering or dumping their cats in larger numbers than in years past. Credit: Dou011fu Tunce/Pexels

The story quotes rescuers who say they’ve seen more surrendered pets, as well as data from Shelter Animals Count, which tallies self-reported information from shelters and rescues. The latter says 32 percent of cats taken in were owner surrenders in 2024, compared to 30.5 percent in 2019.

“It’s a combination of people surrendering their pets and people not adopting because they’re not sure they can take on the financial commitment,” Animal Care Centers of NYC’s Katy Hansen told Time.

Rescuers say that’s reflected in their experiences trapping the felines, who are friendly and acclimated to humans.

The people surrendering their pets cite inflation, not only impacting the cost of essentials like food and litter, but also more expensive veterinary care.

The story additionally includes this eye-popping detail:

“At Veterinary Care Group, a private equity-owned practice in Brooklyn, the cost of spaying or neutering a cat has soared to $850 per animal. By contrast, at the nonprofit veterinary clinic Zweigart recently founded in Brooklyn, the cost of spaying or neutering a cat is $225 and a mid-sized dog is $300.”

The lesson here: Steer well clear of veterinary clinics that aren’t vet-owned or are obtuse about their ownership. Private equity groups don’t buy clinics out of love for animals.

a close up shot of a tabby cat — The cost of spay/neuter procedures ranges dramatically at different veterinary practices. Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels

As for solutions to local spikes in stray populations, the story doesn’t offer any. It mentions TNR (trap, neuter, return) but only in the context of a lawsuit against the San Diego Humane Society for its neuter/vaccination program.

That said, there probably isn’t a one-size-fits-all technique. What works for a small town won’t necessarily work in a city, and there are dozens of factors that could influence the prevalence of stray cats and colonies. Still, city councils and town boards don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Chances are if they look, they’ll find a municipality similar to their own where locals have successfully stabilized feline populations.

As for the Buddies, I’d live in my car before giving Bud up. He wouldn’t be thrilled about that situation, and we’d have to head south because the winters here are brutal, but as long as Bud has his servant, he’s good.

A previous version of this post incorrectly described cat chromosomes. The story has been updated to remove the error.

Evil Dodgers World Series Hero Adopts A Kitten After Defeating Yankees

In a tragedy for the baseball world, the hated Dodgers defeated the beloved Yankees in the World Series. Buddy the Cat is NOT happy about the outcome.

Freddie Freeman, Dodgers first baseman, infuriating hit-celebrator, and Yankee killer, has adopted a kitten.

The evil Freeman has named his new kitten Champ, in a not very subtle nod to his team winning the World Series with a game five victory over the Bronx Bombers on Oct. 30.

“Freddie Freeman thinks he can buy his way into my good graces by adopting a cat, and a gray tabby, no less,” Buddy the Cat, president-elect of the Americats, told reporters. “Well, I have news for you, Tom Brokaw — you’re still on my poop list!”

freemankitten — Freeman with Champ. Credit: Freddie Freeman/Instagram

Buddy cited the considerable distress Freeman’s five home runs and 12 RBI caused Buddy’s human, including the “despicable” game one walk-off grand slam that shocked the Yankees. He also blasted Freeman for “doing a stupid little dance” every time the Dodger reached base.

But most of all, Buddy said, he blamed Freeman for cutting short the celebratory treats he enjoyed at every previous stage of the playoffs, when the Yankees were on a roll en route to the World Series.

“In the American League Division series against the Kansas City Royals, snacks rained down from the heavens as the Yankees took the series 3-1,” he said. “In the American League Championship Series, I feasted like a viking in Valhalla as the Yankees crushed the Cleveland Indians.”

But tragically, the silver tabby said, there was only one game in the World Series that merited celebration at Casa de Buddy.

“One measly game!” Buddy raged. “So no, you’re not on my good side, Freeman!”

Freeman dance — Freeman should be kicked out of the league just for doing this dance on the bases, Buddy said.

Asked about Freeman’s teammate, Shohei Ohtani, and his dog, Decoy, Buddy claimed the canine “lives by my forbearance alone, and it would be a shame if he found his home raided by Feline Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents.”