Buddy has grown tired of most of his toys and his beloved birdie is in danger of disintegrating. This cannot stand!
Since my human has been working on some other stuff, I thought to myself, “Budster, why don’t you take over that there site and deputize its readers as my servants?”
So congratulations, you have the great honor of being my secondary staff!
Now to the meowtter at paw: I require new toys. The old ones are boring, I’ve torn my favorite birdie to shreds, and there are only so many times I can terrorize Big Buddy by doing cannonballs onto his stomach while he sleeps. If he has a heart attack, who will feed me?
What I need from you humans are some suggestions. You’re the inferior species when it comes to napping, lounging, being fearsome, roaring, being ridiculously good looking, and bathing yourselves.
But you do make good toys!
Just a heads up, I’m terrified bored of those floppy fishes, I have two of those track toys where you slap the ball around with your paw, and I have a cat tunnel and my very own mini camping tent. I am also the proud owner of a variety of excellent boxes!
I need something fresh, something exciting. My human says I need a toy that gets me up, running and jumping. Grudgingly, I admit he may be onto something. My incredible hunting skills must be honed and maintained with regular practice.
Today’s a good day to do something special for your little pal(s), and to help spread awareness that felines are sentient, intelligent animals with feelings.
Happy International Cat Day!
Today marks the 23rd annual observance of the special day, which was established by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a nonprofit originally founded in the late 1960s to stop the commercial hunting of seals off Canada’s coasts.
Buddy sits on his vanquished foe, an alien xenomorph. “I don’t understand how these things gave humans so much trouble,” he said.
In more than half a century since, the group has expanded to an international operation with projects aimed at improving conditions for wild and domestic animals. They do wildlife rescue, rehabilitation, preserve management and more.
International Cat Day was intended to help raise awareness about cats, their behaviors and the best ways to interact with them and give them good homes.
For those of us who are already wrapped around the paws of our feline overlords, it’s an occasion to do something extra for our buddies. Here at Casa de Buddy, that means spending more time with little man, giving him catnip, and his favorite human food treat: cheese.
The thing that matters most to him is Buddy Time, when we hang out, play games with his wand toys, and eventually he snuggles up in my lap.
We hope all of you are enjoying International Cat Day and have the opportunity to spend some extra time with your furry pal(s) today. For all they do to improve our lives, a little expression of gratitude is the least we can do.
The makers of Temptations want you to feed your cats more snacks, as if they don’t get enough!
In yet another indication that some people don’t seem to pay attention to their feline masters, the Wall Street Journal reports on Mars and its internal operation “Cattitude,” which as far as I can tell amounts to a few people within the company realizing they haven’t squeezed every last dollar of revenue from people who have cats.
That’s a problem, the company realized, because more people are adopting cats, younger generations are more likely to adopt felines, and anyone who hasn’t had their head in the sand knows the little ones rule the internet with their cuteness.
Through “Cattitude,” which apparently involves everything from executives walking around the office wearing cat ears, to handing out “I Love Cats” decals and consulting with “cat parents” on products, the company says it’s identified a “treat gap” between felines and canines, with dogs as the far more frequent beneficiary of yums:
“Feline insecurity can be self-fulfilling. If you think your cat doesn’t care, you might be less likely to shower them with perks. That may be why dogs get way more treats.
Mars launched a campaign in May that spotlights the “treat gap” by the numbers: Dogs are nearly 32% more likely to get daily treats than cats in dogs-only and cats-only households; in homes with both, 38% of parents said they don’t give the same number of treats.“
The story does not say how the company arrived at those numbers. Probably market research in the form of surveys. Not exactly scientific, as these things go.
This is one of those stories that makes me wonder if these people actually have cats.
From the moment I wake up until the second I settle into bed, Bud shrieks at me for snacks. He won’t even let me stumble into the bathroom before the first shrill reminders. He demands snacks before dinner, after dinner, after he’s had snacks, and sometimes while he’s eating them.
If he could speak English and hold a bull horn, I have no doubt he’d spend the majority of his day blasting the demands into my ears: “MOAR SNACKS, BIG BUDDY! MOAR! MOAR!”
Mars should know this. One of its most popular products, Temptations, turns cats into slobbering addicts. I had to wean the Budster off them, then stupidly bought them again months later and had to wean him off the Temps again because he has a one-track mind when they’re in his bloodstream. Two are not enough. Six are not enough. Ten are not enough.
One time, I left a big tub of the damn things unattended for a minute and he managed to pop the top off by knocking it off the coffee table. When I walked back into the living room, he was dragging his jaw along the floor like a bulldozer, inhaling as many as was felinely possible into his little mouth.
Frantically, I shooed him away and began picking them up, but the damage was done. He threw up a few minutes later. Then he shrieked for more!
He always looks innocent, doesn’t he?
Interestingly, the WSJ notes that if you type “Does my cat” into Google, the first two auto-complete suggestions are “Does my cat love me?” and “Does my cat know I love her?”
And that brings us to a point on which I agree with the people at Mars: cats still aren’t well understood.
Dogs happily slobber over their people. Cats show their love in subtle ways, like proximity, head bunting and momentary contact.
Just like the whole “cats love milk” thing is half myth, half misunderstanding, so is the idea that your cat doesn’t love you unless he’s leaping into your arms to hug you as saccharine orchestral music swells in the background.
While there are always outliers, most cats don’t like being hugged or picked up, and most have hard limits when it comes to the amount of physical affection they’ll tolerate. It’s not because they don’t care for us, but because they’re semi-domesticated carnivores who still retain the skittish tendencies of their wild brethren, and because they get easily overstimulated, among other reasons.
If Mars’ Cattitude is an ongoing thing, I hope the decision-makers in the company come to what I believe are two of the most important conclusions to keep in mind when it comes to cats. Giving them your love means giving them your time and attention, and treating them like the sentient, emotional creatures they are.
The best piece of advice I ever got was to always take your cat’s emotions into consideration.
It really is that simple.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have snacks to dispense.
The quest for clicks and attention is a race to the bottom, and “petfluencers” are willing to dive deep to differentiate themselves from the thousands of others trying to build an audience.
Clothes, sneakers and hats. Vitamin supplements, energy drinks and probiotics. Backpacks and costumes.
What do all those things have in common? People are buying them for their pets, not themselves, and they’re part of the reason people in the UK spent more on pets in 2024 than childcare, hobbies or dating, according to Nationwide UK.
The problem is, they’re not doing it for their pets. Experts, including veterinarians and animal behaviorists, tell The Guardian that most cats, aside from hairless varieties like Sphynx cats, don’t like wearing clothing, nor do they like wearing costumes, or taking baths with heavy perfumes and essential oils.
Portrait of Hipster White Cat wearing sunglasses and shirt
Influencers — or petfluencers — stage elaborate “pampering” scenes, and make their pets wear different clothes to show off their shopping “hauls.” Some pose their animals like dolls and find ways to coerce them to remain still. Audiences think it’s cute. It’s not.
As for me, I’ve got a handy chart when I’m unsure if Bud will be cool with something:
Make him wear clothes. Result: Get clawed to death
Give him baths with essential oils. Result: Get clawed to death
Make him wear sneakers. Result: Death by bite to the jugular
Force him to eat supplements or guzzle energy drinks. Result: Shredded skin and lots of blood, perhaps some light homicide.
While the animals themselves aren’t thrilled with these new trends, they probably won’t go away any time soon. There’s just too much money involved.
The average pet owner in the UK spent the equivalent of $163 per month on their companions, and only half of UK households have pets compared to 66 percent in the US. Although there’s not an apples to apples comparison of total expenses on pets per month by household in the US, Americans spend $68 a month on cats on average, according to research by ValuePenguin. For dogs, it’s about $110 a month.
‘Salty liquorice’ cats owe their unique coats to a missing snip of DNA
It’s always an interesting occasion when nature gives us something new, and the salmiak cat is definitely unprecedented in the world of feline aesthetics.
The unique cats, named after a popular liquorice candy from Finland, have a coat pattern that results from a gradient on individual strands of fur, starting out black and getting lighter toward the tip. It gives their coats a singular peppered look, and in photographs the unusual felines almost look as if they’re rendered in monochrome stippling.
Credit: Ari Kankainen
The Finnish candy the cats are named for.
The salmiak cat wasn’t the product of any breeding program, and reports in Finnish media say strays with the new coat pattern/color first emerged in 2007.
To find out how the salmiak emerged, a team of Finnish, British and American scientists sequenced the genomes of two salmiak cats. They found a mutation in genes that express coat color that resulted in a missing sequence of DNA, and they confirmed the mutation is recessive. That means to get salmiak kittens, both parents have to have the mutation.
Cat cafes offer a unique way for adoptable kitties to find homes, as well as a stress-reducing experience for customers, but two groups in the UK say cafes are not appropriate living spaces for cats.
Two major feline advocacy groups in the UK are urging the government to stop issuing new licenses for cat cafes, arguing they’re not good living situations for the felines who are their main attraction.
Many people see the cafe model as a win-win for cats and people. The latter get to unwind and spend time with cute animals who have a knack for lowering blood pressure, helping the stressed to relax. The cats, who are adoptable, get to run, play and live in an environment much better than a shelter cage while they wait for their forever homes.
But the RSPCA and Cats Protection, the most prominent feline welfare organization in the UK, say its “almost impossible” to meet the needs of the animals, who may be stressed by living with other cats and, they argue, are used as “entertainment” for customers.
“We don’t believe these environments can consistently provide cats with a good quality of life and are hugely concerned that many cats will be unhappy as a result,” said Alice Potter, a cat welfare specialist with the RSPCA.
“Generally cats are not sociable, and many felines often prefer to live without other cats, or prefer to form social groups with their relations.”
A cat cafe in Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
I’m not sure how I feel about this, and I’m not particularly familiar with how most cat cafes are run. The only ones I’ve been to were in Japan, and they were miraculously clean spaces with lots of things to climb, as well as nooks and private areas where cats could hide. The cats were well cared-for, staff were friendly, and the environments were relaxed.
Cat cafes also offer a unique opportunity for finding homes for the little ones. They’re much more likely to meow their way into the hearts of would-be adopters when they’re given space to run around, play and enjoy themselves as opposed to the often sullen, frightened state they’re in at shelters.
Are the UK cats groups right, or are they making perfect the enemy of good?
Pain In The Bud 