Matt Damon rescued a stray living on the periphery of a Costa Rican jungle.
Matt Damon stopped by the Late Show With Stephen Colbert this week, and somehow they got on the topic of Damon’s cat.
The Oppenheimer actor described how he and his wife gained the feline’s trust while staying at an AirBnB in Costa Rica. The cat, who was living on the edge of the nearby jungle and “fighting for his life every night,” gratefully accepted food from the Damons and grew to trust them over the month they spent at the rental.
“By the end we were like, ‘We have to take this cat. This guy’s gonna die. Now he’s relying on us.'”
It turns out the little brawler was done with living rough and enthusiastically took to the life of a pampered house cat.
“He moves into our house, and I’m thinking ‘I have a little yard out in LA, it’ll be great out there [for him],'” Damon told Colbert. “He never went outside ever again.”
Damon’s cat had a serious health scare, but the story has a happy ending and it’s better to hear Damon tell it, so turn up your speakers/headphones:
Yes, Damon’s cat may be “jacked,” and he may even be the Arnold Schwarzenegger of felines, but surely he doesn’t compare to the OG of ripped and meowscular cats.
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.
Little dude has large black spots, possibly scabs, beneath his chin.
I first noticed a black spot under Bud’s chin two or three months ago.
I thought he’d somehow hurt himself, perhaps from sticking his little face everywhere, and the mark looked like a scab to me.
Then it went away, was replaced shortly after by another mark, then a second next to it and now there’s a large black mark under his chin.
The problem is, he won’t cooperate with attempts to photograph it and he acts like I’m torturing him if I gently pick him up and try to get a close-up shot. I was finally able to photograph it by setting my phone to take a photo with a voice command and placing it beneath him, and this is what I saw:
And a close up with flash:
It looks a lot like the feline acne photographs I saw when I googled the condition, but this mark is quite big and looks painful.
I wash Bud’s food bowls after every meal and I wash his water bowl out with soap and water a few times a week. Both are stainless steel and his dry food bowl is some sort of ceramic. Nothing plastic that would harbor bacteria.
It may be genetic, he may be not as good about grooming under his chin, or it may be my fault. Bud has always had a lot of discharge from his eyes (the nasty black eye crust) so he does secrete fluids more than most cats.
Regardless, I hope he’s not in serious pain. Has anyone dealt with this before? Do the antimicrobial gels designed for cats actually work?
Some material online suggests using common antibacterial wipes or solutions found in pharmacies, but I’m wary of anything like that because Bud may get it in his mouth while grooming.
Budd’s feeling much better and he’s back to his usual Buddinese antics!
Name: Buddy the Cat Date: Oct. 13, 2023 Status: Very handsome
I just wanted to post what I hope will be the last update regarding Buddy’s recent illness and let everyone know that he’s doing very well, hasn’t had an incident since he got sick again on Sunday, and is back to his old antics.
I couldn’t be more thrilled. The little guy is energetic, talking all the time again and even pestering me for treats, which means his appetite has recovered as well, thanks in no small part to the prayers and support from all of you.
“It is my professional opinion, as an expert in meowdicine, that I should be put on a regimen of regular snacks to, uh, recover my snackolyte levels and help balance my catesterol. This script says you should feed me moist treats in the afternoon, a post-dinner treat of crunchies, and a late night snack of my choosing. It’s very important that you don’t skip a dose!”
It’s still not clear exactly what happened, and hopefully I get a clearer picture of Bud’s overall health via a regular veterinary appointment.
In the meantime I’m glad to have my best friend back, and I’m especially thankful the ordeal is over for both of us. It was very frustrating to see him so clearly suffering and having no way to help him except trying to comfort him and giving him catnip, which worked surprisingly well to soothe his stomach. (If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, which I hope you do not, and your cat doesn’t typically eat catnip, try putting some in a pill pocket or finding another way to get kitty to eat it. All the online literature says it works best if ingested.)
Now if you’ll excuse me, Bud wants to nap and he’s demanding a lap to sleep on…
“Time to be my sleeping substrate, human. If you need to use the bathroom, go now, for I plan to sleep at least four hours.”
We are at the emergency vet. Buddy got sick early this morning and threw up, then threw up some more, and some more, most of it yellow bile.
He was vocalizing in obvious pain and distress and while I was able to soothe his stomach a bit with some catnip — enough that he eventually climbed on top of me and slept for a while — I got really worried when we woke up a few hours later, I got out of bed and he didn’t budge. He stayed there for almost two hours.
He never does that. He follows me to the bathroom first thing, always, and then starts meowing for food.
When he finally left the bed he was extremely lethargic, not at all like himself. He wouldn’t eat. His eyes were half closed, he didn’t respond when I rubbed his head, and I couldn’t feel him purring. The local vet couldn’t see him, so I took him to an emergency vet.
The good news is that it doesn’t look like he has anything obstructing his digestive track, a UTI or any of the usual culprits.
He doesn’t have a fever, which is also good, but he’s significantly dehydrated and there were some concerning signs in his blood work.
I knew he really wasn’t doing well when the nurses took blood and gave him the anti-nausea injection and he didn’t even bother to object. Normally he’d try to tear their faces off but this time he didn’t raise a paw. I’m not even sure it registered with him that there were large dogs and other cats in the open floor plan space, where staff hurried between stations with equipment and animals cradled in blankets.
This is not how it ends, not here and now. For that I am grateful. I’m taking him home after the vet gives Bud some sort of subdermal hydration treatment and meds to hopefully get him eating and drinking again.
The bad news is that the visit cost an eye-watering amount, more than three times what I expected in the worst case scenario, and that was without x-rays. Absolute madness.
On the other hand I realize I have a lot to be grateful for. I just watched a young girl crying and holding onto her mother as a veterinarian worked on her cat, who was severely injured and looked like she’d been hit by a car. In one of the private rooms, a family was saying goodbye to their dog.
All this is a reminder to be grateful for the time we have. I will update soon, hopefully with good news.
Pain In The Bud 