Buddy the Cat is known for his movie star good looks, charm and wit, but one fact remained little known until recently — he’s meowgnificent on the dance floor.
The tabby cat set the dance floor on fire this week when he dropped in at New York’s most popular disco club and showed off a series of spectacular moves that left observers shocked — and sparked several cat fights among his admirers.
All jokes aside, how awesome is this commercial?
I’m curious about how this was done. We’re not seeing people in cat costumes. It looks like the paws are practical effects, but the cat faces are rendered with something similar to deepfake tech, with the render following the actors’ performances. Or it may have been done the labor intensive way, with full modeling. Either way, the effect is fantastic: Look at the two cats at the end talking about how Disco Cat learned to slide.
Any readers out there with FX backgrounds who might have some insight?
From the makers of kitty crack: “Human” flavored kitty crack!
I’ve never been more grateful that I’ve weaned Buddy off of Temptations.
The treats, which are famously irresistible to cats thanks to some strange alchemy that definitely isn’t healthy for them, now come in Tasty Human flavor in a new promotion for Halloween. (They’re heavy on corn and other fillers, as usual, but the meat ingredients in Tasty Human flavor come from chicken, liver and beef. Apparently we taste like KFC and burgers.)
The commercial spots are clever and humorous.
“I read that if our cats were bigger, they’d try to eat us!” a man whispers as ominous music plays and his cute cat grooms himself in the background. “So this Halloween, I’m gonna keep him satisfied with these.”
The man tosses a nervous look over his shoulder at his cat as the music swells with a horror movie-style orchestral stab, then he shakes the bag.
I won’t be buying any.
The popular cat treats are made by Mars, the almost $40 billion pet food and candy multinational that has had its own significant controversies, particularly with the use of slave labor in sourcing particular ingredients. Many of its pet food brands, such as Whiskas, are loaded with cheap carbohydrates and use by-product meal as their primary protein sources.
But I stopped feeding the Budster Temptations before I knew any of that, and for an entirely different reason: The little guy turned into a full-fledged kitty crack addict when he ate them.
Like any cat, Bud loves his treats, but when I fed him Temptations he had a one-track mind: The first thing he’d do in the morning was follow me to the kitchen, sit in front of the treat cabinet and meow incessantly for his precious Temps. It got to the point where he was turning his nose up at wet food he’d always liked and pestering me for Temptations instead. He was going full-on Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
I weaned him off once, stupidly folded less than a year later when I bought a bag for him on impulse (we were out of treats and the grocery store did not have any other kind), and had to wean him off the kitty crack a second time when he returned to his cracktastic ways.
Nowadays the little dude gets natural treats with non by-product meat as the main ingredients, and he behaves like a normal cat: He still loves his snacks, but he doesn’t ignore his wet food and howl at me for kitty crack.
After arriving in his Forever Kingdom, a newly-adopted cat began the hard work of training his new human.
NEW YORK — It took only six seconds for Jenna, Mikey’s new human, to open the bathroom door when guilted with mournful meows on Wednesday, the newly-homed cat reported.
The 28-year-old human woman entered the bathroom without her recently-adopted feline at approximately 6:22 pm on Wednesday.
“I said to myself, ‘Mikey, we gotta nip this in the bud right away. We can’t have her thinking she can use the bathroom without us, can we?'” the white moggie said.
Mikey launched into a routine that involved scratching the frame, reaching under the door and meowing frantically — “the classics,” he said.
Six seconds later the bathroom door opened, revealing a concerned Jenna.
“Oh my poor baby, are you okay?” she asked, extending a hand as Mikey padded into the bathroom. “I was worried! It sounded like someone was strangling you!”
Mikey said he milked his new human’s sympathy for all he could get.
“I flopped onto my back, gave out a little ‘Muurrrp!’ and looked at her with my big, sad eyes,” he told reporters. “A few minutes later she was in the kitchen, showering me with snacks. Easy peasy!”
Paws under the door: A classic feline manipulative strategy that almost always yields results, especially if you can grab something!
Mikey, who spent almost three months in a local shelter as younger cats were adopted during kitten season, said he’s proceeding cautiously in his new home and plans to use his keen feline powers of observation to develop a meticulous catalogue of which buttons to push at specific times “to yield maximum snackage and massages.”
“I haven’t used my solicitation purr yet,” he said. “So far my human’s been pliable and gives me what I want, when I want it. The other night she spent four hours laying in a very uncomfortable-looking position to avoid disturbing me while I napped on her shoulder. I want to see how far I can take it before bringing out the big guns.”
Patience has paid off, Mikey said.
“Her boyfriend came over the other night,” he said. “I could have hissed, peed in his shoes, chased him off. After all, there can only be one man of the house. But he brought a gift for me, one of those track towers with the ball you swat around, you know? I have to admit, I was impressed that he knew enough to pay tribute to me. That guy’s alright.”
The trail-blazing comedian talks about all the ways cats amuse — and perplex — him.
Our previous posts on cat-related stand-up featured Zoltan Kaszas and Corey Rodrigues from Dry Bar Comedy, which is a comedy channel that specializes in “clean” sets without vulgarities or obscenities.
This time around we’re checking in with George Carlin, so fair warning: There will be bad language, and Carlin pokes fun at cuteness aggression in a way that probably won’t go over well by people who take it literally.
It’s 100 percent Carlin. After all, we’re talking about the man who was pretty much single-handedly responsible for a 1978 Supreme Court decision on the government’s authority to censor public broadcasts after his now-legendary “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television” bit.
George Carlin in the 1960s.
It’s obvious Carlin’s spent a lot of time around cats, as he’s got their behavior down and he finds humor in the feline tendency to be relentlessly one-minded. He laughs at the way cats make biscuits — “looks like they’re into some bad drug!” he says as he imitates a cat’s ecstatic kneading — and how quickly they become whirling tornadoes of claws and teeth as kittens.
“You take a baby baby — that is, a human — a baby dog and a baby cat, and you attack all three of them, which I try never to do if I can help it,” he says, drawing laughs. “You’ll get three different results. You attack a baby, he cries. You attack a puppy, he cowers. You attack a kitty cat, he fights!”
Carlin makes a meowing sound, swiping one hand like an annoyed cat.
“One day old and they’re looking for some sh–! They don’t even got their eyes open, they’ll get right in. Nasty cute little thing. Cute little nasty guy! Oh, they’re wonderful, God love ’em.”
While dogs love pets and never want you to stop, Carlin points out that with a cat “you just put your hand out and he’ll do all the work.”
Cats love rubbing against people so much that they’ll start to rub against your leg “even if you’re not there yet,” Carlin observes, imitating the way the little ones change their body language the instant they decide it’s rubbing time.
“They love to rub on you. If you’ve got a leg and a cat, whew, you’ve got a party! ‘Oh boy, oh boy, I’m rubbing on his leg!’ If you’ve got two legs, sh–, jubilee celebration time! ‘Oh boy, two legs! Hot sh–, I can do the figure eight! Oh boy!’” Carlin says, stalking across the stage.
“There’s one other quality cats have that I admire. Cats don’t accept blame and they don’t embarrass, at all. A cat does something dumb, you’ll never know it by lookin’ at him. Dog knocks over a lamp, you can tell who did it just by looking at the dog. Not the cat. Cat doesn’t accept any blame, cat moves along to the next activity. ‘What’s that? Not me, f— that, I’m a cat! Something break? Ask the dog.’“
Originally posted on Pain In The Bud: Dear Buddy, Did you hear the news about the cat mummies and the big trove of cat statues found by archaeologists in Egypt? My dad says Egypt is a special place ‘cause that’s where humans used to worship us a long time ago. Is that true? Why did…
Did you hear the news about the cat mummies and the big trove of cat statues found by archaeologists in Egypt? My dad says Egypt is a special place ‘cause that’s where humans used to worship us a long time ago. Is that true? Why did they stop?
Kitten in Kentucky
Dear KiK,
Your dad is right! Egypt is a magical land, a place where humans were once keenly aware of our status as the most awesome species on Earth.
Egypt is where you’ll find the biggest litter box on the planet. It stretches for miles and miles until finally the horizon reveals a huge weather-worn statue of a cat and three stone pyramids jutting out of the litter.
The Great Sphinx of Giza keeps watch over the world’s most sacred litter box.
It is said that by pooping in front of the Great Sphinx and reverently burying…
The Great Sphinx of Giza keeps watch over the world’s most sacred litter box.
Pain In The Bud 