Modern Box: The magazine for discerning felines.
Modern Box Monthly’s December issue will hit newsstands today, with editor-in-chief Buddy promising a boxstravaganza for our loyal readers! Plus: Investigative Eater Tux digs in to new yums, while our box reviewers preview the boxes your humans’ likely presents will come in! ‘Tis the season for boxes!
Cats were recognized for their efforts to transform laziness into an art form.
NEW YORK — Domestic cats swept the Laziest Species category at the 212th Annual Animal Awards on Friday night.
Accepting the award on behalf of all cats, Chonkmatic the Magnificent waddled on stage, took a short nap, then was helped up to the podium, where he yawned and addressed the audience.
“Thank you!” Chonkmatic said, allowing others to hoist the award for him. “We didn’t work hard at all to earn this recognition, and that makes it even more satisfying.”
Chonkmatic went on to list several other cats who made the award possible by demonstrating remarkable laziness, before handing off the list to his assistant so he could be carried off stage for a snack and another nap.
Jaguars, the apex predators of South America, were recognized in the wild cat category for the remarkable achievement of ruling more than two million square miles of rainforest while napping approximately 70 percent of the time.
The big cats of the Amazon prerecorded an acceptance speech because the award show was scheduled to interfere with their napping schedule.
“We are honored to receive this award,” Ahau-K’in, the King of Jaguars, said in the message. “If you could just deliver it to us, that’d be great. In fact, you can leave it at the Temple of Palenque, but bring it up the stairs, mind. We don’t want to have to drag that thing up here.”
Sharing in the recognition was Buddy the Cat, who “showed us all that a new style of napping is possible by training our humans never to move if we’re sleeping on top of them.”
“The New York cat also developed new techniques for prompting humans to deliver snacks directly to their feline overlords,” the judges wrote. “After all, why should we come running at the sound of a crinkly bag being opened? The snacks should be placed before us, requiring as little effort as possible to eat them and leaving more time for yawning, stretching and lazing.”
A street cat’s glare wins him thousands of admirers.
A scowling street cat dubbed Giggles has found a new home thanks to his mean mug.
The tabby cat with an unforgettable glower was found roaming in Streetsboro, Ohio — a small city about 20 miles northeast of Akron — and had ticks as well as a wound from a cat bite, according to staff at Riggi Rescue.
After a good Samaritan brought the little guy in, the rescue fixed him up, then snapped a few shots which quickly went viral.
Despite Giggles’ fixed expression, the golden tiger-striped tabby is friendly and affectionate, shelter staff say.
“He’s not mad, he’s actually quite happy, sweet and charming,” Giggles’ rescuers wrote on Instagram. “If he’s angry about anything, it’s because you aren’t petting him.”
As expected, adoption offers poured in, and Giggles already has a home lined up, presumably to someone who’s going to make a fortune on Instagram from his mug.
Iris the cat tips the scales at 7.5kg, which equals 16.5 pounds in the Proper American Way of Recording Weights and Measures™.
The fluffster has become so rotund that she can no longer fit through her cat flap. But her humans, who live a few miles south of Exeter in the UK, think the problem is their neighbors, so they’re “pleading” with people in their neighborhood “not to feed the overweight feline,” the Daily Mail reported.
“She’s getting bigger and bigger,” Sheena Wilson, Iris’ human, told the newspaper. “We cannot keep her indoors. Her diet, as you can see, is not going very well.”
Photographic evidence confirms the Russian blue does indeed love the snacks:
Iris can only manage to get her head through the cat flap now, “so she can only use it to play peek a boo and can’t fit the rest of her in it,” Wilson said.
But Wilson also told the newspaper Iris is a “diva” who demands attention, so we’re left to draw the obvious conclusion: Wilson and/or other humans responsible for Iris are letting her out every day, since she can’t get out on her own.
Iris “pretends to be neglected” and fools neighbors into thinking she has “an empty tummy,” Wilson said.
As much as Wilson may want to outsource supervision of her cat’s diet, it’s hard to believe anyone thinks Iris is underfed.
We sympathize, and we also know there’s a simple solution: Keep the cat inside. You can’t control your snack-dispensing neighbors, but you can cut off your cat’s access to them — and keep her safe from traffic and all the other dangers of the outdoors.
We wish good luck to Iris and her owners.
“Vote 4 me and all your wildest dreams will come true!!” Buddy tweeted. “Turkey and bacon will rain down from the heavens! Great rivers of catnip will flow through the streets!”
Twitter generated another round of controversy Wednesday after censoring meows by President Buddy, claiming they were misleading or inaccurate.
It was the fourth time in less than a week that the social media giant censored or amended warnings to the president of the Americats’ messages. The first was President Buddy’s election day tweet to his followers:
“Vote 4 me and all your wildest dreams will come true!!” Buddy tweeted. “Turkey and bacon will rain down from the heavens! The panda demic will last forever, ensuring your humans are always home to do your bidding! Chihuahuas will be deported back to Chihuahua! Great rivers of catnip will flow through the streets!”
The tweet was up for more than 20 minutes before Twitter amended it with a warning to users: “Our community guidelines team have decided this tweet violates our terms of service. No politician can make turkey or bacon rain down from the sky.”
A second tweet was semi-censored late on election night, with Twitter’s team deactivating retweets on the post.
“Well, that looks about wrapped up!!!” Buddy tweeted to his 56.3 million followers. “Tremendous victory! Stand by for turkey — oven roasted, sliced and fried — to rain down from the heavens, my friends, amid clouds ushering in the sweet smell of bacon as crispy bits of it form a deluge over patriotic American skies. (The counties that voted for me.) I’ll sleep well knowing I have four more years! ‘MERICATS!”
By Wednesday morning, President Buddy’s posts had changed in tone as vote tallies indicated tighter contests in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. Exit polls indicated the president did well with desert cats in Arizona, who said poultry and bacon were two of the most important issues this election cycle.
“WHAT IS THIS BULLS–? They CHEATED. This is the work of the Siamese, folks! They’ll tell you it was the Russian Blues, but who are all these tech companies beholden to? THE SIAMESE. Americat tech companies are conspiring with the Siamese to censor me, President Buddy, and STEAL THE ELECTION! Sad!”
Less than a half hour later, Twitter tagged the post with another warning: “Our fact-checking unit has determined this tweet is wrong or misleading. There is no evidence the great and powerful Siamese, led by the awe-inspiring Chairman Xinnie the Pooh, have exerted any influence in the Americat election. Xinnie is too wise a man to trouble himself with such rubbish. May he live forever!”
The president’s supporters cried foul, calling for anti-trust proceedings against social media giants like Twitter, Facebook and Google.
The fourth and most recent censored tweet was sent on Thursday.
“It’s been an exhausting few weeks, but we made it to the finish line!” Buddy tweeted. “Gonna go crash on my human and enjoy a nice long nap. Nothing’s better than sleeping on my Big Buddy.”
Like earlier tweets, the Thursday post had reduced visibility, with Twitter’s engineers blocking the ability to share the tweet.
“Our office of standards and opinion moderation has determined this tweet violates our rules against advising users on sleeping habits and sleep hygiene. In addition, our fact-checkers have determined that declaring Big Buddy as the best human mattress is an opinion that cannot be verified or fact-checked by other cats. All hail Chairman Xinnie.”
Twitter CEO Peter Dinklage did not respond to requests for comment.
Buddy learns of the existence of boxing. What could the humans be hiding from cats?
Dear Buddy,
I thought you might like to know that I overheard my human and his friend talking about a mysterious human sport called boxing. They were looking forward to a really big upcoming “boxing match,” and then I thought about how you’d discovered the existence of bowling.
If humans can hold out on us and not tell us about bowling, a game that involves knocking things off flat surfaces — a game made for cats, if there ever was one! — then I would not put it past them to keep this “boxing” from us either. I am intrigued.
Have you heard of boxing? What’s your take?
Curious Cat in California
Dear Curious,
You’ve come to the right cat! My detectivating skills are legendary, for good reason. This is the first I am hearing about this so-called “boxing,” but there are two things we can immediately deduce:
I hate to think less of Big Buddy, but his kind are sneaky, and I can’t help but imagine a social event in which humans gather for wild parties in which they have incredible amounts of fun sitting in boxes. They probably laugh joyously as they jump in and out of the boxes, saying “Hahaha, our cats can’t play with these boxes! These are all for us!”
And they probably dismantle the boxes afterward, just so we don’t find them and get tipped off to their boxing “matches.”
I am so angry right now! I am going to confront Big Buddy and bite him if he doesn’t spill the deets on boxing.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
Cheers,
Buddy
Pain In The Bud 