Category: cat photography

cat photography, Cats in Games, Feline Overlords, Hero Cats, news, pop culture February 24, 2023

Check Out This Beautiful Gallery Of Larry The Cat, PLUS: A New Game Features A Furious Feline

As we noted on Sunday, Larry the Cat just celebrated his 12th anniversary as chief mouser at No. 10 Downing St., the UK prime minister’s residence and office. The Atlantic has a new gallery featuring photos of Larry’s adventures over the years, and it’s fantastic.

See Larry chase a pigeon, tolerate former President Barack Obama, pose for the press, bolt from a Mitsubishi bigwig, cautiously supervise a police dog working on his turf, hang out with photographers and steal the show during meetings of world leaders.

The gallery also includes rare photos of Larry inside No. 10 (during which he’s mostly gazing longingly at his turf outside) and other amusing moments from his long tenure as de facto head of government in the UK.

(Top image credit: Pete Souza/White House photo)

Cuddly carnage!

The camera pans from a wet, neon-lit street to the jagged remains of a wall spray painted with “Death to Humans” when a tiny head pops up, with the unmistakable shape of cat ears and the markings of a ginger tabby.

Zoom in: An orange tail speeds by, its owner just out of the frame, then the guitars kick in and Gori the cat stylishly disembowels some freak monster from atop his trusty Back To The Future-style hoverboard.

The game is called Gori: Cuddly Carnage, and it looks completely ridiculous, absolutely glorious and a hell of a lot of fun.

cuddlycarnage2 — Gori stylishly puts down a monster. Credit: Angry Demon Studio and Wired Productions

It’s from Angry Demon Studios and Wired Productions, the same people behind the well-received 80s/90s nostalgia trip Arcade Paradise, so the production values look great and Gori shares some elements of the retrowave aesthetic prevalent in Paradise.

It probably won’t get the kind of hype that the feline-centric Stray received, nor will people laud it for educating players about cat behavior, but that’s okay. It’s not that kind of game. Gori: Cuddly Carnage is still in development with no announced release date, but we’ll be keeping an eye on it.

ss_65c72aebb98390d4a3cda988cffa50065f871cf7.1920x1080 — Gori the “ultimate pet cat” on his hoverboard. Credit: Angry Demon Studio/Wired Productions

cat photography, Feline Ingenuity, news, Technologyy September 14, 2022

NASA Photo Shows ‘Cats’ Got To Mars Before Humans Did

Cats are sneaky, quiet as a ghost when they want to be and have a habit of seemingly teleporting between spots, but could they somehow use their feline superpowers to beat us to Mars?

As the Perseverance rover continues to chug along and take photos as well as samples of rock and soil, people following the rover’s progress can vote for “image of the week,” and this time around they picked an image that, when seen from a distance, appears to show a crouched cat with its behind raised, in mid butt-wiggle as it prepares to pounce on some unfortunate Martian.

marscatloaf — A Martian Desert Cat spots a rich vein of Temptatiums in a natural deposit and is ready to pounce.

This isn’t the first time Mars enthusiasts have spotted a “cat” in an image from the red planet. In 2015, some people said a group of rocks resembled a “giant cat statue” poking out from the Martian soil in a photo taken by the Curiosity rover.

I don’t really see it. YMMV:

An “enhanced” image of the same formation.

The “cat statue” on Mars as encountered by the Curiosity rover in 2015.

Perseverance is exploring the site of a former crater lake and an adjoining former river delta. The Bad Astronomy blog says it was “very clearly a lake of standing water at some point in the past.”

The blog provides a breakdown of the geography of the crater and what it can tell us about the Mars of the past. Knowing there was water on Mars makes the idea of life elsewhere in the solar system seem possible. Astronomers believe Jupiter’s moon Europa, for example, potentially hosts life. The satellite exists so far from the sun it’s in a permanent deep freeze and would normally be inhospitable to life, but the evidence strongly suggests there are oceans beneath Europa’s icy surface, and those oceans are heated by massive vents on the ocean floor.

Water, warmth, energy. The conditions for life are there. If Mars was covered with lakes at one point, what’s swimming in the oceans of Europa?

mars_jezerocrater_landingsite — Credit: NASA

So Mars had water and the entire planet was pristine litter box. If it had some prey to hunt and an atmosphere, the red planet could have been the perfect homeworld for felis sapiens, who would rival humanity in technology if not for the tragic fact that their species is only awake eight hours a day.

Now that’s a scary thought!

Buddy, cat photography, cat stories, Kittens August 1, 2022

Who’s That Handsome Kitten?

I was digging through some old files when I found these photos of a young Buddy the Cat:

handsomebuddy2 — “Hey, where’s that steak you promised?”

These were taken in my brother’s apartment on the Upper East Side. It was early summer, so Buddy was probably about four months old, give or take.

He spent almost the entire day in the yard where he made friends with Cosmo the Dog and had lots of fun chasing insects, running around and rolling in the grass. He made friends with every human there, of course. Then when he was tired out from all that playing, he had a super special treat: Steak from the BBQ.

I’d love to bring the little guy to more social events and barbecues, but alas, almost all of them involve dogs who are not Cosmo, and I’m not sure how Bud would do with three or four dogs running around, let alone 20+ people. Smaller gatherings sans pups are a better bet.

cat photography, Feline Weirdness, kitties January 24, 2022

Can You Spot The Cat?

Here, kitty kitty! Oh where could you be?

Not a challenge? Let’s try this one. Hint: Kitty’s shy:

This cat is well hidden, but she’s like a deer in headlights:

This cute cat is getting ready for an ambush:

Last but definitely not least, if you enjoy a challenge (or just feel like driving yourself crazy), I assure you there is a cat in this photo. Hint: Kitty’s in plain sight, not half-buried in the junk. Good luck!

big cats, cat photography, Feline Ingenuity January 19, 2022January 19, 2022

Russian Woman’s Maine Coon Is The Size Of A Lynx

It’s not easy having a huge cat.

As readers of PITB know, I have first-hand experience with taking care of a massive beast of a cat, with Buddy weighing in at a jaw-dropping 10 pounds, most of it pure meowscle of course.

That means I can sympathize with Russian one-percenter Yulia Minina, who bought a Maine Coon kitten less than two years ago only to see him balloon into an almost 30-pound behemoth — and he’s still growing!

Visitors often mistake Kefir for a large dog at first, Minina said, but the Maine Coon is the kind of gentle giant typical of his species and acts more like “a very affectionate and modest child.”

“When friends and acquaintances come to the house, all the attention is on him and he willingly allows himself to be stroked,” Minina told the UK’s South West News Service.

Kefir the cat — The scary part? Kefir isn’t done growing. Credit: Yulia Minina/Instagram

While most cats are just about their full size after a year, Maine Coons can continue to grow until after their second birthdays. (There’s no evidence that they continue to grow until they’re 5 years old despite claims online, mostly from breeder sites.) That means Kefir, who already looks like a robust lynx, could end up challenging domestic cat size records if he enjoys another growth spurt.

Kefir is just starting to go viral within the past day or two, and as his Instagram follower count (7,288 as of this post) continues to tick up, so do the enquiries from people who want to buy the big guy.

“To everyone who wants to buy my cat, I answer: NOT FOR SALE!” Minina wrote in an Instagram post on Monday. “But I can give all the information about the breeder that many have asked! At the moment, 3 gorgeous snow-white blue eyes are available in the nursery age 1 month. I think you don’t need to praise their beautiful and big parents, you already know everything!”

No word yet if Minina gets a commission on successful referrals to the breeder.

In the meantime, Buddy can rest easy knowing that even if another cat rivals his huge and intimidating presence, he’s all the way in Stary Oskol, a safe 4,873 miles away.