cat stories – Pain In The Bud

People Love This Cat So Much, They Put On A Festival In His Honor

Wanderin’ Joe attends the local school, poses for annual yearbook photos, pops in to see his friends all over town, and has innumerable humans wrapped around his little paws.

He’s more popular than any human, practically ubiquitous around town, and so well-known he’s been nicknamed “mayor.”

He’s also a cat.

Wanderin’ Joe, as he’s known to locals in Clintonville, Ohio, is often spotted padding along a ravine, poking his head into homes and shops of his choosing, and hanging out in the local elementary school.

He’s the school’s unofficial mascot, loved by students and staff, and is even included in annual yearbook photos. (Previously we wrote about Ziggy, another family cat who accompanies his family’s kids to school daily and took it upon himself to pose for a yearbook photo. Who knew some cats love going to school?)

The people of Clintonville love little Joe so much that they decided to throw a festival in his honor. It’s not tied in to another event or celebrated in conjunction with a holiday. It’s an event exclusively in celebration of one very special four-legged ambassador of local good will.

Wanderin’ Joe poses for an admirer. While Joe’s got a grumpy look, his many fans say he’s friendly, gentle and curious. Credit: Christina More via Wanderin’ Joe/Facebook

Nick Fancher, Joe’s human, said the little guy’s wanderlust began when the family began taking him on walks. At first Joe would pad along behind his human family, but then “he would run ahead of us and then let us catch up.”

“He’s precocious,” Fancher told WOSU, the local public radio station. “Like, I swear he was an explorer in another lifetime.”

Joe’s adventures are legion. Per WOSU, he’s been “adopted half a dozen times” by well-meaning people who mistook him for a stray, crashed weddings and memorial services, and did a six-month stint as a barn cat when yet another person mistook him for a stray and brought him home.

Fancher said he’s well aware Joe could be harmed, but worries his orange tabby buddy wouldn’t be happy if he was restricted to the indoors.

The Ohio man did not have a hand in promoting his pal. The festival, a Facebook page devoted to Joe sightings, and tributes like a charcoal portrait of Joe, were all the efforts of random admirers in Clintonville, a town of some 30,000 residents about eight miles north of Columbus.

Joe exploring his neighborhood. Credit: Wanderin’ Joe/Facebook

At Joe Fest, some locals brought their own cats along, traded stories of the legendary Wanderin’ Joe over food and drink, and paid tribute to the feline himself, who graciously permitted his admirers to scratch his head and feed him snacks.

“It’s a little hard to wrap one’s head around it. It appeals to my sense of the absurd and the wonderful,” Patti Liszkay, who lives in the neighborhood, told the station. “It’s just sort of a bipartisan get together in honor of a cat. I mean, it’s gentle. It’s nice.”

Credit: Joseph Forcina via Wanderin’ Joe/Facebook

Meanwhile in an attempt to avoid hard feelings, and knowing it has long been one of Buddy’s dreams to have a festival in his honor, I had this printed out and stuck it on the fridge:

Maryland Man Tried To Use A Kitten To Rob A Bank, Cops Say

The suspect’s crime spree was short lived and the kitten has been returned.

Magnolia is back after her meowgnificent caper.

The three-and-a-half month old kitten was conscripted into an attempted bank robbery by a man who stole her from the adoptable cats section of a Maryland pet shop late Tuesday morning, then took her to a nearby bank.

Security camera footage from the pet store shows the suspect cradling Magnolia as he darts out of the shop.

The man, whose name has not been released by police, then asked a teller to hold the kitten while he scribbled out a note demanding cash.

Despite the suspect’s wily and carefully calibrated plan, the attempted robbery went awry when police arrived in force before he could escape with any cash.

Meanwhile the pet store employees across the street, unaware of the attempted robbery, watched the cops converging and thought the local sheriff was very serious about pilfered pets.

“I immediately saw all of these police cars, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a heck of a response for a stolen cat,” Stephanie Stullich of Beltsville Community Cats told a local TV news station.

As for Magnolia, she seems to be a resilient kitten and wasn’t particularly phased by her ordeal. Footage after her return shows her happily batting her paws at a toy. When pet store staff were told by the cops that their cat was in the bank, they found Magnolia cuddling up with the bank manager.

The man who stole her had visited several times and had been fixated on the kitten, store employees told the local NBC affiliate.

Magnolia was back and safe shortly after her ordeal. Now she’s looking for her forever family. Credit: NBC Washington

Surely treats are in order for little Magnolia. We’re glad to hear she’s okay. She’s available for adoption, by the way, and wants to retire from her brief lifeof crime. Stullich says she’s “looking for a law-abiding citizen with a lot of love in their heart.”

Police haven’t offered details besides acknowledging the incident and saying they’re still sorting details out. We’ll update as more information becomes available.

Short Story: The Wrath Of The Cat!

Humans have insulted felinekind for the last time!

Little Buddy was determined to win the prize.

A lavish spread of his most favoritest snacks — including a mouth-watering variety of crunchies, Gouda and American cheese, turkey meaty sticks and more — would be his if he could rush to the kitchen, open the refrigerator door, remove a cold beer, and somehow get it back to his human before the end of the half-inning commercial break during a Yankees broadcast.

“Sixty seconds left!” Big Buddy called from the living room.

Little Buddy panicked. He was still working out how to reliably open the refrigerator door and was worried about whether he’d be able to carry the bottle by gripping the slender part with his teeth, or would be forced to roll it.

With a back paw resting against the adjacent cabinet, Buddy wedged his body against the refrigerator door and, with a bit of wiggling, finally pried it open. Yes!

There it was: the cold beer.

“Thirty seconds!” Big Buddy called.

Oh crap! The feline tried to grab the top of the bottle with his teeth, but it was slippery with condensation and cold.

I’ll have to roll it, then, he conceded.

Working quickly, he had the bottle safely on the floor in a few seconds and began rolling, nudging the icy brew with his nose and correcting its direction with his paws. Think of the snacks, he told himself.

He was out of the kitchen and heading toward the living room, beer rolling along, when Yankees announcer Michael Kay’s voice boomed through the speakers.

“And we’re back here in the bottom of the sixth, Yankees up two runs over the Red Sox,” he said.

“Time!” Big Buddy said, then got up and walked over to where his feline pal was sitting dejected with his shoulders slumped.

The human picked up the beer and cracked it open.

“So close,” he said, shaking his head. “What a shame.”

Little Buddy stared at the floor sadly as Big Buddy walked into the kitchen. Then he heard the unmistakable crinkle of a plastic bag. It was music to his ears, a balm for his soul, relief for his rumbling stomach.

I knew Big Buddy wouldn’t do this to me! he thought. He’s gonna give me that snack spread anyway!

The excited feline came skidding to a halt just inside the kitchen doorway and looked up to find his human digging a few mochi nuggets out of a Trader Joe’s bag. His tail, which had been quivering with excitement a second ago, sank like an inflatable air dancer suddenly deprived of wind.

“Mmmm,” the human said. “These are delicious. Don’t you just love snacks?”

He walked back into the living room and collapsed in his chair, leaving Little Buddy staring longingly up at the inaccessible Cabinet of Yums.

The hollow pop of a fastball discharging its kinetic energy off a wooden bat and the roar of the crowd sounded through the speakers in the next room, sending minute rumbles through the floor that tickled Buddy’s paw pads.

The gods of yums are pooping on me from great heights, he thought. What have I done to deserve this cruel fate?

“He’s training you!”

Little Buddy spun around. Who was meowing to him?

“Up here, dummy!” the voice meowed, and Little Buddy looked up to find a cat the color of a tangerine sitting on the outside window ledge and licking one paw.

“What do you mean by ‘he’s training me?'” Buddy asked the mysterious interloper.

The other feline continued raking his tongue along his paw at an insouciant pace, then finally stopped and looked down.

“He’s conditioning you to retrieve bottles of beer,” the interloper said with certainty. “The promise of a reward lit a fire under your behind, so you didn’t even question the ridiculous ‘challenge.’ And that, my boy, is how humans train lesser creatures like dogs. It is beneath us felines and an insult to our dignity!”

Buddy let the new information sink in.

“That bastard!” he meowed.

“Yes!” the tangerine cat replied.

“He’s treating me like a mutt? A dirty dog?”

“An abominable way to treat a friend, and if I may say so, an insult to your stature!”

Buddy seethed. “I’m supposed to be his best pal! His little buddy!”

“Some might call it a stunning display of absolute contempt for your feelings and your stomach,” the other feline nodded. “Criminal, really.”

“I’m gonna kill him!” Buddy meowed angrily.

The orange cat held up both paws.

“Hold off on that for a minute, will you, pal? If you go scorched Earth right away, you’ll have nothing for when this inevitably escalates.”

Buddy nodded reluctantly. “What did you have in mind?”

Tangerine smiled mischievously.

“My friend,” he trilled, “do you know what a toothbrush is?”

Author’s note: This is a work of fiction. At no time has Bud ever been denied a snack, nor has he ever missed a meal.

Meals missed: 0. Snacks deprived of: 0. Snacks consumed: 10,967. Vet assessment: Slightly chubby. Self assessment: Extremely meowscular, meowscle definition hidden by silky soft coat.

Hugely Popular ‘Warrior Cats’ Book Series Scores A TV Adaptation

The novels have sold almost 100 million copies worldwide and have prompted millions of kids to read.

Warrior Cats, a series of books that have sold in excess of 90 million copies worldwide, will be adapted as an animated series.

The new TV series is already in production with Chinese media giant Tencent producing in tandem with El Guiri Studios, an animation studio in Madrid.

The series will likely premiere in 2027.

I read the first volume of Warriors a few years ago to see what all the fuss was about and found a much better story than I expected. The narrative follows a young domestic cat named Rusty who ditches his comfortable life to join a clan of stray and feral cats living in the woods near his former home.

Warriors imagines groups of cats living in clans and working together to survive in a dangerous world.

As he adjusts to his new surroundings, he’s welcomed and supported by the clan’s cats, but others mock him as a “kittypet.” Rusty is determined to prove himself and his value to the clan.

The narrative is well paced, and there’s a compelling mix of world-building and action. The series is written for younger readers, probably appealing most to teens and pre-teens, but the authors — who collectively work under the pen name Erin Hunter — don’t condescend to their audience.

There’s tragedy, despair and death, but the book treats them with appropriate gravity, never trivializing events.

At a time when 28 percent of American adults are functionally illiterate, more than half read below a sixth-grade level, and schools are churning out graduates who struggle to read simple sentences, you’ve got to reach younger readers where they are.

We’re living through an unprecedented backslide in capability, one that cannot be fully explained by COVID-prompted disruptions to education.

Well-written books like Warriors are crucial in getting kids to read and turning it from a chore to something they enjoy. In a way, they’re this generation’s version of Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Let’s hope the animated series inspires even more kids to pick up the books it’s based on.

Stray Returns Every Day To Hug Shopkeeper Who Feeds Her

Caring for cats is a communal effort in the Turkish city of 16 million people.

Normally we don’t do the “OMG how adorbz!” type of thing here at PITB, but this short clip should bring a smile to everyone who loves cats.

The shop you see in the video below is in Istanbul, the famously feline-tolerant city of Turkey (or Türkiye), where people collectively feed, house and care for the many stray cats who call it home.

A stray cat in Turkey shows up every morning to hug the man who fed her.

Not sometimes. Every single day.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/85XSxwZrj4
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) May 18, 2026

Cats are allowed almost everywhere in Istanbul, including shops, offices, hotels and other businesses. There have been instances in which cats have gone to hospitals when they’re hurt or their kittens are sick, and medical staff actually treat them.

There are cat parks for play, communal cat shelters and tiny cat houses everywhere.

In the US, where some people will shoot any animal that ventures near their property, we would do well to follow the example set by our Turkish friends and do more to care for a species that has been by our side for thousands of years.