Nevada, who looks like she’s Buddy’s sister, really wants a human and a home.
And from the looks of it, she’s ready to leave.
The green-eyed silver tabby gave Bloomington, Ind., police dispatcher Matt Smith a big hug when he visited the city’s Animal Care and Control department to help photograph an adoption drive this week.
Nevada is five years old, just like Buddy, and she looks like she could be his sister. If you’re in Indiana and you’re looking to adopt a cat, check out the shelter’s Facebook page. Her adoption fee has been reduced to $20 during the drive.
Here’s hoping little Nevada finds a great human and a comfy home.
Police dispatcher Matt Smith and Nevada, who has been waiting for a human and a home. Credit: Bloomington Police Department
What’s wrong with the above picture? Anyone who knows anything about my species will recognize immediately that the collar is on the wrong person. The “cat” should be leading the human around, although a collar isn’t strictly necessary for humans — usually a few stern meows are enough to get the message across.
Kat Lyons (come on!) fastens a tail to her behind, wears a pair of kitty ears on her head, and for some reason completes the look with a Catholic school girl skirt, because apparently my species dresses like Catholic school girls. (Plaid tabbies, anyone?)
In the accompanying video, Ms. Lyons climbs up onto a dinner table and awkwardly laps at a bowl of milk with her tongue.
”People are like ‘Oh, you’re not really a cat,’ and I’m like ‘I feel like I really am, though,’” Lyons told a documentary crew from Barcroft.
So what do I really think about all of this? I say, “Stop appropriating my culture!”
Licking your own butt, pooping in a box and sleeping 16 hours a day are traditions that have a long history among my people, and outsiders simply cannot understand the subtle cultural nuances of such behavior.
For example, screaming bloody murder when dinner is 45 seconds late is a tradition that has deep roots going back millennia to the days of the First Kittehs, and shitting on things is the time-honored way of registering displeasure.
It’s one thing to say “Stop! I don’t like what you’re doing!” and quite another to build a monument of fecal matter on your human’s pillow as a means of expressing deep dissatisfaction.
A cultural appropriator appropriating my species’ well-known affinity for boxes. An outrage!
But if Ms. Lyons really wants to be a cat, she must pass the Trial of the Tabbies, and prove herself by catching and eating a delicious raw mouse.
She must possess the ability to groom herself, and she must demonstrate she can’t open cans anymore.
That’s a human superpower, and if Kat Lyons wants to be a real cat, she must forfeit her ability to perform such sorcery and meow for dinner like the rest of us.
Russian inmates have been using cats as couriers for drugs like hash and heroin.
Apparently some criminals in Russia avoid jail sentences and are sent instead to penal colonies, which are closed compounds resembling Laconian communes instead of prison blocks.
And apparently using cats to smuggle drugs into penal colonies is a favorite pastime among the Russkies — every few months a new story hits the headlines, detailing doomed drug delivery operations using kitties as couriers.
The latest comes to us courtesy of Tatarstan, where an inmate’s non-incarcerated confederates withheld food from a cat for a few days, then slipped hash in a hidden sleeve in kitty’s collar before setting him loose near the penal colony.
The hungry cat headed toward the compound where an inmate was presumably waiting with pungent chow to lure his unsuspecting mule. But guards realized there was something odd about the cat, and after a short chase around the grounds they were able to corner the purrpetrator, according to the BBC.
Here’s the sneaky tortoiseshell immediately after penal colony guards intercepted him in late October. He doesn’t look happy that he’s been caught and he’s missed some meals:
Can we get some Friskies for this guy already?
Meanwhile in the city of Novomoskovsk a case against a local inmate is on the brink of collapse after the cat who allegedly delivered drugs to him managed to escape from custody.
The slippery kitty was allegedly an accomplished mule when authorities nabbed him and found heroin in his collar. Three witnesses told prosecutors the tabby was a reliable enough courier that his owner, Eduard Dolgintsev, took regular drug orders for other inmates, per Russian media reports.
WANTED: Dmitry the Deliverator, on charges of delivering smack to Russian inmates and talking smack to Russian prosecutors
The defense isn’t buying it.
Dolgintsev’s attorney told Russian newspapers he wanted to run experiments to see if the cat really would make reliable runs to and from the penal colony, hoping to demonstrate to the court that the idea was more fanciful than feasible.
The cat, who was considered evidence in the case, was kept in a “secure location” in a petting zoo facility, but when Dolgintsev’s attorney went there to check on the feline he was told it had slipped custody earlier, when staff let it out of the enclosure to get exercise and two dogs began creating commotion.
With the kitty’s dramatic escape, the case against the inmate looks shaky. A Russian legal expert told Kommersant.ru that the case would be dismissed unless “proof was previously obtained that the cat really did serve as an instrument in the crime.” Proof like lab test results showing traces of heroin on the his fur, for instance.
In the meantime, a very interested Buddy is wondering if the same method could be used to smuggle catnip and silvervine into The Big House, aka Animal Control…
This photo shows the Houdini of Novomoskovsk before he hightailed it out of his holding pen.
A Russian man makes a painful sacrifice for his chonktastic cat, Viktor.
Mikhail Galin loves his cat Viktor, that’s for sure.
The 34-year-old Russian and his feline flew from Riga, the capital of Latvia, to Moscow without any incident on Nov. 6, but when Galin checked in for an 8.5-hour flight to his destination in Vladivostok, he was told Viktor was too fat to fly in the cabin.
Officials from Aeroflot — Russian Airlines — told Galin there was an 18-pound limit for companion animals checked into the cabin, and at 22 pounds, the chonktacular Viktor was just too much chonk to hang with his human in business class. Instead, Viktor would have to tough out the long flight in cargo.
But Viktor was already stressed from traveling, and Galin wouldn’t take the flight without the cat by his side.
“I was very worried that during the duration of an eight-hour flight, something would happen to him in the cargo and he wouldn’t survive the trip,” Galin told the Washington Post.
When he couldn’t persuade Aeroflot to let him board with Viktor, Galin turned to social media for help and found a couple sympathetic to his cause. Their cat, Phoebe, looked like a miniature Viktor.
Galin booked a business class ticket, met up with the couple at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, and presented Phoebe as the cat he was taking with him on the flight. After airline employees weighed Phoebe and waved Galin forward, he and his new friends switched Viktor back in for his smaller body double and parted ways.
The plan worked beautifully and Galin would have gotten away with it if he hadn’t celebrated the successful swap on social media. He couldn’t resist the temptation and posted photos of Viktor on the flight: One shows the chubby cat peeking out of his carrier next to a glass of champagne, while another shot has Viktor in Galin’s lap, man helping cat enjoy a bird’s eye view.
Viktor takes a liking to business class.
The post went viral, an unamused Aeroflot got wind of it, and after an investigation the company docked Galin almost 400,000 frequent flier miles, his entire stash. It also booted him from its bonus miles program entirely.
“The law is harsh, but it is the law,” Galin told NBC News, repeating a stoic Russian maxim about punishment. “I violated the rules, and the carrier has every right to take action.”
Thankfully the result wasn’t all bad and Galin was rewarded for his loyalty to his cat. He told the Post several cat food companies had offered a year’s worth of food free for the flabby feline, and other transportation companies offered free use of their services.
While one politician called for Aeroflot to relax its rules on pet weight, the government wisely stayed out of kitty affairs.
“I don’t believe the Kremlin can or should comment on a situation involving a cat,” a spokesman for Vladimir Putin deadpanned.
As for Viktor, he’s made it clear he expects the same level of comfort next time he flies.
“He liked business class a lot better than economy class,” Galin said, “because he considered himself superior.”
A protective cat saves a toddler from a potentially nasty fall down a flight of stairs.
A cat in Colombia has been hailed a hero for saving a 1-year-old boy from a potentially nasty fall down a flight of stairs.
The incident happened on Halloween in Bogota. Samuel, the toddler, had escaped his play pen and had nearly made it to the stairs on all fours when Gatubela, a Siamese mix, leaped into action.
The cat dragged little Samuel back from the brink, then put herself between the toddler and the stairs, pushing him to safety:
“The cat has been part of our family practically since birth, we had her here when she was a month, a month and a few days old, and she has become familiar with my children,” Samuel’s father, Jesid Leon, told a reporter. “She is two months older than my son.”
As for the rest of it, I have no idea what’s going on here. Why does the floor look like a demilitarized zone? Where are the parents? And does Gatubela — whose name means Catwoman — get paid for babysitting? At the very least she deserves some treats…
Jesid Leon, father of Samuel, cradles the heroic Gatubela.
Pain In The Bud 