cat stories – Page 57 – Pain In The Bud

The Cat Who Ate The Turkey

Hey kitty, help yourself to all the turkey you want.

Buddy has a new hero.

Heather Ziegler, a columnist for a local newspaper in West Virginia, recalls a Thanksgiving from her teenage years made memorable by her cat helping himself to the turkey:

My mother had taken the huge frozen turkey and placed it on top of the [freezer] to begin the thawing process several days before Thanksgiving. By the grace of God, we all survived this process over the years.

However, this particular year was a first for our family. A day or so before Thanksgiving, my mother went to retrieve the turkey. A scream was heard, peppered with a few harmless curse words. At some point, the family cat had discovered the turkey and had begun to enjoy a pre-Thanksgiving meal. The turkey was ruined and it was too late to thaw another bird.

The story has a happy ending of sorts: Heather’s mom and dad took all twelve (!) of their children out to dinner, where they were joined by their young cousins, whose police officer father had been shot a few days earlier and remained hospitalized. Thanks to the crafty cat, those kids had the comfort of their extended family on a difficult holiday.

Since then, Ziegler writes, The Turkey Incident has become a fondly-remembered bit of family lore.

As regular readers of Pain In The Bud know, turkey is Buddy’s favorite food in the universe.

Why turkey, and why not chicken, beef, salmon, duck or tuna? Who knows? He’s loved it since kittenhood and would eat turkey all the time if he could.

Thankfully he won’t be putting a damper on Thanksgiving: I don’t eat meat, and my aunt hosts Thanksgiving in her house. But maybe it’s time for a special turkey treat for the good boy in the form of Thanksgiving leftovers.

Cat and Turkey! — This silver tabby (not Buddy) can’t wait to get his paws on leftover turkey. Photo credit: Nick Strate

Meet Feline Police Pawfficer Donut, A Cat Who Raises Cash for Charity

Not to be outdone by K9 officers, one cat has become a “Pawfficer” in a Detroit suburb.

Community policing is the idea that people feel safer and are more likely to trust the police if officers are visible, accessible and know the people in the neighborhoods they patrol.

It’s a different model of policing, one that gets cops out of their patrol cars and onto sidewalks, parks and public events. Officers check in with local businesses, listen to concerns from the community and place a high priority on quality of life, acting on lessons learned from many research studies showing crime drops dramatically in places where there’s a stronger sense of community. (Community policing was the model used by the NYPD in the late 90s, dramatically transforming Manhattan’s worst neighborhoods.)

For example, drug dealers work corners in blighted neighborhoods where people won’t call the police, but they’re much less likely to extend their turf to places where people know their neighbors, take pride in their homes and don’t tolerate petty crime like graffiti and vandalism.

To help them connect with the local community, police in Troy, Michigan — a mostly suburban area north of Detroit — added a kitten to their force in 2018.

Pawfficer Donut of Troy Police Department — Pawfficer Donut is sworn in as a member of the Troy Police Department in 2018. Credit: Troy PD

Pawfficer Donut, as the tiny tabby is known, accompanies cops to local events, helps officers connect with kids in schools, and oversees regular meetups called “Coffee with Cops,” in which citizens can speak to officers in an informal setting to air concerns and provide feedback.

Now Pawfficer Donut is extending her beat to charitable fundraising, helping raise cash for Leuk’s Landing, a home for cats suffering from feline leukemia, and HAVEN, a group that aids victims of domestic violence.

For $25 you can support Donut’s fundraiser and get a sweet Feline Police Unit t-shirt. The proceeds go to the above-mentioned charities:

To purchase a t-shirt and help Pawfficer Donut with her fundraiser, click here.

Donut is a former shelter cat. To follow her adventures on pawtrol, you can subscribe to her Instagram account.

AAB1765B-4CA9-48EB-BDC9-445BE81DDC61 — Donut even has her own badge. Credit: Troy PD

Nevada’s Been At The Shelter For 100 Days

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.

catandcop2 — Police dispatcher Matt Smith and Nevada, who has been waiting for a human and a home. Credit: Bloomington Police Department

Buddy’s Mailbag: The Woman Who Identifies As A Cat

This is cultural appropriation!

Dear Buddy,

What do you think of this story about a 31-year-old woman who “identifies as a cat” and calls her boyfriend her “meowster”?

– A Real Cat

Woman Who Thinks She’s A Cat — *shudder* (Sauce: Barcroft TV)

Dear ARC,

Ugh! I cannot unsee this, do you realize that?

First of all, she’s doing it wrong:

Woman Who Wants To Be A Cat — WRONG! Erroneous! Totally wrong! (Barcroft TV)

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.

Cultural Appropriator! — 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.

Your friend,

Buddy

Cat Caught Smuggling Drugs Into Russian Penal Colony

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:

Russian cat gets caught carrying drugs — 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: Russian drug mule — 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…