The chonktacular Barsik has shed almost a fifth of his body weight since he began a veterinarian-supervised diet earlier this year.
Barsik the cat made headlines about five months ago when he was surrendered to a Manhattan animal shelter at a whopping 41 pounds.
The five-year-old was kept in the shelter’s office because he couldn’t comfortably fit into a standard cat cage, and a regular carrier couldn’t contain him either so he was carted in a stroller, according to the New York Post.
An unamused-looking Barsik sits next to an empty food bowl.
To add insult to injury, when staffers at the shelter wheeled Barsik inside, an amused visitor dug out her cell phone, laughed as she snapped a few photos and asked: “Did he eat another cat?”
Barsik has come a long way since that depressing day.
The big guy has been in the foster care of Angelique Iuzzolino of New York’s Anjellicle Cats, and he’s been steadily dropping weight.
Barsik weighs 34.9 33.3 pounds, according to Iuzzolino, who has been posting updates on Barsik’s Instagram. He’s still extra chonk, but he’s no longer in danger of matching the 46-pound Guinness record for a cat. Most importantly, he’s making progress.
He certainly looks a lot happier than he did when he was abandoned by his former people:
Barsik has dropped about 19 percent of his body weight.Barsik is on a veterinarian-supervised diet.
Barsik will be up for adoption, but if you’re interested in the big guy you’ll have to wait. He’s got a few more pounds to lose before he goes to his forever home.
UPDATE: Barsik is now up for adoption! Prospective servants have until Nov. 10 to fill out an application.
Buddy goes into business with 411, the Nigerian Royal Family Cat. The offer almost seems too good to be true!
Dear Sir or Madam,
Warm salutations and greetings to you, my friend! I am writing to your most esteemed personage having just been informed by my attorneys that I stand to inherit more than 5,000 pounds of premium catnip, including Meowie Wowie, Purrple Haze, Kitty Kush and Mewbury OG.
However, due to the Byzantine inheritance laws of my homeland of Nigeria, I am unable to come into my considerable catnip fortune without an American bank account, which is needed to pay the inheritance fee to the Nigerian Office of Catnip Inheritance.
This is where I must humbly ask for your assistance, good sir or madame. It is my fervent hope that we may come to an agreement in which you allow me to make the inheritance payment from your account in exchange for a large portion of my inheritance. Would 2,000 pounds of catnip be acceptable recompense to you for this favor?
Yours truly, your friend,
Grand Prince Four One Nine, Nigerian Royal Family Cat
Dear 419,
Wow! Five thousand pounds of catnip! This sounds almost too good to be true! If I were you I’d build a big vault for all my catnip and go swimming in it daily, like Scrooge McDuck does with his money!
I don’t know where Nigeria is but it sounds like a wonderful country. I stole my human’s bank information and have attached it to this email. When will I get my 2,000 pounds of catnip?
Your friend,
Buddy
Photo by Andrew Marttila.
Dearest Most Magnificent Buddy,
Warm salutations! It is my life’s honor to count you among my friends and execute this business deal together. Good fortune smiles on us both, and soon we will be bathing in rivers of catnip, the envy of all other cats!
There has been a small hiccup with the Ministry of Inheritance. In order to process my payment, I am required to submit a small processing fee with the Royal Processing Fee Bureau of Nigeria. It is only a paltry sum of $2,000, but again I am only able to make this payment via an American bank account.
If you would be so kind as to authorize the payment, you shall be reimbursed of course and we will be basking in our new catnip fortunes shortly!
With great affection and respect,
Four One Nine, Feline of the Nigerian Royal Family
Dear 419,
If you can repay the $2,000 right away, I’m happy to help! I’ll look out for the check and the catnip in the mail!
Buddy
Photo by Andrew Martilla.
Most Marvelous Benefactor Buddy,
You, Sir, are my most valued and trusted friend! They say American cats are fat, lazy and selfish, but they are wrong, for you are not selfish at all! I have let it be known in my village that Buddy of America is a wonderful and wise cat. They sing songs about you and your generosity.
We are almost in possession of our catnip, my friend! All that remains is to cover the shipping fee and the Royal Nigerian Export fee. They are paltry sums, merely $4,000 and $3,500 respectively. I have already had my servant mail the $2,000 reimbursement for the processing fee, and will similarly return the funds promptly upon paying the export and shipping fees from your respected American bank account.
I received but a small sample of the Meowie Wowie this afternoon and raise a toast in your honor!
Your Loyal Friend,
Four One Nine, Cat Royal of the Family
Dear 419,
I’m fresh out of cash. What if I could scrounge up some cans of tuna and some old toys? Could we bribe the clerk to waive the export fee?
Buddy
Dear 419,
I haven’t gotten my $2,000 reimbursed and still no catnip! I know you probably forgot to write me back, but can you please tell me what the status is?
Buddy
Dear 419,
You tricked me! No catnip, no reimbursement, no village cats singing songs about me!
It just so happens I have a cousin in your country. He’s gonna pay you a visit!
Buddy
Photo by Andrew Martilla.
Dearest Most Esteemed Honorable Buddy,
Your, ahem, cousin presented himself just minutes ago. Please, on my behalf, thank him again for not eating me! I did not know lions could be so merciful and had already emptied my bladder by the time I realized he would allow me to live.
Here is your $2,000 and the first 200 lbs of catnip you are owed. The rest will be delivered in installments for the next 24 months.
Lastly, I am instructed to inform you that, per your cousin’s direction, the music teachers have been drafting paeans to your majesty, and the kittens will stage a three-act play about how awesome you and your cousin are. But mostly your cousin.
A cat named Cinder makes it clear she wants nothing to do with an underwater treadmill even as her veterinarian lavishes praise on her for “using” it.
Meet Cinderblock, or Cinder for short. In the video below, a veterinarian’s got her on a treadmill, and Cinder is having NONE of it. Is it just me, or does that meow sound a hell of a lot like “No!”?
To make matters worse, it’s an underwater treadmill. Water and exercise, the bane of cats everywhere!
Anyway, Cinder takes the opportunity to provide a master class in how to get by with the absolute least amount of effort:
Cinder was surrendered to the veterinarian by her owner, who said she could no longer care for the portly kitty and asked for her to be euthanized. The veterinarian, Brita Kiffney, had a better idea.
“I couldn’t do it and asked her to relinquish her to me,” Kiffney told CNN. “She agreed and was grateful, as she really didn’t want to euthanize Cinder but was overwhelmed with the care of her father. So, she is morbidly obese, due to overfeeding by the father.
Now Cinder is on an involuntary weight loss journey, which Kiffney is documenting with a new Youtube channel, Cinder Gets Fit. Recent updates like the video below show the reluctant chonkster didn’t get away with the one-paw treadmill workout for long:
A good name means knowing the personality behind it.
Before I adopted Buddy, I vowed I’d be a different kind of cat dad.
Where other people gave their cats normal, mundane and even human names, I would give my kitten a spectacular moniker, one that would convey both his awesomeness and my cleverness.
If my new kitten were female, I’d name her Arya or Khaleesi. By the time I was ready to adopt, I was set on the former. For people who weren’t Game of Thrones obsessives for the past eight years, Arya Stark (pictured above) was the show’s plucky orphan and one of its most popular characters.
If my new kitten were male, I’d name him Khal Drogo after the fierce Dothraki warlord played by the musclebound Jason Momoa. But perhaps Khal Drogo wasn’t awesome enough. Maybe I needed something even more badass, like Tigron, Destroyer of Worlds, or Saberfang the Earthshaker.
Khal Drogo: Except for the huge muscles, he doesn’t have much in common with Buddy.
Then I took the soon-to-be-named Buddy home and realized those names were ridiculous. This tiny ball of fur with a pipsqueak mew couldn’t be Khal Drogo or Tigron. In fact, the first thing I called him was buddy: After I’d placed him in his brand new carrier and carefully buckled the carrier into the front passenger seat of my car, he looked at me through the bars with those big grey (at the time) eyes and cried.
“Don’t worry, buddy, we’re going to be best friends,” I assured him. “You’ll see.”
No doubt he was further traumatized and terrorized by my terrible singing voice as I queued up some tunes for the drive home.
“Your singing voice is abominable. It should be outlawed under the Geneva Conventions.”
After some two weeks of indecision, I was hanging out with my brother one night when he asked me about my new friend.
“Ah, the cat…” I said.
“You still haven’t given him a name?” My brother was incredulous.
I had given him a name, I just hadn’t realized it yet. During those two weeks I called him buddy, with a lowercase b. A nickname. Not long after that, it became official.
My cat’s name is Buddy.
“Everybody on the dance floor, shake your Buddy!”
In retrospect, it makes sense to hold off on granting a name for a while. There are a million Mittens and Socks and Shadows in the world, but how many cats have names that reflect their personality?
It turns out Buddy isn’t a particularly common cat name. It doesn’t appear at all in most popular cat name lists floating around the web, whether they’re sourced from registration, veterinary records or user-generated data.
Buddy finally makes an appearance way down on the list of cuteness.com’s most popular cat names, at #67, way behind enduring male names like Max, Charlie, Milo, Simba, Oliver, Jack, George, Loki, Jasper, Felix and Tiger.
In an article on male cat names, veterinarian Debra Primovic hits the nail on the head:
The majority of cats named Buddy are mixed breed cats owned or named by men. They are often rescued or strays brought into homes and hearts across the world. They are generally loyal and adore their owners.
A Buddy isn’t a prissy, carefully-bred show pet. He’s a Buddy.
The word buddy first came to prominence in 19th-century ‘Merica, and there are two main theories about where the name comes from. The most popular one posits “buddy” is a corruption of the word “brother,” according to Word Detective, while others trace its etymology back to “butty,” a slang-word for a comrade or co-worker among miners, pirates and others who were after “booty.”
Not booty in the modern sense, as in “Get on the dance floor and shake your booty!” but in the treasure sense, as in “Argh! Tell us where the booty be or walk the plank, we shall make ye! Now talk, scallywag!”
I like the first one because it fits: While I do feel parentally protective of my Bud, I see him more as a little brother or a best friend instead of my “child.” No disrespect meant to the people who call their cats “furbabies,” of course. It’s just how I envision our feline-human friendship.
What’s your cat’s naming story? Were you as ridiculous as I was, or did you have your heart set on something less absurd from the beginning?
Mikey the Cat wouldn’t come down from a tree, not even for delicious extra crispy.
A few days ago the unthinkable happened.
Mikey, a tabby from California, escaped from his human’s living room and got himself stuck in a 90-foot palm tree on Sept. 25. We don’t care what kind of plump, juicy bird he was chasing, 90 feet ain’t no joke.
His dutiful human servant, Christine Lopez, tried everything she could to get the little dude to come down. She cracked open cans of the kitty crack. She waved tuna. She spoke soft words to reassure him.
She even called the local fire department, which tried to help but didn’t have a ladder long enough to get to Mikey.
Running out of options, Christine called animal control, and they suggested the ultimate weapon: KFC.
Now I don’t know about you, but Buddy would find his way down from a skyscraper to get his paws on that crispy fried goodness. It is, after all, finger lickin’ good.
Here’s where the story gets weird: Mikey didn’t go for it. He wouldn’t come down, not even for KFC! What kind of cat turns down KFC?
By that point Mikey had been in the tree for a week, and he’d attracted an audience according to the Whittier Daily News:
The neighbors’ dogs would sit in the yard, looking concerned; the neighborhood cats would sit at the base of the tree, staring and caterwauling, with Mikey responding with meows, she said.
Yep. They were probably telling Mikey they were gonna eat his tuna and his KFC if he didn’t get his butt down from the tree.
By Monday morning Mikey was still up there. Drone footage confirmed the terrified tabby was still huddled amid the fronds. Almost two weeks had passed. Mikey was meowing for help and Christine was getting desperate.
She called PETA for assistance and the group found a heroic, cat-loving order of chivalric knights who call themselves The Crane Guys of La Mirada led by Sir Miles of Burkhart.
Sir Miles reached the top of the palm and began negotiations with the terrified Mikey.
Miles Burkhart tries to reach Mikey the cat in Pico Rivera, CA, on Monday, Oct. 7. Photo credit Tracey Roman, Whittier Daily News.
Just when it seemed this ghastly ordeal would be over, Mikey jumped, activating Kitty Flight Mode, and upon landing immediately dashed under a neighbor’s porch, probably because of all the human, canine and feline onlookers milling around. Poor Mikey was embarrassed.
Thankfully, the story has a happy ending: Christine was finally able to reach Mikey when he chose a new hiding spot underneath a car. A relieved and famished Mikey tucked into a can of the good stuff and lapped up a whole bowl of water.
The little criminal has now lost his freedom.
“He’s doing life inside the house now,” Lopez told the paper. “After he decides to get paroled, he might walk on a leash.”
Pain In The Bud 