cat stories – Page 9 – Pain In The Bud

Merry Christmas! Is Buddy Too Fat To Fit In His New Tiny Tent?

Bud wishes everyone a very delicious Christmas.

This year, Santa brought something really awesome for Little Buddy!

No, not a Roomba. A TinyTent! A beautiful, dark blue tiny tent with equally tiny mesh windows and and a tiny rain fly.

I put it together and called Bud over.

“Look, Bud!”

He meowed, tail up, clearly interested. But he didn’t go inside, so I got a few of his favorite treats and tossed them in there.

Bud padded over, stuck his head and front paws in the tent…and I realized he may be too fat for his TinyTent.

I need to get him in there. After all, the entire point was to put it on my desk and establish a clear Buddy Spot, a place where he can be right next to me and lounge comfortably without sitting in front of my monitor or on the keyboard.

He will fit. Cats are liquid, after all, and love a good snug spot. I just have to wait until the tent floor settles a bit and maybe add an old t-shirt.

Then Bud will have his Buddy Spot, so he can be cozy and remain within one foot of me while allowing me to write. (Yeah right.)

And if not…it’s diet time, fat boy! For both of us.

Special thanks to my nieces, who gifted Buddy his TinyTent. They remain the only two humans in the world Bud is terrified of, and I feel bad they can’t play with him much, but they love him.

In other Christmas gift news, my mom gave me this mug “from Bud,” and, well, it’s almost embarrassingly, uncannily accurate, and the image is not custom-made:

I mean, that’s a gray tabby, but it’s also his precise coloring, and the black t-shirt, red-brown hair and man bun are all me. (We’ll pause so you can laugh at me for the bun. It never would have happened if COVID didn’t shut down barbershops for an entire year and I didn’t watch Vikings during the pandemic, thinking “That Ragnar Lothbrok has cool hair! I wanna be a viking!”)

As for the rest of Christmas, I am spending it with family and I hope you are too, friends. I know some people feel they need to drink just to tolerate relatives, but I have always been grateful that my family is boringly normal. No fights, no arguments, and we’ve all agreed not to talk politics.

I hope your gatherings are similarly uneventful and you get to enjoy the holidays and your families.

And now we leave you with a lively and festive number from Buddy the Cat’s Christmas songbook, originally published in 2022. It’s meant to be sung to the Tony Bennett version of My Favorite Things, a true classic!

Buddy’s Favorite Things

Temps in my bowlses and snacks in the kitchen
Taunting the street cats and smacking some kittens
Leaving the neighbor’s dog tied up in strings
These are a few of my favorite things!

Bubble wrap, peanuts and UPS boxes
4 a.m. zooms when I scream like a rocket
Waking my human with songs that I sing
These are a few of my favorite things!

At nail clip time, things I dislike
When I’m really mad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad!

Calico booties and slices of Gouda
Ambushing like I’ve been launched by bazooka
No consequences ’cause I am the king!
These are a few of my favorite things!

Screeching in anguish at doors closed between us
Shattering Wise Men and statues of Jesus
I helped myself to the buffalo wings
These are a few of my favorite things!

Meow at my bowl as if I’ve been forgotten
Screeching in panic ’cause I see the bottom
Gorging on kibble till I am puking
These are a few of my favorite things!

When I’m told no, ’cause I broke those
When my dad is mad
I’ll get away with my favorite things
Because I’m a real cute cat!

Festivus 2024: Little Bud’s Got A Lot Of Problems With You People!

On Dec. 23, it’s a Festivus for the Rest of Us.

It’s that time of year when we celebrate a Festivus for the Rest of Us!

As seasoned Festivus pros know, the holiday falls on Dec. 23 and eschews the commercialism that’s taken over the season. Instead of a tree or a menorah, Festivus decorating consists of a single unadorned pole. In the words of founder Frank Costanza: “I find tinsel distracting.”

At the Festivus gathering, family and friends get together for a meal, which ends with the Airing of Grievances, in which you tell your loved ones all the ways they’ve disappointed you over the past year.

“I’ve got a lot of problems with you people,” Frank Costanza said during Festivus 1997, “and now you’re gonna hear about it!”

So we’ll hand it over to Little Bud for his grievances:

To Big Buddy: Ten Christmases! Ten, and still no Roomba! You, sir, are a man of empty promises and crushed dreams. Year after year I made my Christmas list, and I remind you of all the ways I’ve been a good boy. I don’t go on the counter tops, ever. I leave the Christmas tree alone. And when I smack you in the face to wake you up, I don’t smack you too hard. What else do I need to do?

The Pirates of Somalia: I thought we had something, guys! Aye, some of me best memories are of sailing the high seas with me mates, looking for plunder on cargo and cruise ships. I didn’t even get a Christmas card from you this year!

The Jaguars of Amazonia: You guys are my true homies! You welcomed me with open paws. We hunted together, we napped together, we took ayahuasca and ran around the jungle hallucinating giant turkeys. You even made me an honorary jaguar and named me Kinich Bajo, or “Tiny sun-eyed one.” And you sure do know how to provide muscle! Every cat and dog for 15 miles is scared of me because I roll with you. I love you guys!

The Tigers of the Bronx Zoo: I offered a paw in friendship, and what did you do? You let one of your females abduct me and take me back to her cave, where she treated me like one of her cubs and bathed me in her saliva. It was horrible! Do you know how many actual baths it took to get rid of the stink? I still have PTSD!

The Readers of PITB: Maybe I’m mistaken, but it feels like you don’t tell me how charming and awesome I am as much as you used to.

Smudge from Apartment 1S: You, sir, are pushing your luck. This floor isn’t big enough for the two of us, and at some point there’s going to be a reckoning. You should be really scared.

WANTED: Competint Mignons 2 Serv Awsum Cat!

As Buddy’s mignons, you will execute his will across multiple platforms, ensure that client needs are met, and help maintain a company-wide culture of feline supremacy over humans, dogs and other lesser animals.

Are you a dog who can follow directions? Are you a fellow cat who may be timid and needs a strong leader to rally behind?

You’re in luck!

Buddy the Cat is looking for mignons to help execute his fiendishly brilliant plans for world domination!

We offer a competitive benefits package including paid nap time!

Positions:

Palanquin carrier (4, possibly might need 6 after holidays)
Chef
Human wrangler
Cat burglar (a burglar who is a cat, not a burglar of cats)
Groomers
Meowscle (bouncers)
Meowscle (bodyguards)
Consiglieri
Tigers (4) to be my warlords
Chariot-maker
Kittens to serve as lookouts
Architect to build a really awesome secret lair! (Also, a cool throne)

Once we have our secret lair, we can begin plotting to take over the world! Muahahahaha!*

(*) Battles of conquest and meetings about ruling the planet are scheduled around nap times.

Through Tears, Young Girl Revives Kitten Succumbing To Cold

A feel-good video about a kitten who was rescued from the brink of death.

The girl in this video found an orange tabby kitten on the verge of death in Hubei, China, and refused to give up on the little one.

Through tears, she used a hair dryer to warm the kitten while her 39-year-old dad filmed her efforts. She was successful! The kitten slowly began to stir and felt well enough after two hours to lap up some milk.

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Temperatures in Hubei can plunge into the 20s and 30s overnight this time of year, so the kitten would have died without the little girl’s intervention.

No Respect! 6% Of Americans Think They Can Beat A Grizzly Bear In A Fight, 69% Think They Can Beat A Cat

A Yougov survey of Americans produced some hilarious results when respondents were asked how they’d fare in hypothetical combat.

In the opening scene of Netflix’s Afraid, a woman is using her iPad in bed when she asks her husband: “Did you know six percent of Americans believe they could beat a grizzly bear in a fight?”

I had to pause the movie right there and see if there was any truth to the claim. Sure enough, in a Yougov survey from 2021, titled “Rumble In The Jungle,” six percent of respondents — almost entirely men — said they could defeat a grizzly bear unarmed.

Grizzly bears top out at more than 2,000 pounds, can crush bowling balls with their paws and have claws the size of large knives. They’re also extraordinarily well-protected, with heavy fur and fat protecting their vital organs. If you think you can harm one unarmed, let alone kill it, well, good luck with that.

Incredibly, eight percent said they could defeat a lion, gorilla or elephant, while 17 percent thought they could take on a chimpanzee. Again, the respondents who liked their own odds against extraordinarily lethal animals were almost exclusively men. The survey doesn’t say what they were smoking when they responded.

Domestic cats fared poorly in the imaginations of Americans: 69 percent thought they could defeat the little stinkers in hypothetical battles. Only rats fared worse, with 72 percent sure of victory in unarmed single combat.

“This is really an insult to felines,” said Buddy the Cat, a combatologist at Buddesian University. “However, we jaguars fared much better, as we were projected to win about two-thirds of hypothetical fights against other animals, including elephants, rhinos and tigers. Personally I think it’s closer to 99 percent, but I won’t protest. It’s better for us if we’re underestimated.”

He chalked human overconfidence up to the fact that people are “bizarre creatures who live in a fantasy world,” and have “an unfulfilled yearning to be something more than our servants.”

“They don’t have the claws, teeth or, like, the muscle fibers we do,” he explained. “Those advantages make it possible for me to kill a caiman with a single bite or tear an anaconda apart in seconds. Jaguar means ‘He who kills with one leap,’ did you know that? Yeah, it’s pretty badass.”