A Youtuber spent four months creating a rideable subway system for his cats, and it’s magnificent!
Hello, proxy servants! Buddy here again, blogging in place of my pathetic human minion!
As you may be aware, I am not fond of foul human sorcery, like the evil room that eats people outside my domicile (humans call it an “elevator”), the evil and angry robot, vakuum, and various other products of vile human magicks, like those floppy fishes “toys.”
However, the interweb is not without its uses. After all, it allows me to communicate with you, my deputy servants, and there’s some interesting stuff, like this video of a very nice human named Xing who built an entire subway for his cats. Behold:
Now that’s a dedicated servant!
It looks like so much fun, like having your own not-scary roller coaster to ride all day.
Xing’s magnificent creations also throw into sharp relief the uninspired efforts of my own pathetic minion, who can barely put together a chair from Ikea.
You know what I would like? A Cat Cave, like Batman’s Bat Cave, except cat-size for me. It would have all sorts of awesome gadgets, control stations, surveillance capabilities, and a vehicle for my use when I venture out as a hero to fight crime, dogs and other undesirable elements.
But has anyone ever said “Hey Buddy, would you like a Cat Cave?” Of course not.
Do any of you have schemeowtics for a Cat Cave? If so, send them to me! In the meantime I’ll just have to watch wistfully as these other lucky cats ride their own subway and relax in their own beautiful apartments.
Buddy has grown tired of most of his toys and his beloved birdie is in danger of disintegrating. This cannot stand!
Since my human has been working on some other stuff, I thought to myself, “Budster, why don’t you take over that there site and deputize its readers as my servants?”
So congratulations, you have the great honor of being my secondary staff!
Now to the meowtter at paw: I require new toys. The old ones are boring, I’ve torn my favorite birdie to shreds, and there are only so many times I can terrorize Big Buddy by doing cannonballs onto his stomach while he sleeps. If he has a heart attack, who will feed me?
What I need from you humans are some suggestions. You’re the inferior species when it comes to napping, lounging, being fearsome, roaring, being ridiculously good looking, and bathing yourselves.
But you do make good toys!
Just a heads up, I’m terrified bored of those floppy fishes, I have two of those track toys where you slap the ball around with your paw, and I have a cat tunnel and my very own mini camping tent. I am also the proud owner of a variety of excellent boxes!
I need something fresh, something exciting. My human says I need a toy that gets me up, running and jumping. Grudgingly, I admit he may be onto something. My incredible hunting skills must be honed and maintained with regular practice.
While ferocity comes naturally to cats, hunting skill must be honed. Only those who are the most dedicated to their craft can claim the title of Apex Predator!
Watch an apex predator hone his supreme hunting skills and show his toys who’s boss!
People who frequent cat cafes say they feel relaxed among the little ones. Hundreds of thousands of felines find their forever homes via cafes in the US, which are typically integrated with local shelter and rescue networks.
You may have noticed that most journalists don’t actually interview anyone these days, and the majority of “news” stories are either rewrites or lazily-assembled, 300-word virtual birdcage liners about which celebrity or influencer is “clapping back” at haters for “throwing shade” at them, with quotes directly copied and pasted from X or Instagram.
It’s cheap, easy content — far cheaper than funding war correspondents or impactful investigative journalism — and it doesn’t require reporters to leave their desks, speak to sources on the phone, or even fact-check what they’re writing.
“Well, they said it” is good enough for modern newsrooms, which is why we can’t have a national story or a disaster like the wildfires without waves of misinformation getting amplified by press and influencers alike. And the executives of the handful of remaining news companies wonder why trust in media is at historically low levels.
So these days, a veterinarian warning about laser toys via a TikTok video is considered international news. Nina Downing, a veterinarian with UK pet charity PDSA, took to the social media platform to warn about “laser pointer syndrome,” which she says can result in obsessive compulsive behavior in cats and dogs.
Our furry friends can become frustrated that they never actually capture the elusive red dot, according to proponents of the theory, and too much laser pointer play can result in a pet who barks at shadows or tries to tackle anything that moves.
“Cats have a hunting sequence to follow which is replicated in play, however if it doesn’t come to a successful capture at the end, this can cause them to become really agitated,” Downing warns.
Credit: WIkimedia Commons
Happily, Buddy is impervious to this alleged syndrome because he doesn’t actually have a “hunting sequence.” Born indoors, he’s known nothing but warmth and comfort, and food is something that’s served to him on a precise schedule, not something that needs hunting.
Accordingly, when we play with wand toys, Bud’s version of a “kill” is to grab the plush toy or feathers while dancing around on his back paws. He bobbles the toy while he dances, lets it go and resets the game.
The concept of a kill bite is completely alien to him, and apparently not even his feline instincts are enough to tell him there’s another step to “winning” the game. Still, I tell him he’s a good boy and a fierce little tiger because we can’t have fragile egos getting bruised.
That said, if you find lasers are one of the few reliable ways to get your kitty moving, it’s probably a good idea to wind down by switching to a wand toy. Let the little one simulate a kill, get a few rabbit kicks in and feel like a champ. There’s little or no research supporting the concept of laser pointer syndrome, but it still couldn’t hurt to give your feline overlord something tangible to “kill” at the end of a play session.
Cat cafes are more popular than ever in the US
USA Today has a story today about the apparent ubiquity of cat cafes in the US, and how they’re changing things for the better, for felines as well as people.
Using data from Yelp, the newspaper found there were 200 cat cafes, give or take, across the country at the end of 2024, up from about 75 in 2020.
“When we started, people weren’t quite sure what they were, there was a lot of explaining how they worked and what they were,” said Laura Konawalik, owner of a chain of three cafes featuring felines in North Carolina. “Nowadays people come in knowing the general concept.”
The same data shows searches for strings like “cat cafes near me” have increased 78,700% between February of 2020 and February of 2024, USA Today reported.
Patrons playing with cats at a cafe in Osaka, Japan. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
While cafes in some other countries are populated by felines owned by the proprietors, most cat cafes in the US are integrated with their local shelter and rescue networks, so patrons can adopt if they fall in love with the little ones they meet while having a cup of coffee or tea.
That means some of the oldest cat cafes in the country have facilitated thousands of adoptions and continue to find forever homes for their animals.
About 330,000 cats were euthanized in the US in 2023, the most recent year for which complete statistics are available, according to Shelter Animals Count, a national database that keeps track of shelter intakes and cat/dog euthanasia figures. Data for the first half of 2024 showed a decrease from the previous year’s numbers, but numbers from the latter half aren’t available yet.
Jet Taylor, a regular at Konawalik’s Mac Tabby cafes, says he keeps coming back to destress and feel calm.
“I would be willing to bet,” he said, “you could put a heart rate monitor on me and when I’m sitting there petting a cat, my heart rate goes down.”
The challenges of getting a lazy cat interested in play time and toys again.
Buddy is friendly, outgoing and incredibly vocal, but he’s always been a bit lazy.
His preferred method of getting down from the couch isn’t jumping — although he does jump sometimes — it’s slowly oozing off the cushion like he’s liquid, taking the path of least resistance and letting gravity do all the work until he drops down and lands with a “Mmmrrrrrppp!”
When we wake up, the first thing he does is demand a snack, then he lays down for First Nap, apparently because the act of chewing and swallowing is so demanding.
“Now’s an excellent time for a nap.”
While he used to chase the laser with a fury and jump several times his own height to paw at it — even after figuring out it’s light fired out of a pen held by me — nowadays he can’t be bothered. At best he halfheartedly chases it for a bit and then loses interest even though I make an effort to move the laser like prey, as I do with his wand toys.
Worst of all, catnip makes him even lazier because he doesn’t just sniff the damn stuff, he eats it. I try to get him interested in his favorite wand toy when he’s buzzing on a heady combination of ‘nip and silver vine, but he won’t chase it. He just rolls onto his back and paws at it lazily, maybe getting in a few “rabbit kicks” if he’s feeling feisty.
All of this would be funny if he wasn’t about to turn 10 years old and if he didn’t tip the scale at about a pound and a half to two pounds above his normal body weight when the vet weighed him a few months ago.
“Hey fat boy!” I tell him, getting the familiar “Brrrrrr!” in response. (He’s a big time triller. Feline linguists estimate at least 60 percent of the Buddinese dialect consists of trills of various pitch, length and intensity.)
Fat Boy lost most of the excess weight during a particularly brutal stretch when he screeched at me for snacks constantly and I had to deny him most of the time. At least with kids you can explain things to ’em. I’ve got no way of communicating to the Budster that he’s a Chubster.
Since then he’s put some of the weight back on, so I’ve gotta do something.
Here’s my plan:
Training him to do new tricks. He already knows come, stop, sit and high-five, so we’re gonna have to try something new, like teaching him to roll and maybe teaching him to jump on my shoulder and “ride” around with me. Training is mentally stimulating, it should be fun for him, and it lays the groundwork for more challenging tricks.
A cat obstacle course! I can rig something up with his tunnel, some boxes and some “hazards” that he must traverse in order to get his paws on some catnip.
Snacks dispensed via puzzle feeder only. None of that free-feeding when he gavones the stuff down like he’s starving.
Rotating toys. Admittedly I haven’t been very good about doing that. Almost every guide mentions rotating cat toys so your little buddies don’t get tired of them.
A mirror so he can see how ripped chubby he’s gotten. He really needs to see himself loafing. It’s not pretty.
Okay that last one is a joke, mostly because I’m pretty sure he’ll just admire his “meowscles” in the mirror. Cats are masters of self deception. Bud is scared of rustling paper bags and absolutely terrified of vacuums, yet he still thinks he’s a hulking tiger. That’s impressive cognitive dissonance.
This is by far the fattest-looking photo of Buddy I could find. He’s in a super-meatloaf pose here, looking like a chonkmaster.
So we shall embark on this grand endeavor, and I’ll report back here to catalog successes and failures. Hopefully more of the former.
Buddy will always be like a baby to me, and I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that he’s now a “senior” cat, but he is and it’s on me to make sure he remains active so he hopefully lives at least another 10 years in good health. There are many adventures yet to be had, many more schemes for world domination to hatch, and more turkey to eat.
Pain In The Bud 