crime – Page 16 – Pain In The Bud

Australia Is Offering $10 Per Cat/Kitten Scalp, And Wants To Cull 2 Million Kitties By 2020

Australia sucks.

Dear Buddy,

I saw these horrible stories on Mama’s computer:

Cash for Cats: Queensland’s Bounty on Ferals
Why Australia Has Declared War on Feral Felines
You Can Legit Be A Feral Bounty Hunter, Australia Needs You

What do you think of them? I can’t believe it. I think they’re awful and I’m scared. I have a good home, but what if my mama died or something and no other people came to help me and I was left outside? Would this happen to me?

Headbump,

Stasi from ‘Stralia.

Dear Stasi,

This is from the third link you sent me:

“…good news, folks! You can legit be a bounty hunter in Australia. Sort of. Now before you get excited over traveling around Australia, hunting down outlaws, and slamming down bounty posters onto a sheriff’s desk in demand of payment, people are off-limits if you decide to be a bounty hunter in Australia.

No, what you’ll be hunting are – wait for it – cats. Feral cats to be specific.

The Banana Shire Council up in Queensland is offering bounties on the presentation of feral cat scalps and are willing to pay you $10 per scalp.”

Oh, what brave hunters, stalking the outback with bolt-action rifles to combat the plague of 10-pound kitties! Well, I’ll bet they’re as heroic as this guy:

fatguylion — *It’s not hunting when there’s zero chance of failure and the animal is so accustomed to humans, it doesn’t even realize you’re trying to kill it.*

So brave!

Don’t worry, Stasi. Buddy will give these Australians a piece of his mind. And if those savages don’t stop, you can come live with Buddy in New York.

His Grace, Buddy the King
Dated August the 14th, 5 A.B. (Anno Buddy)

To the Foul, Ignoble Degenerates of Australia,

After enquiring about your country, having never heard of it before receiving this most unfortunate news, we have been reliably informed that “Australia” is a former penal colony for English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh riff-raff who were banished from their home countries.

Some 160,000 criminals were forcibly transported to your abominable hovel of a “country,” where the assorted scoundrels, reprobates and rapscallions engineered a vulgar approximation of civilization. Fueled by alcohol, you copulated and produced more pissants. Generations of them, which brings us to you.

Australians — The proud history of Australia.

It comes as no surprise, then, to receive news that misguided leaders and anti-cat activists are pushing for a culling of your superiors, adult and kitten alike. You are offering between $5 and $10 “bounty” per kitten or cat “scalp.”

What kind of barbarians would do such a thing?

We understand there are two primary reasons for this: Our collective impact on local species, and Greg, best known to humans as the Bane of Birds, the vicious white cat who snacked on an entire bird sanctuary.

Look, Greg is a dick. We freely admit that.

We told him those birds were in a sanctuary. We told him not to eat the birds. We told him to stop messing with humans. We even told him to stop hogging the Temptations.

Greg didn’t listen, and now Greg’s dead. At your hands.

We offer the opportunity for a cease fire. You got Greg. There’s no reason for you to continue hunting us with rifles and arrows like the wimps you are, terrified of getting scratched by creatures that weigh 1/20 your weight even if we are 10 times your superior.

We control rodent populations. We are furry and we like to cuddle. We are like warm, purring pillows of love and cuteness. What more could you want?

And so we extend this olive branch in the sincere hope that you take it. Recall your “hunters” or face our wrath!

Signed,
His Grace, Buddy the King
First of His Name, Sole Sovereign of the Fields of Turkey, Ruler of New York, Protector of the Apartmental Realm, the Most Handsome, Totally Not Scared of Anything

budhanging2 — Run in terror at the sight of my claws, Australians!

Feeding Buddies Is Not A Crime!

Jerks in Ohio want to send a 79-year-old woman to jail for the “crime” of feeding cats.

Nancy Segula lost her husband and her cats in 2017 and, feeling lonely, she made friends with the stray buddies in her neighborhood via the most direct route to a kitty’s heart — food.

Now poor Nancy has the prospect of 10 days in jail hanging over her head because curmudgeons in her hometown of Garfield Heights, Ohio, complained about her ~~acts of charity~~ service to cats and called the police.

“I’m an animal lover, and I feel guilty that they’re wandering around out there and they have nothing to eat,” Segula explained, as if serving cats requires explaining. “So I just feel that I need to give them food.”

What a sad legacy for a town named after a fat orange tabby cat!

Now a judge has intervened and will hold a hearing this month in an attempt to diffuse the situation and avoid jailing the kindly Mrs. Segula for the “crime” of doing what all humans should do.

Buddy wants YOU to write letters of support on behalf of Mrs. Segula! It’s very important that you DO NOT send them poop! Ask your humans for envelopes and stamps, then dictate the letters to them. Or if you have one of those fancy computers, you can email the mayor directly at vcollova@garfieldhts.org and ask him to get rid of that ridiculous ordinance that makes it a crime for humans to feed their feline overlords.

Remember, no poop!

Buddy’s Mailbag: Get Your Tongue Off Me!

“I want my human to lick me with a rubber tongue!” said no cat ever.

Dear Buddy,

I know your advice column is meant for cats, but I thought you’d make an exception for a human who seeks your wise and benevolent guidance, Oh Great Handsome One, for who else is as smart and perceptive as Buddy?

My question is: Should I buy a Licki? You know, one of those silicon rubber “tongues” with spikes that are supposed to mimic a kitty’s bristled tongue. I’d like to bond with my cat, and according to the people who make the Licki, grooming my kitty just like a momma cat is the best way to bond.

What do you think?

– Human In Hawkins, Indiana

Dear HiHi,

Oh hell no!

Big Buddy bought one of those things and creeped up on me all stealth-like when I was taking a nap one day. One second I’m dreaming about bountiful feasts with endless roast turkey, the next I’m waking up to that daft two-legs dragging a rubber tongue back and forth through my fur, looking like an epileptic seal.

I thought I was being attacked by a porcupine dipped in crazy glue! Once I realized what was happening, I gave Big Buddy a hard paw smack and bit his hand for emphasis: Get that weak shit out of my personal space!

Licki Terrorist! — Horrific and embarrassing for everyone involved. Don’t. Just don’t.

So no, don’t buy a Licki. You’ll just waste $25 on a piece of rubber that makes your cats loathe you. Instead, provide massages on-demand and step your treats game up. Now that is something your kitties will appreciate.

– Buddy out

Licki? No. — This poor cat looks traumatized. He should smack his human like I did.

Roppongi Hills: Tokyo From Above

See Tokyo from the sixth-tallest building in the city, Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills.

Tonight we visited the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, a skyscraper with great views of the surrounding city.

The building is less than a five-minute walk from my brother’s apartment, and at 54 stories and 781 feet it’s the sixth-tallest building in Tokyo.

E51578DF-085A-4192-A631-0A0C4E97F74B — The neon blue floors of the foreground building are hotel suites with one hell of a view of the city.

Mori Tower has a 54th floor “Sky Deck” which was closed this evening due to the weather, so the observation deck on the 52nd floor was our only choice.

It doesn’t really matter — the view is spectacular and the observation deck features a 360-degree view of the city through floor-to ceiling windows. It’s even got signs pointing out the neighborhoods you’re looking at from each angle, and a section where you can pull up a chair, have a cup of tea and look over the city.

Even from this height Tokyo extends to the horizon in every direction save for the waterfront near Haneda, an endless sprawl of shops, homes, office buildings, izakayas, plazas and parks.

All photos by Big Buddy using a Canon T3. Click on the photos for higher-resolution versions. Trust me, it’s worth it. 🙂

82CD8DB6-3D4A-48C7-BCAB-9FFA1A1AAA27 — A view from Mori Tower’s observation deck. Shibuya is the bright spot to the right.

Tokyo at Night — From Roppongi, Tokyo looks like an endless sprawl disappearing into the horizon.

The CIA Thought It Could Control Cats. lol.

The CIA should have realized cats are indifferent to the petty squabbles of their lessers.

No one tells a cat where it can and cannot go.

Some nameless CIA agent came to that obvious conclusion while surveilling a Russian compound one afternoon in the mid-1960s. The site was so well-secured and heavily-guarded that Soviet officials felt comfortable discussing business in the open air, where American spies could see them from a distance but, critically, couldn’t hear what they were saying.

The Russians weren’t leaving anything to chance: No one could slip through the perimeter without them knowing about it, making infiltration impossible.

Except, the CIA officer realized, for cats. Human trespassers would be shot on sight. Any deliveries or strange pieces of equipment would become the immediate subject of suspicion. But not even grizzled KGB veterans would dream of trying to stop cats from chasing rodents or finding a sunny spot to nap.

‘No one tells a cat where it can and cannot go!’ the CIA officer thought in a flash of inspiration, envisioning the wealth of intelligence that could be gathered with a small army of felines trained in spycraft and equipped with tiny microphones hidden in their free-swiveling ears.

Two years and $20 million later the CIA abandoned Project Acoustic Kitty after realizing cats make lousy spies for precisely the same reason guards don’t try to stop them from entering secure compounds: No one tells a cat where it can and cannot go.

“Our final examination of trained cats [REDACTED] for use in the [REDACTED] convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical way to our highly specialized needs,” a recently-declassified CIA memorandum notes.

To put it in simple terms, CIA agents couldn’t get the cats to stay near their marks. The cats would get distracted or hungry or bored, which all resulted in the same thing: Wandering off and leaving the Americans with only fragments of conversations.

Imagine it: “Yes, Yuri, we have finalized the details for our strike against American interests in” (drowned out by loud MEOW) “which we will launch when…” followed by the cat taking off after seeing a bird.

The CIA should have realized cats are indifferent to the petty squabbles of their lessers, even if those petty squabbles bring humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation.

Mutually assured destruction may be a grim doctrine for students regularly participating in air raid drills or families investing in personal bomb shelters, but to cats it’s merely the regrettable loss of a species that faithfully served them for 10,000 years.

If humans nuke each other into oblivion there will still be plenty of rodents to eat, and a surviving primate species — perhaps bonobos or rhesus macaques — could serve as a suitable replacement in servitude to felines.

As for Project Acoustic Kitty, how much of that $20 million was spent on treats used as rewards for getting the cats to participate in training?

The CIA thought it was using cats. As usual, it was the other way around.