Cats: Elevating Laziness To An Art Form

I see you are a cat of taste and culture. Join us in our effort to practice prolific laziness!

There’s this thing Buddy does when he’s been napping on my legs or in my lap and he wants to get down.

Whereas the vast majority of living creatures would simply stand up and hop off, Buddy doesn’t bother with that. He yawns, stretches and shifts his weight forward until he’s hanging off me, then allows himself to sag into a ponderous drop, letting gravity do all the work as he practically oozes onto the floor. He’s like water taking the path of least resistance, committing absolutely no energy to the “effort” of moving.

The sequence is complete when he plops down on the floor like sentient slime — paradoxically furry yet gelatinous — then finally picks himself up to pad toward his bowl, his litterbox or the kitchen, where he’ll stand yowling in three second intervals until I give him a snack just to get him to shut up.

It’s horribly manipulative behavior, and I shouldn’t reward it, but sometimes I do because damn, he’s really, really good at being annoying when he wants to be.

If there were an Olympics for being lazy and annoying, Buddy would be its Michael Phelps, pioneering spectacular new ways to do things without expending a single millicalorie more than is absolutely necessary.

And yet, like all cats, he’ll randomly decide it’s time to release all that hoarded energy at once, trilling an enthusiastic “BRRRRUPPP!” before rocketing around the house, ricocheting like a bullet in a sensory deprivation chamber.

Of course I wouldn’t have it any other way. These quirks are part of Buddy, just like his kitten voice, his unintentionally hilarious behavior and his big heart.

We salute you, dear Buddy, for elevating laziness into an art form.

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Can You Spot The Cat In This Photo? Pt. III

Not an easy one to spot…

The last “Can You Spot the Cat?” we posted was pretty challenging, we thought, until a bunch of people said they saw the well-camouflaged kitty right away.

This one is a bit more difficult because the nature of the image throws off pattern recognition. Can you find the cat?

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Still having difficulty?

Need a hint?

The cat you’re looking for is a tortoiseshell. If you still can’t find the hidden feline, click here to see the same image with the cat’s position circled.

h/t The Dodo

Newest Social Distancing Fad: Sports With Your Cat

From Tic-Cat-Toe to Zoomies Bowling, people and their cats look to stave off boredom.

You’re bored, we’re bored, everyone’s bored.

We’re all living like hermits these days, hunkered down at home, trying to limit our exposure to the Coronavirus while risking cabin fever.

We’re trying to find new activities here in El Casa de Buddy: There aren’t any live sports, the new season of Netflix’s awesome action drama Kingdom only had six episodes, and there are only so many times you can watch humorous clips of idiots playing trombones on bikes or Ali G exasperating another poor soul with his profound stupidity. (“It’s a farm. Do you know what a farm is?” “It’s a rubbish zoo.”)

Necessity being the mother of invention and all that, people have begun inventing sports to play with their cats.

Cat cricket:

Cat bowling:

Tic-Cat-Toe:

Then there’s cat air hockey. Is there a cat who doesn’t like batting things around on flat surfaces?

h/t USAT’s For the Win.

Inspired by the creativity of other feline servants, I put a few suggestions to Buddy.

“Hey Bud, wanna play cat soccer?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a game. We take a ball and…”

“Nope. Got napping to do.”

“Uh, okay. How about cat golf? I’ll cut a hole in a cardboard box and…”

“Don’t you dare defile a box!”

“But it’ll be fun! Come on, little dude.”

“I have an idea for a game.”

“You do?”

“Yep. It’s called Buddy takes a nap, and Big Buddy stays quiet otherwise Little Buddy bites him. We start playing now.”

So there you have it. We’re gonna try our hand/paw at competitive napping, which I suppose works for us since Buddy’s favorite way to nap is curling up on top of me.

If any of our readers have found novel ways to simultaneously entertain themselves and their feline masters, please do share.

Can You Spot The Cat In This Photo?

There’s a kitty hiding among the stuffed animals in this photo…

Now for another edition of Cats Hiding In Plain Sight. This time it’s a domestic cat instead of a leopard, and the landscape is a bed full of stuffed animals instead of the wild outdoors.

The challenge here is to find the fluffy cat amid all the other fluffy things.

Unlike the hidden leopard photo, which drove me crazy, I spotted the cat immediately in this one. Can you?

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Where’s the cat at?

The cat’s name is Obi and he likes to snooze in the pile of stuffed animals. His favorite is a small hedgehog plushie that he likes to retrieve from the pile and carry with him around the house, owner Mark Carney said.

“We don’t think Obi is hiding per se,” Carney told The Dodo. “When we spot him, we get no reaction, so it’s not a game, either. It is just a spot he likes to sit.”

There may be another reason little Obi retreats to the stuffed animal-bedecked bunk: The family recently adopted a new kitten, and Obi may be trying to earn a reprieve from all that kitten energy.

Dear Buddy: Should Cats Be Concerned About Coronavirus?

Buddy puts his considerable detective skills to good use, uncovering the link between Corona virus and Corona beer.

Dear Buddy,

My humans have been stressed out lately, rubbing every surface with weird-smelling wipes and going on incessantly about something called the Coronavirus. I’m starting to get a little worried now. What is the Coronavirus, and do we cats have to worry about a disease that infects lesser animals like humans?

– Unsure In Utah


Dear Unsure,

I’d never heard of that there Coronavirus, so I did a little research. It turns out that my Big Buddy has six (!) Coronas in the refrigerator and is either unaware they carry viruses or doesn’t care.

Actually there may be more than six. I got kinda distracted when I found the cheese and helped myself to some Gouda.

So I went on the Internet, because everyone knows only true things are allowed on the Internet, and I found this:

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Makers of Corona report £132,000,000 loss as a result of coronavirus

Also, the search term “Corona beer virus” is trending, so there are people who are smart like me who have also made the connection:

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Searches for “Corona beer virus” and “Coronavirus beer” have spiked sharply over the past month, Google Trends shows.

I also looked at the most trustworthy source, Wikipedia, and it says Corona is a beer made in Mexico.

I’m not exactly sure whether Mexico is a city or a province of China, but I heard some humans saying Corona Virus originated in China, so I can tell you for sure that Corona Virus started with Mexican Chinese people drinking Corona.

So it is my informed and professional opinion that we felines are safe from Coronavirus as long as we do not drink Corona, and as long as our humans don’t put Corona beer in our water bowls.

Your friend,

Doctor Buddy, MD

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