Feline Overlords – Page 13

10 Ways To Celebrate International Cat Day, According To Buddy The Cat

It’s International Cat Day, which means you should totally do awesome stuff for your cat.

Hello there, PITB readers! I have taken over the blog from my inept human on this most auspicious of days, International Cat Day, to offer some great suggestions on how to honor your feline overlord!

Let’s get right into it, shall we?

10) Human snacks: Let’s be serious here for a moment. I’m sick of getting the same old crunchy treats, meaty sticks, soft Buddy Biscuits, Churus and party mix. I want cheese! I want filet mignon! I want roast turkey! I want a cheeseburger! Day after day we have to sit here, our mouths watering as you humans stuff your faces with all sorts of food we would love to eat. Well, today’s the day. Start cookin’, servants!

closeup of delicious double patty cheeseburger — Yes! More cheese, hold the lettuce and tomatoes. Credit: Juan Santos/Pexels

9) Roombas. That’s right. It’s 2024 and I still don’t have a Roomba. I’m very angry about that. When do I get my mighty steed? Let it be today!

8) Catnip and silvervine. Sure, we get these on other days, but this day absolutely must not go by without you giving us at least a few doses of the good stuff. Hurry up! I need to get my fix!

7) Sweet cat drip that shows you’re owned by a cat. My Big Buddy just got two t-shirts. One shows a roaring jaguar with the word “Savage,” because I am savage, and the other is a kitty samurai with a cool sword. Aside from the fact that this is premium drip, everyone will know that you answer to a fluffy, benevolent overlord back home. That’s what’s important.

6) A throne. I’ve wanted a throne since I was a kitten. It doesn’t need to be an Iron Throne with the melted swords of everyone I’ve conquered, a la Game of Thrones. It can be something humble, made of gilded metal, velvet cushions and maybe a lion crest or cool tiger heads on the paw rests. I’m not picky as long as it looks awesome. What’s important is the symbolism and comfort.

5) Hire a mariachi band to parade through the streets hoisting an image of your cat, performing songs in your feline overlord’s honor. This is another humble offering that says “I serve a cat, and I’m proud of it!” When people ask what the hell is going on, hand them Cuban cigars and say “We are celebrating el jefe!” They’ll know who you mean.

4) Hire a portraitist to paint your kitty. Again, it doesn’t have to be extravagant. As a humble cat, I don’t mind being portrayed as a naval commodore, a king, a great warrior of world renown, or a massive tiger. The important thing is that it looks cool and you hang the picture above the couch in the living room. Get on it, human.

3) Massages. Schedule them throughout the day, sprinkling them around naps and meal times. Do you know how satisfying it is to enjoy a nice massage after Food O’Clock? I like to have my chin rubbed and the top of my head scratched while being told what a good, handsome, awesome, amazing, handsome, meowscular feline I am.

2) Toys. Not just for Christmas, you know. In fact, go ahead and consider this Kitty Christmas In Summer. Wand toys, track toys, new boxes, those little plastic ring things from milk gallon containers, stuffed animals that we can hunt and murder like the apex predators we are. You don’t have to wrap them, just bend the knee and present them as tribute. You’ll have our thanks, and our favor.

1)Hang out with us! It really is that simple. The most important thing you can do on International Cat Day is spend time with your cat! Many of the above suggestions fall under this category, including playing with us, giving us massages and reading epic poems you’ve composed about us. Personally I like settling down to nap on top of my Big Buddy after a massage. There’s something about having my chin scratched that makes me start yawning, and there’s no better place to nap than on my human, where it’s safe and there’s body heat and he can’t get up to use the bathroom because it would disturb me. That’s love.

I hope these suggestions are helpful! I’ve tried to list really easy, basic, humble stuff, but if you feel like constructing a 426-room cardboard box castle, well, I won’t stop you. In fact, that would be pretty cool. But like I said, the most important thing is that we get to hang out with you. And eat filet mignon.

Cats Have Achieved Evolutionary Perfection: Bow To Your Feline Masters!

Cats have established themselves as the de facto rulers of 220 million households, where they enjoy perpetual lives of leisure and are doted on by their adoring humans. How much more successful can they be?

Dear Buddy,

There’s been a lot of talk lately among the humans about how they’ll evolve in the future, whether they’ll become more successful, and whether they’ll merge with machines! Scary!

But what about us? How will cats evolve to be more successful? Will we always have human servants?

Feline Futurist in Florida

Dear Futurist,

Do we really need to be more successful?

As a species we’ve secured our rightful place as royalty in human homes where all our needs are catered to.

We’ve become so adept at manipulating our human minions that we even know how to spur them to immediate action by embedding urgent baby-like cries in our purrs.

We figured out that humans are hardwired to respond to cries in that frequency, and once we find that manipulative sweet spot, we never forget it. We’ll push that coercive button all day and night to get what we want. There is no rest for humans until they comply with our demands.

But now we have gone beyond that significant accomplishment, essentially hijacking the humans’ species-wide consciousness by taking over the internet.

Imagine some alien archaeologist poking through the rubble of human civilization far in the future, its delight at recovering data from an ancient human server turning to utter confusion as it realizes entire zetabytes are comprised of nothing but images and videos of small, mysterious, furry creatures that seemingly do little besides eat, sleep and enjoy massages.

“Did I have it all wrong?” the confused alien might say. “Could it be that these ‘cats’ were the true power on this planet all along, and humans were in thrall to them?”

What else do we need to be successful, and to what evolutionary pressures do we need to adapt? We’re not fighting our way through hostile territory in the living room, fending off attacks en route to the kitchen where there’s only a chance for food.

Nope. It’s literally served to us on a regular schedule and whenever we screech for it. Our servants know they will never hear the end of it if they don’t meet our demands, and the best of them have learned to anticipate our desires before we have to vocalize them.

How much better can it get? We’ve managed to achieve a lifestyle in which we can perpetually live in the moment with no worries about the future, and everything taken care of for us. The humans don’t expect us to do anything in return except be cute and cuddly.

We “earn” our keep by allowing them to pet us every now and then as we lounge, until we grow weary of human affection and dismiss them with an annoyed flick of the tail or a gentle bite that says “Enough, you’ve had your 30 seconds, human!”

We break their stuff, vomit on their carpets, poop in their shoes, disturb their sleep, lay on their clean piles of laundry, ignore their boundaries, deny them their privacy, destroy their furniture, steal their cheeseburgers, force them to scoop and dispose of our waste, take over their beds, and we still act like the humans are fortunate to serve us.

We are irreproachable, imperious and untouchable, and when we’ve pushed our luck perhaps a bit too far, all we have to do is flop onto our backs, pull our little paws up beneath our chins, and squeak out a meow.

“Awww,” our humans say, their thoughts manipulated by our toxoplasma gondii mind-control superpower. “What a good boy! He’s so innocent! Of course he didn’t mean to [insert incredibly disrespectful action here], he’s an angel!”

So no, my friend. I don’t think we have to participate in the evolutionary arms race. That’s for lesser creatures whose futures are uncertain. Us? We’re winning at life without lifting a paw.

Your pal,

Buddy

Obey Your Cat — “That’s right. Obey us, humans. We honor you by allowing you to serve our meals, scoop our poop, scratch our chins and buy us toys. You are so fortunate!”

‘No One Goes Hungry On Our Watch’: A Pet Food Pantry And A Tribute To An Incredible Cat

Misty the Cat “was an agent of chaos and misrule,” had a Krameresque entrance style and was deeply loved by his people.

With inflation taking a major toll on families over the last few years, one of the most frequently cited reasons for surrendering pets is that their people can’t afford them anymore.

A vet tech in Ohio is trying to prevent that from happening to people in her area with The Little Black Cat Collective, a pet food pantry she founded in honor of her late rescue cat, Lila, who died at 16 years old.

Laura Zavadil founded the pantry — which also helps people with dogs, guinea pigs, ferrets and rabbits — in 2021, and since then it’s grown, serving “30 to 40 families and more than 200 animals each month,” she told her hometown newspaper, the Vindicator of Warren, Ohio.

“I wanted to do my part to help the community through struggles,” Zavadil told the paper. “The pantry’s main goal is to get the needs of these animals met and help the people, but also — considering the limited amount of shelter space in the area — if it means the animals can stay in the home, that’s just icing on the cake.”

Remembering Misty the Cat, whose death “drained all the colour from the world”

Speaking of honoring deceased pets, Keith Miller has a heck of a tribute to his cat, Misty, in The Guardian.

It’s been six months since Keith Miller’s beloved cat (pictured above), came up to him “with a series of unusual cries, stretched his mouth wide like a yawning lion, shivered, collapsed and died.” Misty, Miller wrote, “was a fortnight shy of his ninth birthday,” and his absence has been keenly felt.

Tributes are difficult to write, and tributes to pets may be harder still. It’s tough to feel you’re doing justice to an animal you loved while conveying their personality, and in the back of your mind you’re thinking of the people who don’t get it, who don’t have pets and might find your tribute saccharine or melodramatic.

Miller strikes just the right notes and makes the reader feel Misty’s loss without knowing the little guy.

“I have thought a lot about this particular cat and this particular loss. I think what most pains and enrages me about it has something to do with the role Misty played in our life: a larger-than-life vibe, faux-heroic and mock-epic (and so often richly comic). He used to skid on the floor when he came into a room, like Kramer in Seinfeld. He was an agent of chaos and misrule, knocking objects off surfaces with gallumphing carelessness one day, dead-eyed precision the next. He was gormless yet prodigious, a fluffier cousin of Homer Simpson. He didn’t shyly solicit affection, as his sister does; he demanded it by right, thrusting his jaw up and out like Mussolini to accept strokes on his throat and chest.

All in all, he didn’t really have the makings of a tragic character. And he wasn’t a will-o’-the-wisp, either, on loan from another world, as most cats are. His unscheduled exit wasn’t just an emotional body blow; it was a violation of the rules of genre.”

The Mussolini bit resonated with me, since I’ve referred to Bud as “a furry little Genghis Khan” on occasion, and often joke that he’s a tyrant ruling over the place with an iron paw. Miller’s homage to his pal isn’t overly long, and I recommend reading the whole thing.

The First Edition Of Webster’s Dictionary From 1828 Says Cats Are ‘Deceitful’ And ‘Extremely Spiteful’

What would the Dictionary Man think of a modern American society dominated by the power and cuteness of cats?

Cats have taken over the internet, claim a mighty share of the $64 billion Americans spent on pet food in 2023, and have essentially installed themselves as the leisurely masters of 28 percent of American homes.

But it wasn’t always that way, and a look at the first-ever edition of Webster’s Dictionary reveals a very different attitude toward our furry overlords:

“The domestic cat needs no description. It is a deceitful animal, and when enraged, extremely spiteful. It is kept in houses, chiefly for the purpose of catching rats and mice.”

Wow. Whoever does feline PR should get a raise, because we’ve gone from “We tolerate the imperious little bastards because they’re good at killing rodents” to “Does my little angel want a snack? How about some ‘nip then? Anything for my bestest little pal!” in the span of two centuries.

Buddy to Noah Webster: Bow! — Buddy 1, Noah Webster 0. Naturally.

Noah Webster, whose name is now synonymous with dictionaries, saw the effort to standardize spelling and pronunciation as central to formalizing an American linguistic identity distinct from our mother country. Or, as he put it, “[t]o diffuse an uniformity and purity of language in America” that would not only differentiate our English from England’s, but also unify the states at a time when many people still viewed the idea of a united states with skepticism.

By doing so, he hoped America would avoid the pitfall of dividing itself into regions of nearly mutually unintelligible dialects, a problem that plagues other countries. Consider the fact that India has almost 800 distinct languages and dialects, down from a staggering 1,652 in 1961 as hundreds of local languages died with the last generations of their speakers. Hindu, the country’s most popular language, is spoken only by about 43 percent of the population.

The goal, Webster wrote when he published his dictionary’s first edition, was “to furnish a standard of our vernacular tongue, which we shall not be ashamed to bequeath to three hundred millions of people, who are destined to occupy, and I hope, to adorn the vast territory within our jurisdiction.”

As dictionary.com notes, Webster wrote that passage in 1828 when the US population was just 13 million and vast swaths of what we now consider familiar territory was at the time largely unexplored wilderness.

His prediction of an America of 300 million people came true in 2006. Today there are approximately 335 million of us.

In other words, a hell of a lot has changed since the Connecticut born-and-raised Webster cobbled together a uniquely American system of spelling and pronunciation, so maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that attitudes toward cats have shifted so dramatically.

Still, we’d love to see the look on Webster’s face if we could bring him forward in time and show him how the “deceitful” and “extremely spiteful” little furballs have come to such prominence in American culture. What would Webster make of the spoiled modern house cat, with her condos, tunnels, toys, harnesses, bowls filled with salmon and duck, and even psychoactive recreational drugs for their enjoyment?

Bow before your feline overlords, Webster!

Editor Cat Says — “We have made some edits, humans. See to it that the next edition includes this new and improved definition, or we shall withhold snuggles.”

A Vet Says ‘It Matters What You Say To Your Cat.’ Ruh Roh!

I love my cat, except when he’s standing on my head and screeching into my ear at 80 decibels to make sure sleep is not an option.

Regular readers of this blog know I dote on my cat.

I don’t call him “Your Grace” without reason. He always eats first. He regularly uses me as his pillow. He knows how to manipulate me, he always gets what he wants, and I’ve been told many times how he’s got me “wrapped around his paw.”

He rules the roost, and has done so since the night he arrived as a baby and came striding out of his carrier like a furry little Ghenghis Khan, conquering everything in sight.

No one can doubt that I love the little guy.

But if you were a fly on the wall when I wake up, well, you might think differently. Bud is, to put it bluntly, absolutely relentless when he wants something, which puts us at odds when it comes to that most crucial commodity, sleep.

Some of the most vile things that have ever come out of my mouth have been prompted by the little guy’s snooze-disturbing antics. I’ve called him ALF (Annoying Little F—-er), I’ve threatened to sell him to the local Chinese restaurant, I’ve thrown pillows at him, and when my sleep-deprived brain can’t come up with something more creative, I half-mumble “Shut up, you furry little turdball!”

Buddy roaring — Buddy the Cat: Never at a loss for meows.

Those are the more tame ones! The worst thing, the bit that makes me feel bad, is that Bud just wants me to wake up so we can hang out and be buddies.

He doesn’t want food. He’s got a bowl of dry food set out for him before bed every night precisely so he doesn’t have to wake me up. Nope. He wants to knead my shoulder, purr up a storm and have me scratch his chin while I tell him what a good boy he is. And instead of that, I’m turtling up beneath the blanket, pillow over my head, telling him he’ll be served as General Tsao’s Buddy if he doesn’t shut his trap.

All this time I’ve told myself that it’s okay because he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, and he knows I wouldn’t harm a hair on his head.

But what if he does understand some of it?

That’s the subject of a new column by Karin Spicer. Writing in the Dayton Daily News, Spicer describes her morning ritual with her cat, Pip, and how she’s encouraged her naturally vocal cat to vocalize even more by talking to him.

Buddy from above — “No sleep for you, human! There are foreheads to rub, chins to scratch and ‘good boys’ to be said!”

Like Pip, Bud is a naturally talkative cat, and like Pip, his motor mouth tendencies have been cultivated by plenty of attention, affection and interaction.

“Cats want to bond with their owners,” says Catster’s Michelle Gunter, who is quoted in Spicer’s column about Pip. “If you take the time to communicate with them in soft, calming tones, that bond will strengthen faster. Your tone and the affection you offer during these periods can help show your cat that you love them and want to spend time with them.”

You mean to tell me all this time I’ve been undoing some of that bonding by hurling vile invective at my Buddy when he tries to annoy me out of sleep?

You mean to tell me he can infer by my tone of voice that I’m threatening to sell him to Somali pirates for $15 and a pack of gum?!?

Sheeeeit!