Feline Overlords – Page 58

A Cat Really Did Bring Her Kitten To An ER In Instanbul

It happened in Istanbul, a city ruled by cats.

Buddy and I were a bit skeptical when we first heard the story of a cat who padded into the emergency room of a hospital, carrying her kitten by the scruff of the neck, to plead for help for the little one.

The story first appeared on Reddit without any details, but we were able to track down some of the people involved to fill out the narrative and answer some questions.

A woman was waiting in the emergency room of Kucukcekmece Hospital in Istanbul at about 5 p.m. on April 27 when the cat dragged her baby through the open doors.

istanbul_hospital34jpg — A mom cat brings her sick baby into an ER in Istanbul. Credit: Merve Özcan

The witness, Merve Özcan, described the kitten as “a little bit mischievous” in Twitter posts about the incident.

An article in Sözcü, a daily newspaper whose name translates to “spokesperson,” said the mother cat brought her kitten right up to the blue-gowned hospital staff, meowing for attention.

Hospital staff immediately helped — more about that below — and the cat mom followed them, keeping her eyes on her baby as they brought the kitten into a room for treatment.

“While the kitten was being cared for, the mother cat was given milk and food,” the newspaper reported. “Hospital staff ensured full treatment by passing them onto a veterinarian after their intervention.”

istanbul_hospital5 — Staff take the kitten as the mother watches. Credit: Merve Özcan

The story doesn’t say exactly what was wrong with the kitten, and Özcan did not know either.

While this story would seem insane to most of us, it starts to make a lot more sense when you consider where it happened: Istanbul, a city famous for its massive cat population, and the humans who revere those felines.

From the Legal Nomads travel blog:

Cats are the most beloved animal in Istanbul and the living attraction of this huge city. They are extremely friendly, come in all sorts of cuddly colors and sizes, and always respond with a greedy “meow.” Stray cats usually take the best seats at cafes and restaurants in Istanbul without anyone even bothering moving them. They maneuver around tables and customers, inside and out of the buildings in search of the most comfortable spot.

Caring for the city’s hundreds of thousands of cats is a community effort: People feed them, pet them, bring them to veterinarians when they’re injured, and even build little dwellings for them.

With that in mind, it makes sense that a cat in Istanbul would know to approach humans for help, and to go to a hospital. If the mom cat lives in the area, undoubtedly she’s seen the sick and injured walk through those doors many times.

“Money is not an issue to some people when it comes to cats,” Ozan, a pet shop employee, told Reuters. “They take in cats with broken legs, blind ones or ones with stomach problems and bring them to the clinic. When they see that they are healed, they let them live on the street again.”

In an article titled “Istanbul: The City of Cats,” Goran Tomasevic of Reuters describes the relationship between the city’s inhabitants and their feline friends:

They are so ubiquitous that no one bats an eye at a cat padding across the lobby of a high-rise office building, or when one curls up to sleep on a nearby barstool. Shop owners and locals often know their neighbourhood cats by name and will tell tales about them, as if chatting about a friend.

instanbulcats — A cat house next to water and food bowls on an Istanbul street. Credit: Reuters

A 2017 documentary, Kedi (Turkish for cat), explores the world of Istanbul’s street cats and the people who love them. Pictured at the top of this post is Kedi director Ceyda Torun, posing with cats in Istanbul.

You can watch a trailer for the documentary here:

Dear Buddy: What Are Zoom Calls, And Why Should We Crash Them?

REMIND HUMANS WHO IS BOSS.

Dear Buddy,

We are now almost two months into the Staypocalypse, that devious and coordinated human effort to ruin our lives by never leaving the house.

During this time I keep hearing about something called Zoom, and how we should crash it. Could you tell me what Zoom is and what I should do?

– Mikey the Maine Coon

Dear Mikey,

I’m glad you asked. If we play our cards right we may be able to put an end to the staypocalypse and reclaim our domiciles from these lazy humans.

While humans stay home to annoy us, they still have to work to earn money so they can buy our food, litter and toys. As a result, the humans work from home, and Zoom is a foul form of sorcery that allows them to create “videoconference calls” with their coworkers.

Those “videoconference calls” provide a perfect opportunity to show the other humans who really runs the world, and that humans are our subordinates who do our bidding.

Personally, I like to appear on camera while looking innocent, so the people say “Awww he’s so cute!” then stand with my backside immediately in front of the camera, so the other people see nothing but my butt. To us felines, sniffing backsides is a standard greeting, but to humans it is a sign of deep disrespect.

If your human appears on the light box for a living, you could do what Betty has done and take over his job:

betty2 — **“I GIVE WEATHER REPORT NOW, HUMAN.”**

Or what this good looking tabby is doing by reminding everyone on the conference call that Mandatory Yums Time is fast approaching:

catcomputer — “OKAY WRAP IT UP NOW PEOPLE, MY SERVANT NEEDS TO FEED ME.”

All forms of Zoom crashing are acceptable, as long as the message is clear: We are the boss.

Your friend,

Buddy

NASA: We’re Pretty Sure Cats Can’t Commandeer Our Spacecraft

With their cats hovering around their keyboards, NASA employees working from home discussed how to prevent cats from commandeering spacecraft.

If you’re a cat servant working from home in the social distancing era, you know cats have given themselves a new job: Supervising their humans’ professional activities.

It comes naturally to curious felines, who normally supervise mundane household chores like cleaning the litter box.

Among those working from home these days are NASA and ESA engineers, physicists and anyone else whose primary work responsibility is dealing with data rather than hands-on technical work. Many of them have cats and, well, cats are naturally helping themselves to the work:

Daniel Lakey was in the middle of an important meeting when an unauthorized participant decided to chime in.

“He appeared at the door, jumped on the table, meowed in my face, walked across the keyboard, put his furry ass in my face, and eventually curled up sweetly on the desk next to the laptop,” Lakey recounted to me recently.

It was Sparkle, Lakey’s fluffy brown-and-white cat. Sparkle stuck around for the rest of the virtual meeting, in fact, mewing every time Lakey stopped petting him.

Like many people in the pandemic era, Lakey is doing his job from home, with a new set of colleagues who might be less cooperative than his usual ones; his new workspace is now wherever his two young kids and two cats aren’t. Lakey is a spacecraft-operations engineer who works on the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, which means that he spends his days managing a spacecraft flying millions of miles away from Earth. The work is complex and precise, and usually doesn’t involve feline input. Sparkle interrupted a teleconference only that one time, but what else could he do?

That thought recently became a point of public discussion when Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist at NASA, tweeted:

The Atlantic’s Marina Koren reached out to Straughn, who assured her “commanding spacecraft is a labyrinthian process from start to finish, with all kinds of checks and fail-safes along the way.”

“As absurd as the scenario might seem, it would be nearly impossible for a cat to briefly become a spacecraft-operations engineer, whether at NASA or ESA,” Koren wrote, after speaking to several NASA employees who assured her cats aren’t capable of flying the complex vessels.

catsinspace3 — LOL humans think we can’t fly spaceships.

Most operations require physical access to control rooms and can’t be operated remotely, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory spokesman Andrew Good said

“Some of those commands require a mouse clicking on certain options, so it’s not just an issue of commands being written and sent up with typos,” Good told The Atlantic. “A person has to make conscious choices for spacecraft commands to go up.”

While NASA says it would be “nearly impossible” for cats to hijack spacecraft normally used to service orbital telescopes or make supply runs to the International Space Station, cats love a good challenge. And what is the ISS, really, but a big metal box that would be fun to play in?

With at least one alien race recognizing cats as the supreme rulers of Earth — sorry, Felinia — is it really far fetched to imagine cats commandeering spacecraft to explore the final frontier and the Great Big Litter Box in the Sky?

Who Wants More Buddy?

Participate in our reader survey and tell us what you’d like to see on Buddy’s site!

Hello and welcome to our Spring 2020 reader survey! We here at Pain In The Bud (littlebuddythecat.com) appreciate our readers, all four million of them, and we’d like to know what kind of content YOU want to see on this illustrious blog.

So without further adieu, here are the reader survey questions:

1) How often would you like to see new photos of Buddy?

a) Daily
b) Twice a day
c) Every hour!

2) How much should Buddy charge for his pawtograph?

a) One bag of Temptations turkey flavor.
b) One bag of Blue Buffalo moist turkey treats.
c) A whole turkey.
d) Two (2) cans of delicious turkey pate.

3) Are you interested in stories about other cats?

a) Nope, I just want to read about Buddy!
b) Maybe, but not if that means fewer Buddy stories!
c) Yes. I love all cat stories, but Buddy is my favorite.

4) How would you describe Buddy if you were recommending his site to friends and other cat lovers?

a) He’s roguishly handsome.
b) He has big muscles.
c) He’s roguishly handsome, he has big muscles and he’s incredibly charming.

5) What’s your favorite thing about Buddy?

a) He’s a mastermind! He always comes up with brilliant schemes that never, ever backfire.
b) He’s astonishingly brave! Most cats are terrified of vacuums, kitchen blenders and garbage trucks, but Buddy isn’t like most cats.
c) He’s possessed of exceptional intuition. His powers of deduction, such as his investigation linking Coronavirus to Corona beer, are second to none.
d) He’s remarkably humble. He has the body of Cadonis, the strength of a tiger, the roar of a lion and the stealth of a jaguar melting into the jungle, but he never brags.

6) Have you told your friends and family about Buddy?

a) Does a bear poop in the woods?
b) I never stop talking about him! He’s so dreamy!
c) I have been derelict in my duty to inform others of how delightful he is. I apologize and will correct my error!

Thanks in advance for your answers! Your responses constitute valuable data that we’ll use to improve this blog, and have absolutely nothing to do with massaging Buddy’s ego. Cheers!