Feline Overlords – Page 65

How Do These Nice Russian Ladies Know My Cat?

My cat’s been teleporting to Russia, apparently, where he’s become a muse to a pair of witty Russian ladies.

Dear readers, I think we’re close to proving what we’ve long suspected, that cats can indeed teleport!

I used to think Buddy could only teleport short distances. One time, for example, I stepped over the little guy while chastising him for lounging in the middle of a doorway. I raised my foot, careful not to step on him, took another step…and looked up to find him sitting on a table 10 feet ahead of me, his head cocked at an angle, staring back at me with an amused expression on his face.

“How do I teleport? Easy. I use a retaining magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons. These in turn fold space-time consistent with Weyl tensor dynamics until the space-time curvature becomes infinitely large and you produce a singularity. Now, a singularity…”

I did a double take, looking back at the spot on the floor where he had just been, absolutely sure there must be a second gray tabby, a Buddy imposter helping my cat play a joke on me. How can anything move that fast?! He must have teleported!

Now it seems Buddy’s powers of space-time manipulation are greater than I ever imagined.

Enter Lingvistov, a creative team comprised of artist Landysh and writer Asia, who became friends while studying English at a Russian university. After they graduated they decided to put their skills to good use by penning short comic strips and illustrations about cats and their many weird and wonderful habits.

Somewhere along the way, Buddy must have used his powers of teleportation to meet them and serve as a muse, because they’ve got him down to a tee:

Play With Me! — Although we’ve been working hard on correcting the behavior, biting to get what he wants is a classic Buddy move. Credit: Lingvistov

The sneaky little bastard has been fluent in Russian this whole time and hid it from me! That, and his ability to manipulate space-time and teleport at will.

Food O’Clock — ”Wakey, wakey, human! Up, before I slappeth you with my paw!” Credit: Lingvistov

Buddy must have napped with them as well. He loves sleeping between my legs, in the “valley” formed by the blanket, and he uses me as his human mattress. He must have demonstrated his preferred sleeping positions for his Russian friends:

Of course there will be skeptics. The teleportation thing doesn’t quite stand up to Occam’s razor, after all. What’s more likely, that Buddy can teleport, or that a woman in Russia has a gray tabby who is just as uniquely obnoxious as my little dude?

Still, I choose to believe he can indeed teleport and one day, when I finally train him to do my bidding, he can put his powers to good use by teleporting to the store to get me a six-pack of beer.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for a gift for the cat servant in your life, you can’t go wrong with a Lingvistov print or stationery reminding them of their allegiance to our furry overlords.

Cats love boxes — Ah, the eternally unused cat bed. Credit: Lingvistov

Announcing the 2nd Annual Buddy Portrait Contest!

Calling all cat-loving artists!

Hey, palicos! We’re pleased to announce the second annual Buddy Portrait Contest, a prime opportunity for artists around the world to show off their talents with illustrations of Buddy.

Let’s look at last year’s winners for inspiration!

3rd place:

This one’s a bit too manga for our particular tastes, but the artist deserves credit for getting Buddy’s musculature right. This sketch takes a naturalistic approach, eschewing exaggeration in favor of stark realism.

2nd place:

The judges absolutely fell in love with this pencil illustration, which renders Buddy’s hulking frame in dramatic greyscale tones. Buddy’s visage is fierce and his shaggy tail suggests virility and power. The drawing is centered by his considerable biceps and his fourteen-pack. Bravo!

1st place:

This is the Buddy we all know and love: Regal, majestic and powerful. In this awe-inspiring piece, Buddy looks toward an unseen horizon, his whiskers and tail alert and broadcasting unshakable confidence. His symmetric handsomeness is reproduced faithfully by the clearly inspired artist, and his broad shoulders are framed by jagged stripes in homage to Buddy’s heritage as a terrifying tiger. Superlatives fail us. This is the very picture of feline grace and power.

Honorable mention:

We think this is an attempt to portray Buddy as a Pokémon, shrinking him and his muscles down to a kawaii style more popular with children.

How to enter this year’s contest:

Submit a high-resolution illustration or portrait of Buddy no later than Nov. 30, 2019, with “Buddy the Handsome Cat” in the subject line. Portraits that don’t adequately capture how ripped Buddy is will be disqualified.

An Early Stocking Stuffer for Cat Lovers

Walter Chandoha photographed cats for the better part of seven decades.

Walter Chandoha might not be a household name, but he’s a legend among photography enthusiasts and — most importantly for readers of this blog — a true OG of feline photography.

Chandoha, who took more than 90,000 photographs of photogenic kitties, passed away earlier this year at the ripe old age of 98. We don’t know the secrets to the photographer’s longevity, but it’s a good bet all that time spent with cute cats was a major contributor.

The New Jersey native and NYU graduate didn’t set out to become the most celebrated cat photographer. His work appeared on hundreds of magazine covers before the fluffy little carnivores pulled him into their world:

In 1949, Walter Chandoha adopted a stray kitten in New York. When he began taking pictures of his new pet, Loco, he was so inspired by the results that he started photographing kittens from a local shelter, thereby kickstarting an extraordinary career that would span seven decades

Now those photos are collected in a book called, appropriately, Cats: Photographs 1942-2018.

chandohacats1 — A pair of Chandoha’s kitty muses.

Fashion has Helmut Newton, architecture has Julius Shulman, and cat photography has Walter Chandoha. In 1949, his encounter with a stray kitten blossomed into a career that elevated feline portraiture to an art form. This is a tribute not just to these beguiling creatures but also to a remarkable photographer who passed away this year at the age of 98; and whose compassion can be felt in each and every frame.

Walter Chandoha Cat Photography — Hello, kitten!

Walter Chandoha — Chandoha and one of his feline models in the 1950s.

Chandoha’s “Cats” and two other collections of his cat photographs (Walter Chandoha’s Book of Kittens & Cats, Walter Chandoha: Cat Photographer) can be found at Amazon.

Buddy — “Hey! What about me? I want to be in a cat photography book!”

Study: Cats Really Do View Us As Parents

Cats are furbabies after all.

In a discovery that won’t surprise most feline servants, scientists have concluded cats really do get attached to us even if they have a funny way of not showing it.

The internet is abuzz this week with news of a study that indicates a cat’s bond with his human is much like a child’s bond with a parent.

The research, conducted by a team at Oregon State University, sought to gauge how attached cats are to their owners by putting them in a strange situation and seeing how they react with their humans present and without.

In the study a cat is led into a strange room accompanied by his or her human. After two minutes the human exits and the cat is left alone in the unfamiliar room. Another two minutes later, the cat’s servant returns.

It’s the way the cat acts when its human is away — and how it adjusts when the owner returns — that interests researchers. And sure enough, domestic feline behavior followed a familiar pattern:

With owner/servant in the room: “What is this strange place? What are we doing here?”
Human exits: “Oh no! Don’t leave me in here! I don’t know what this place is! Come back! Hey, come back here! This place looks, smells and feels funny. I’m scared!”
Human returns: “Ah! Okay, much better. I’m just gonna rub up against you so I feel better. You know, this room isn’t so bad after all, is it? You look pretty calm. That means I should be calm, right?”

Although it might seem strange that scientists can learn so much from such a simple experiment, the result is important because the way cats react is precisely the way small kids and dogs react to strange situations.

Cat Hugs His Human — “I love you, furless human, and I’m not just saying that ’cause you feed me!”

It’s all about what psychologists call secure attachment: When a child is bonded with her parent, the mere presence of that parent lends calm and comfort in a strange situation.

Without mom or dad present, the kid is unsure, cautious and maybe even frightened. But with mom or dad in the room, the child feels comfortable and safe enough to go exploring and isn’t intimidated by the new environment. Psychologists call it a “secure base test” because it means kids use their parents as a safe “base” from which to explore.

Two decades ago, researchers broke new ground when experiments showed dogs behave the same way, drawing comfort and feeling more secure with their owners nearby.

“Like dogs, cats display social flexibility in regard to their attachments with humans,” study author Kristyn Vitale said. “The majority of cats are securely attached to their owner and use them as a source of security in a novel environment.”

Another Cat Enjoying A Hug — Must be nice to have a cat who enjoys hugs!

It took another 20 years for scientists to try the same experiment with cats, mostly because felines have a reputation — not undeserved — of being very difficult to work with.

That is, cats don’t always feel like playing nice and participating in a study because, well, they’re cats.

This latest study isn’t the first time researchers have tried to gauge feline attachment to their humans, but it’s the most expansive study of the phenomenon to date: The Oregon State University team conducted the test with some 80 kittens younger than eight months, then repeated the same experiment with adult cats.

The idea was to determine if cats grow out of their emotional attachment. The results suggest they don’t, which lends credence to the theory that domestic cats under the care of humans are, in some respects, kittens for life.

“Once an attachment style has been established between the cat and its caregiver, it appears to remain relatively stable over time, even after a training and socialization intervention,” Vitale said. “Cats that are insecure can be likely to run and hide or seem to act aloof. There’s long been a biased way of thinking that all cats behave this way. But the majority of cats use their owner as a source of security. Your cat is depending on you to feel secure when they are stressed out.”

For those of us currently employed as cat servants, that last bit is important: Cats most definitely do pick up on our moods even when it seems like they don’t.

To read more, check out a 2015 study by Italian scientists that found cats look to their owners for emotional cues about how to respond to new situations, and a 2017 by the same Oregon State University team that found cats value human interaction just as much as they value food.

Buddy Angry — “Buddy doesn’t do hugs, okay? Buddy speaks in the third person, Buddy meows insistently for dinner, but Buddy does not do hugs. Deal with it, human.”

Groom Makes His Cat His Best Man

Best man, best cat, what’s the difference?

Dear Buddy,

Did you hear about Aaron Benitez, the guy who made his cat, Prince Michael, the best man at his wedding? What do you think of this story?

Curious in Colorado

918FE852-AFD1-4879-94CB-BF31EB82190E — Prince Michael, who doesn’t rock a tux as well as King Buddy.

EC0C303B-36B9-4738-998F-43313B71A00B — The remarkably tolerant bride poses with her new husband and his best man.

Dear Curious,

What a heartwarming story! Mr. Benitez obviously loves “Prince” Michael, and the bride seems pretty chill if she’s cool enough to allow that kind of distraction on her big day.

Do you know who also looks suave in a tuxedo? I’ll give you one guess: His name starts with King and ends with Buddy.

8F602B96-1C26-445D-9FFC-13348FA83B42 — Dapper and devastatingly handsome!

I’ve sent a copy of this story to Big Buddy, telling him to hurry up and get married so I can spend the night dancing with bridesmaids. Best buddy, best man!

– Buddy