A freshly baked Bud loaf!
Edit: I am compelled to include the following image, commissioned by Buddy himself and titled “Buddy: Jungle Portrait of Meowscularness.”
It’s so, uh…representative.
Wordless Wednesday: Loaf Of Bud
Freshly baked Bud.
Category: Feline Weirdness
Buddy Eliminated In First Round Of ‘Dancing With The Stars’
The gray tabby cat’s inaugural dance was sabotaged by former sitcom star Steve Urkel and the cousin of the Shamwow guy.
LOS ANGELES — After vowing to “dance circles around” his human competition and become the first feline winner of Dancing With The Stars, Buddy the Cat was unceremoniously sent home from the competition show following an argument with a judge.
Expectations were high when the celebricat was announced as one of a dozen famous booty-shakers on season 78 of the long-running series, especially after he was paired with Alina Gromova, a well-liked professional ballroom dancer who has three Mirrorball Trophy wins under her belt.
Hype reached a fever pitch with a regular trickle of short clips showing the partners practicing in the weeks leading up to the premiere, and the pair seemed to be in sync.
But their performance on the season’s inaugural broadcast left viewers and judges alike scratching their heads.
Things seemed to be going smoothly as Buddy and Gromova grooved to Jamiroquai’s Canned Heat, but quickly fell apart when fellow contestant David Ofer, second cousin of Vince “The Shamwow Guy” Ofer, dug into his pockets and tossed a handful of Temptations onto the dance floor.
Buddy’s head immediately snapped toward the direction of the crunchy, delectable, incredibly irresistible treats, and he shuffled his way over, vacuuming them up in a series of smooth motions with a flourish before joining hands with Gromova again.
She recovered quickly, spinning and kicking in sync with her feline partner, but Jaleel White — who played Steve Urkel on the long-running sitcom Family Matters in the late 1980s and early 90s — was spotted surreptitiously crinkling a paper bag and misting one corner of the dance floor with catnip spray.
Buddy spun around and executed a series of Travolta-esque hip-twist-and-point maneuvers in the direction of the ‘nip scent. Gromova tried to keep him focused, but the frustrated feline rushed White and bit down hard on his foot as ripples of shock spread through the audience.
“Obviously, a bunch of the D-list contestants felt they couldn’t compete with Buddy’s charm and his mastery of movement, so they decided to sabotage him, the cowards,” one fan huffed in a reaction video on TikTok. “Buddy should be on his way to the second round while his saboteurs should be sent home.”
Other contestants — including the Guy From Limp Bizkit, Hawk Tuah Girl and Kanye West — were forced to wait while the judges tore into Buddy and the feline responded in kind.
“Dreadful, absolutely dreadful. What a terrible day to have eyes!” said longtime judge Len Goodman, shaking his head in dismay. “You call that a cha-cha?”
Steam jetted from Buddy’s swiveling radar ears.
“It was a cha-cha!” he spat back.
“Not in any universe I’ve lived in, dear fellow,” Goodman said.
“It was the definition of a cha-cha!” Buddy argued. “It had cha, and then even more cha! Cha in abundance! Look up ‘cha-cha’ in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of me dancing in a bow tie. Now give me a 10 this instant!”
The camera caught Gromova pressing both hands to her temples while William Forrest, who played a Wookie in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, nervously waited for his chance to dance.
Eventually two burly security guards lumbered up to the stage and grabbed the gray tabby, who screamed in protest.
“I have friends at court! Powerful friends!” he shouted. “The Queen herself made me a lord!”
“What is he on about?” Goodman asked.
“I think that’s from Game of Thrones,” fellow judge Carrie Ann Inaba said. “When Lord Tyrion banished Lord Janos Slynt to the Wall, remember?”
“That was a good episode,” host Alfonso Ribeiro said.
While White and Ofer both advanced to the second round, former 1990s infomercial personality Billy Blanks, best known for his Tae Bo series of exercise VHS tapes, remained the odds-on favorite to become the celebrity winner this season.
Maru, Youtube Star Feline, Dies At 18
With his comical expressions and determination to squeeze in the tiniest of containers, Maru developed a loyal following. For a time, he held the record for the web’s most popular animal.
Maru the cat, who was once the most-viewed animal on the internet, passed away after a short battle with lung cancer.
The 18-year-old Scottish Fold was one of the first viral animal sensations on the video platform, and his videos have amassed a staggering 578 million views over the years. In 2017, Guinness World Records named him the most popular animal on the internet, lending credence to the joke that the internet was invented to share photos and videos of our feline overlords.
His name, which means “round” in Japanese, was an apt descriptor, and viewers found laughs and distraction while watching his antics. More often than not, his adventures included boxes and other containers he could barely fit in.
Maru’s face was familiar even to people who weren’t big Youtube watchers, with internet users authoring several popular memes using his image over the years.
Maru’s human, who shared the bad news in a video, said she brought the little guy to the vet when his behavior changed and he stopped eating. His health rapidly deteriorated and he passed away on Sept. 6.
In one of his most-watched videos, the chonky Scottish Fold comically takes a tumble while trying to scale his cat tree, and demonstrates his dedication to laziness by laying on his back, half-heartedly batting his paws at a wand toy while his human tries to get him up.
In the video announcing Maru’s death, his human thanked his fans for being invested in his life for so many years.
“Maru was a laid-back and calm cat,” she wrote, “but at the very last moment he made a mad dash.”
Header image credit Mugumogu/Youtube
New Crime-Comedy ‘Caught Stealing’ Stars A NY Cat Named Bud
A bartender gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to watch his neighbor’s cat in the new comedic crime flick Caught Stealing.
In Caught Stealing, the newest film from director Darren Aronofsky, a seedy guy named Russ (Matt Smith) asks his neighbor Hank (Austin Butler) to watch his cat for a few days while he’s out of town.
The cat is not only a handsome little fellow, he’s got a spiffy name: Bud.
The problem? Russ has seriously pissed off New York’s criminal element, and Hank is unaware a category five shitstorm is about to make landfall. No matter how many beatings he takes from gangsters who mistake him for his neighbor, the Lower East Side bartender takes his cat-sitting duties seriously.
“Bud remains central to the action,” the New York Times notes. “His skeptical gazes punctuate scenes and his presence endears the audience to Hank, who goes out of his way to protect the somewhat ornery creature when the going gets rough.”
Alas, Caught Stealing‘s Bud is not our Bud, although that’s probably for the better. Our Bud would drive the on-set catering crew mad with his turkey-related demands, and he’d run off camera to hide behind my legs during fight scenes.
Instead, Bud is played by a pro, a cat named Tonic who has appeared in the remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and the horror flick Thanksgiving.
Aronofsky tells the Times about the on-set cat wrangling, noting felines are usually “not very notorious for their collaboration skills.”
Still, Charlie Huston, who wrote the book the movie’s based on as well as the screenplay, said the team didn’t take any shortcuts with Bud.
“I don’t feel like we made it as easy for ourselves as some people would have wanted,” Huston told the Times. “I remember a lot of conversations about, ‘Do we have to have the [expletive] cat in this scene?’”
The fact that they did keep him squarely in the action is testament to Tonic. Before the little guy got the role, the team had it narrowed down to him and one other cat. Tonic made the decision easy for them.
“It was just such a no-brainer because the other cat was fine, but Tonic was such a rock star on Day 1 and that was without prep,” Huston said.
Tonic is so accustomed to performing in live events and movie appearances, he was ready to show off his skills — and to get his paws on his rewards.
“The second he came out of his crate,” trainer Melissa Millett said, “he looked like he thought he was the king of the world and he was ready for all the chicken.”
Mars, The Pet Food Company, Claims There’s A ‘Treat Gap’ Between Cats And Dogs
The makers of Temptations want you to feed your cats more snacks, as if they don’t get enough!
In yet another indication that some people don’t seem to pay attention to their feline masters, the Wall Street Journal reports on Mars and its internal operation “Cattitude,” which as far as I can tell amounts to a few people within the company realizing they haven’t squeezed every last dollar of revenue from people who have cats.
That’s a problem, the company realized, because more people are adopting cats, younger generations are more likely to adopt felines, and anyone who hasn’t had their head in the sand knows the little ones rule the internet with their cuteness.
Through “Cattitude,” which apparently involves everything from executives walking around the office wearing cat ears, to handing out “I Love Cats” decals and consulting with “cat parents” on products, the company says it’s identified a “treat gap” between felines and canines, with dogs as the far more frequent beneficiary of yums:
“Feline insecurity can be self-fulfilling. If you think your cat doesn’t care, you might be less likely to shower them with perks. That may be why dogs get way more treats.
Mars launched a campaign in May that spotlights the “treat gap” by the numbers: Dogs are nearly 32% more likely to get daily treats than cats in dogs-only and cats-only households; in homes with both, 38% of parents said they don’t give the same number of treats.“
The story does not say how the company arrived at those numbers. Probably market research in the form of surveys. Not exactly scientific, as these things go.
This is one of those stories that makes me wonder if these people actually have cats.
From the moment I wake up until the second I settle into bed, Bud shrieks at me for snacks. He won’t even let me stumble into the bathroom before the first shrill reminders. He demands snacks before dinner, after dinner, after he’s had snacks, and sometimes while he’s eating them.
If he could speak English and hold a bull horn, I have no doubt he’d spend the majority of his day blasting the demands into my ears: “MOAR SNACKS, BIG BUDDY! MOAR! MOAR!”
Mars should know this. One of its most popular products, Temptations, turns cats into slobbering addicts. I had to wean the Budster off them, then stupidly bought them again months later and had to wean him off the Temps again because he has a one-track mind when they’re in his bloodstream. Two are not enough. Six are not enough. Ten are not enough.
One time, I left a big tub of the damn things unattended for a minute and he managed to pop the top off by knocking it off the coffee table. When I walked back into the living room, he was dragging his jaw along the floor like a bulldozer, inhaling as many as was felinely possible into his little mouth.
Frantically, I shooed him away and began picking them up, but the damage was done. He threw up a few minutes later. Then he shrieked for more!
Interestingly, the WSJ notes that if you type “Does my cat” into Google, the first two auto-complete suggestions are “Does my cat love me?” and “Does my cat know I love her?”
And that brings us to a point on which I agree with the people at Mars: cats still aren’t well understood.
Dogs happily slobber over their people. Cats show their love in subtle ways, like proximity, head bunting and momentary contact.
Just like the whole “cats love milk” thing is half myth, half misunderstanding, so is the idea that your cat doesn’t love you unless he’s leaping into your arms to hug you as saccharine orchestral music swells in the background.
While there are always outliers, most cats don’t like being hugged or picked up, and most have hard limits when it comes to the amount of physical affection they’ll tolerate. It’s not because they don’t care for us, but because they’re semi-domesticated carnivores who still retain the skittish tendencies of their wild brethren, and because they get easily overstimulated, among other reasons.
If Mars’ Cattitude is an ongoing thing, I hope the decision-makers in the company come to what I believe are two of the most important conclusions to keep in mind when it comes to cats. Giving them your love means giving them your time and attention, and treating them like the sentient, emotional creatures they are.
The best piece of advice I ever got was to always take your cat’s emotions into consideration.
It really is that simple.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have snacks to dispense.
Pain In The Bud 