human servants – Pain In The Bud

Two Thirds Of Cats Sleep On Their Left Side: Why?, PLUS: Aubrey Plaza’s Cat Comedy Premieres In April

Cats spend most of their time sleeping, which leaves them in a vulnerable position.

Aubrey Plaza is delightfully weird.

Anyone who’s seen her on a late night talk show or in an impromptu interview knows what I’m talking about. Instead of the practiced, carefully crafted anecdotes celebrities tell to make themselves seem more interesting, or the hard focus on promoting a particular project, Plaza seems to revel in awkward pauses, bizarre responses and stories that most people would never tell about themselves.

She does it all with a deadpan expression so you can never quite tell if she’s joking. That’s part of the fun.

I hadn’t seen her in much until Emily the Criminal, about a woman whose frustration at trying to make ends meet with dead-end jobs leads her down a highly illegal path, revealing a talent for deception she never knew she had.

Now she’s starring in Kevin, an animated show about an eponymous tuxedo cat who decides that when his humans break up, he’s going to break up with them too. Instead of going with one of them, Kevin decides to move “into a local pet rescue in Astoria, Queens, where a band of misfit animals helps him discover what he truly wants out of life,” according to the series’ logline.

Plaza co-created the series with Joe Wengert, and Jason Schwartzmann, who we loved in Bored To Death, will voice Kevin. The show will premiere on April 20 on Prime Video.

Cats prefer sleeping on their left side, but why?

Two out of three cats prefer sleeping on their left side, which immediately raises two questions: why do they prefer sleeping that way, and how do we know such a seemingly obscure piece of information?

In 2025, a team of scientists from Italy and Germany analyzed more than 400 random online videos of our furry overlords in their rest state, and the numbers were consistent. Cats definitely have a preferred side to sleep on, and it’s the left.

As for why, in a research paper published in Current Biology last summer, the scientists say there are several reasons, but the primary one is that the right side of the brain processes shapes and visual sensory input.

Since the right hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of the body in mammals, due to the way nerve fibers cross at the base of the brain, a cat opening its eyes and seeing the world from the left side is able to more quickly assess information and react.

That’s a pretty big deal for cats, as a story in Science Focus notes. As both predator and prey, felines have to respond quickly not only to potential threats, but also potential lunch.

That is especially true for a species that spends the majority of its time sleeping deeply or napping, meaning they’re physically vulnerable to attack most of the time. That explains why our cats are able to spring to alertness immediately from a nap, and why their most restful sleep comes when they’re absolutely sure they’re safe.

Anecdotally, that makes sense. Bud clearly feels safest when he sleeps on me or burrows between my knees, and it’s subsequently harder to rouse him from slumber compared to, say, when he catches some Zs on the couch by himself or retreats to another favorite napping spot.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he also bucks the trend and likes to sleep on his right side. We are, after all, talking about a cat who still hasn’t figured out that wand toy games simulate hunting, and that they should end with a “kill bite” rather than Bud’s favored method, which is bouncing happily on his back paws while bobbling the toy in his front paws.

He may have the instincts of his wild ancestors, but all he knows is the comfort and warmth of human homes.

Study: Dogs And Toddlers Help Caregivers Find Missing Items While Cats Don’t Lift A Paw

“Can’t find your keys, human? That’s terrible. I don’t know where they are, but perhaps I could recall that information if, say, there were treats involved. Take your time, I’m in no rush even if you are.”

A new study shows dogs and human toddlers are eager to help when their adult caregivers are looking for a missing item, but cats don’t seem to care.

The study, which involved running the same experiment for young children, dogs and cats in their own homes, made it clear cats were fully aware of what was happening and understood their humans were looking for the missing object.

They just didn’t care.

There was one notable exception, of course. If the missing items were important to the cat — a favorite toy, for instance, or a bag of treats — the felines were motivated to help search or direct their humans to the missing objects, the research team from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary found.

But at all other times, feline observers were content to hang back and watch, even when they understood their humans were getting frustrated.

By contrast, young children and dogs actively tried to help and signaled to adults when they thought they’d found the object.

“Lookin’ for something? No, I’ll just watch, thank you. Warm, warmer…oh! Cold…colder…that direction doesn’t look promising, human.” Credit: Gord Maclean/Pexels

So does this mean cats are jerks? Probably. Are we surprised by the results? Not at all.

We still love our furry friends, who do have their own unique ways of demonstrating they care about their humans beyond seeing them as providers of food, shelter, and safety, as well as playmates, minions and servants.

Besides, testing whether dogs or cats were helpful or not wasn’t the point. As the authors note, “[t]hese three species provide an important comparison because they share a similar anthropogenic environment but differ in their ecological and evolutionary backgrounds.”

In other words, they’re interested in figuring out how evolution plays a part in how species behave in particular situations. Although it’s yet to be conclusively proven for this behavior, a likely reason is because domestic cats are the descendants of a mostly solitary wildcat species, whereas we humans and our canine friends have long evolutionary histories of living in social groups and cooperating with each other.

The study is included in the March 2026 issue of Animal Behavior.

Look At Him Go! Cat Enthusiastically Takes To Treadmill

Archie the cat, with his love of exercise, is the anti-Buddy.

This is unbelievable.

A three-year-old cat named Archie, who also hails from New York, loves running on his human’s treadmill. Mariah, his 27-year-old servant, keeps a close eye on the little guy while he gets his run in to make sure he doesn’t get hurt, but he seems entirely unperturbed and pumps his little legs, keeping a steady pace:

@mariah.sola
Archie is maintaining 3.0-3.2 our ultimate goal is 4.5MPH
♬ Young Black & Rich (Instrumental) – Melly Mike

Honestly, I can barely comprehend this. Bud would be more likely to engineer a treadmill into an automated system to deliver snacks to him so he doesn’t have to lift a paw. He is, after all, remarkably dedicated to the craft of being as lazy as possible.

Cheers to Archie for showing not all cats are loafing blobs!

Expert Napper Is Cat Sanctuary’s Best Volunteer

Terry Lauerman literally sleeps on the job, and cats love him for it.

Seven years ago, Terry Lauerman and the Safe Haven Cat Sanctuary went viral.

Lauerman, then 75, walked into the Green Bay, Wisconsin, rescue one day and told the staff he liked to brush cats. They welcomed him as a volunteer, he immediately curled up with a cat — and fell asleep.

Since then, Lauerman’s been going to Safe Haven every day, brushing his feline friends, then yawning and passing out with a cat in his arms.

From a CBS News report in 2018:

Lauerman usually spends an hour sleeping on the couch with a cat, then wakes up and moves to another couch to nap with the next cat, WCCO reports. He did this for six months straight before Feldhausen eventually told him he had become an official volunteer and had him fill out a form.

Now CBS went back to check on Lauerman and the shelter. He’s still at it, napping away the hours with the shelter’s cats, giving a comfort they wouldn’t normally have until finding their forever homes.

“We’re very lucky that he walked in here,” said Elizabeth Feldhausen, Safe Haven’s executive director.

Lauerman, who is also a brother at a nearby abbey, said he senses God in our four-legged friends, which is a notion he probably shouldn’t share with them lest they become even more imperious.

“I’ve always been a cat person,” he said. “To me it’s a blessing to be touched by creation.”

As a CBS reporter put it: “You sleep on the job.”

“Yes,” Lauerman said, “that’s exactly it.”

Bud and I salute Mr. Lauerman. Years ago we heard a friend observe that “there are two kinds of people in the world: those who take naps, and those who don’t even understand how that’s possible.”

At the time, I agreed with her. But napping starts to seem like a great idea as the years pass by, and when you have a cat, well, sometimes you don’t have a choice. With 11 years now under my belt as Bud’s pillow, I can safely say there are few things more relaxing than opening a book, reading a few chapters as your little buddy curls up in your lap, and easing into some Zs.

Images via Safe Haven Cat Sanctuary. Header image via Pexels.

Bud napping on my legs on a recent evening.

Cat Beds, Feline Football Experts, And The ‘Elitism’ Of Paying For Veterinary Care

Do cats ever do what we want them to do?

I expected something truly extravagant when a reader wrote to Slate’s advice column to say she was considering doing something “wildly elitist” involving her cat.

What could it be? I wondered. Pure gold or silver eating and drinking bowls, a la Choupette? A fashionable $600 pet stroller like the young, childless women of Tokyo favor for their felines? Feeding premium meat from the butcher exclusively to her cat?

None of the above, it turns out. The allegedly “wildly elitist” thing this woman was deliberating was simply paying a veterinarian to have dental work done on her cat, with costs estimated at between $800 and $2,000, depending on the extent of the kitty’s cavities.

To make matters even stranger, the letter writer says the cost won’t be a financial hardship for her family. Their cat is only three years old, she notes, and the family has had him since he was found on the street as a kitten.

“I guess I didn’t think that part of taking him in would entail thousands of dollars to keep him alive at this stage of the game,” she wrote. “At what point do people draw the line on what it costs to save a cat’s life?”

The writer was essentially looking for “permission” to have the cat put down, for Slate’s advice columnist to virtually pat her on the head, say “There, there!” and agree that taking care of your own cat is “wildly elitist.”

Thankfully, Slate columnist Athena Valentine was having none of it, telling the woman seeking advice that “when you adopt an animal, you take financial responsibility.” Spending money on veterinary care when needed, Valentine noted, is “exactly what you signed up for” by adopting the little guy. A cat who, by the way, could easily live another decade at least.

“If you do not want to pay for your cat’s treatment, please surrender him to a rescue that will,” Valentine wrote. “The rescue will raise the funds you do not want to part with to pay for his teeth and will then adopt him out to a new home that understands the responsibilities of pet ownership. I also advise you to not adopt any more animals until you’re fully ready to accept the financial obligations that come with it.”

Cheers to Valentine for not taking the bait.

Do your feline overlords use their own beds?

One of the first things I bought for Bud, along with his litter box, bowls and toys, was a bed. It’s nothing extravagant, but it does look pretty comfortable.

He has never used it.

Or rather, he lounged on it a handful of times when he was a kitten, but he claimed my bed as his own. He was very clear on the new ownership situation, and generously allowed me to continue sleeping on my his bed as long as I accepted the fact that he would use me as a pillow, which he has been doing for more than a decade now.

A Newsweek story details the efforts of a woman who bought her cat a new bed, hoping he’d let her sleep at night, only for the feline overlord to drag his new bed onto her bed. Essentially, she bought him a new pillow.

Do cats ever do what we want them to? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.

A cat whose fantasy soccer team ranked 222 out of 13 million players

At The Athletic, Conor Schmidt writes about creating a fantasy football (soccer) team for his cat, and letting the little guy choose who to draft and trade by writing the names of players on a dry erase board and putting treats next to each name. The first treat his cat goes for is the one whose associated player is dealt or drafted.

He says his cat reached an astonishing world ranking of 222 out of almost 13 million players on the same platform worldwide, which means either the little dude has incredible luck, or he’s a genius who knows a lot more than he lets on.

Maybe I should register a fantasy basketball or baseball team for Buddy, smear turkey gravy next to players’ names, and see how he does.