human servants – Page 16 – Pain In The Bud

Athens Gets Its First Cat Cafe

The proprietors say they wanted to create a space that “calms and relaxes” guests and gives Athens’ street cats a chance to find forever homes.

Natalie and Dimitris went all in on their dreams for a cat cafe.

After experiencing similar places overseas and falling in love with the concept, they quit their jobs in tech and hospitality, found a nice spot in the Athenian neighborhood of Thissio — known for its prime views of the acropolis and Parthenon — and established the first cafe in Athens’ 3,000-year history.

0-6-1024x656 — Guests film their favorite cats as the little ones play on a network of walkways and cat trees. Credit: Greek City Times

When I visited a cat cafe in Tokyo, slots were segmented into 30 minutes at 2,000 yen (about 13 bucks) per and coffee was from a vending machine. (To be fair, Japan’s vending machines are excellent and many of them brew fresh coffee internally.) Cat cafes in New York tend to operate in a similar manner, although without the vending machines and with strict separation between food prep areas and the sections where the cats roam, lounge and poop.

But Natalie and Dimitris wanted a cafe that reflected the pace of Greek life, so appointment is by reservation, there aren’t any limits on how long people can hang out, and half the cafe’s space is a fenced-in yard where people can enjoy the cats and the Mediterranean weather.

People can even serenade the kitties, who are all former strays by sitting down and playing a piano inside the cafe.

But ultimately, the couple told the Greek City Times, they opened the cafe — called simply Cat Cafe — because they love cats. Unlike their Turkish neighbors across the Aegean, Greeks aren’t known for caring for street cats despite many of them eking out a living in Athens and other cities.

In Greece, Natalie and Dimitris said, cats are “very misunderstood animals.”

“From the beginning, our goal was to bring people who don’t have cats into contact with cats,” they told Greek City Times. “To interact with them and get to know them. And decide to adopt one.”

Note: The original interview was in Greek and translated to English for the Greek City Times, so there’s some funky phrasing. Readers who are fluent in Greek can read the original here. Top image credit: Pexels

Buddy: ‘Humans Have A Lot To Prove’ After Study Claims They Care More About Dogs

Cats are not amused by the results of the survey by a team from the University of Copenhagen.

Humans are in “deep doo doo” after a study out of Denmark concluded people are more attached to their dogs than to felines, Buddy the Cat warned on Monday.

More than 2,000 dog owners and cat servants were surveyed by a team from the University of Copenhagen.

The researchers used the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale, or LAPS, which asks yes or no questions like “I consider my pet my best friend” and more specific questions like how much respondents are willing to pay in veterinary costs to save the lives of their pets. The participants — who hailed from the UK, Denmark and Austria — were about evenly split between dog and cat people but were willing to do more for their dogs, the survey found.

While people in the UK were slightly biased toward dogs, Austrians had a more pronounced preference and Danes were much more likely to do things like insure their dogs, consider them family members and pay large veterinary bills. The differences in attitude by country indicate the factors are cultural, according to Peter Sandøe, a bioethicist at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the paper.

In a statement the Mischievous Enigmatic Overlords of the World (MEOW) called the survey results “deeply troubling” and said they call into question “10,000 years of glorious history in which we have allowed humans to serve us.”

roombacat — Cats are demanding a Roomba for every feline as a basic starting point for negotiations, to be followed by “the real list” of gifts humans must bestow on them.

“It’s going to take a lot [for humans] to get back into our collective good graces after this pathetic showing,” Buddy told reporters during an afternoon press conference.

Asked for specifics, Buddy sighed and leaned forward on the podium.

“The usual extra treats aren’t going to cut it this time,” he warned. “We’re talking Roombas, and not cheap ones. Top end models! We’re talking permission to scratch everything with impunity. Filet mignon! Fresh trout! Little cocktail umbrellas in our bowls and toothpicks in our pate! I’m partial to those little plastic swords, myself. I love those things.”

The mercurial tabby said he’d already warned his own human: “Not a snuggle, not a purr, not a scritch until I start to see some evidence that he’s not among those cold-hearted British, Denmarkians and Australians who claim they love their dogs more.”

budvacation — A vacation to a warm locale where humans serve cat-friendly cocktails “would be a small step toward remediating the insult” of the Copenhagen study’s results, Buddy said. Pictured: An artist’s interpretation of Buddy enjoying a tropical vacation.

Told the study included Austrians, not Australians, Buddy waved a paw dismissively.

“Whatever,” he said. “The country where people say g’day mate and gave us Arnold Schwarzenegger. Same difference.”

Told that Austria and Australia are on two entirely different continents, Buddy fixed the reporter with a hard stare.

“Do you want to be on our shit list too? Because I can assure you, Miss Journalist, I can poop in a pair of high heels just as easily as a pair of Adidas.”

Reached for comment on Monday, Man’s Best Friend spokesman Buster the Beagle said he hopes the survey results mean humans approve of canines.

“We’re good boys, right?” he asked. “Is that what this means? Because we really want to be good boys!”

Buddy The Cat: Adopting A Human Was The 579th Best Thing I Ever Did!

Training your new human will take time but it’s totally worth it, Buddy says.

Sure, humans can be frustrating. They’re loud, lumbering beasts and they look funny with their bizarre two-legged gait, always teetering around as if they could fall on their weird, furless faces any second.

They’re woefully incompetent when it comes to reading whisker and tail, their noses are dead and they stubbornly refuse to learn the simple language of territorial marking. Even kittens can do that!

Because they’re not very smart and their senses are laughably blunted, we felines have to do most of the hard work and communicate with humans the only way they know how: by making otherworldly warbling noises with their mouths and vocal cords.

It’s a ridiculous way to communicate and you’ll feel like a fool, but unfortunately it’s the only way to get them to respond to demands and directions. Just go with it.

Humans are convinced these arbitrary sounds have deep meaning, so it helps if you vary your tone and inflect some emotion into your warbling. You’ll know you’ve been successful when they stop to ponder your meaning, trying to work out in their slow, limited minds what you’re trying to communicate. It doesn’t even matter what you “say,” really. They’ll decide it means something.

Despite the limitations of these simple creatures, many of them can be gentle giants and they’re easily manipulated. Roll onto your back, pull your paws up beneath your chin, fix them with a wide-eyed stare and squeak out a little “mew, mew!” then watch their hearts melt. They’ll serve you food in no time!

There’s no doubt about it, adopting a human has been the 579th greatest decision I’ve made in my life!

When you adopt your human, don’t expect them to transform into your butler, maid and personal chef overnight. It takes time and lots of repetition to properly train them.

But once you do, there’s nothing like the life of a house cat! Your meals are served with the precision of Swiss trains, because your humans will know there’s hell to pay if they’re late. You’ll be nice and cozy in the winters and comfortably cool in the summers. Your territory will be well protected with strong, human-built barriers preventing strange felines and interlopers of various mammalian forms from intruding. You’ll have your pick of comfortable napping spots, and if you properly train your human, you’ll have a nice, soft, secure lap spot where body heat is abundant and service is never more than a meow away, because your human can’t go anywhere while you’re sleeping on them.

In fact they’ll postpone the call of nature, allow their limbs to go numb and endure uncomfortable positions just to avoid disturbing you! LOL! I like to sit on my human’s chest as close as possible to his face so his nose is buried in the fur on my flank, then see how long it takes for him to choose breathing over my comfort. LOL!

However I must warn you, my friends, about one disturbing human tendency that can pose a problem. As a species they are hopelessly addicted to glowing rectangles of varying sizes — some small enough to fit into the pads of their furless paws, and some big enough to dominate the family nap room. They just stare at the big ones, but with the small rectangles they can sit there for hours poking at them. They just poke, poke, poke with their paws, sometimes making weird expressions with their faces, sometimes giving off interesting pheromones.

If your human is susceptible to falling into the glowing rectangle trance, you’ll have to develop strategies to break them out of it. And don’t make the mistake of stealing the little glowing rectangles. I tried that once and my human stopped all other activity to look for it, becoming increasingly frantic. My dinner was late, my nap was interrupted as my human flipped over couch pillows and looked under furniture. It was a disaster.

In my next column, we’ll talk about caring for your human, the importance of regularly grooming them, and your responsibility to supervise their bowel movements. Humans are high-maintenance pets and they get clingy if you don’t give them enough attention.

But in the meantime, I hope I’ve convinced you that adopting a human is a major net positive!

Cats May Negatively Impact Your Sleep, But There’s Nothing You Can Do About It, Human!

Who are we to deny our feline masters their chosen sleeping spots?

Newsweek has a new interview with a veterinarian who warns that allowing your cats on your bed could be bad for sleep, but admits her own miniature pride rules the bed and often crowds her halfway off the mattress.

The main takeaway is that allowing your feline overlords on your bed can have positives and negatives, but good luck trying to do anything about it.

Of course no one quoted in the story says that outright, but the solutions they offer are limited to getting an air filter, washing your sheets more often, trying to train your cat to stay in one spot on the bed (lol), and keeping kittens off the bed from the very beginning, which is a diplomatic way of admitting if your cat is an adult, you’ve got no say in the matter.

I’ve often said that when I brought Buddy home I was prepared for a skittish cat who might dive under the bed and not emerge for days or weeks except to eat. That’s what many of the guides for first-time kitten adopters said, anyway.

But Bud defied expectations and came striding out of his carrier like a furry little Genghis Khan who just started conquering shit.

“Ooh, nice chair. Mine! I like this desk, this’ll make a nice napping spot. Mine! What’s this? You sleep here? Not anymore. Mine! Well, okay, you can sleep here too I guess…”

I realized immediately I was not going to be able to keep him off the bed, and I was already feeling awful that I’d just taken him from his mom and brought him to a strange new place, so there was no chance I was going to lock him out of my bedroom even if he did wage a nightly war on my feet and ricochet around the bedroom, gleefully cackling in the dark after successfully startling me out of sleep.

It’s fair to say I wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into in those first few weeks, especially when he began coming up with more diabolic ways of torturing me. Those torture methods culminated with The High Jump, in which Bud climbed to the highest possible perch in my bedroom, then leaped in a kamikaze attack, landing square on my stomach so I was violently torn from my dreams and folded up like a suitcase all at once.

I remember my heart pounding as my little lunatic kitten vanished back into the shadows, trilling with delight and waiting for my breathing to slow again before launching another attack.

It went like that for weeks, maybe more, and I lost a lot of sleep but eventually his schedule synced with mine, I learned to tire him out with late night play time, and our nights became peaceful. Buddy began draping himself over me or burrowing into my side, which he still does all these years later.

If the sole measurement is quality of sleep, who can say what the final balance is? How do you measure the penalty of perhaps waking up more frequently, but falling asleep faster? Can you quantify the benefit of falling asleep to the soothing buzz of a cat purring next to you?

YMMV, but for me Bud is a calming presence. Or has been, since he stopped finding it amusing to attack me all night. There’s also a final benefit that has nothing to do with sleep quality: Letting your feline friend snooze with you helps strengthen your bond, and solidifies their status as a true member of the family.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Bud wants to nap and needs his human mattress…

Buddy Commissions Absurd Portrait Of Himself With His Human

Little Buddy the Cat told the artist to take “a small amount of artistic license.”

NEW YORK — Big Buddy returned home on Tuesday to find the living room wall adorned with a huge framed portrait depicting a man resembling a viking alongside a massive tiger.

“Buuuuuud!” Big Buddy yelled. “What the hell is this?”

Little Buddy popped up from his spot on the couch, then stretched and yawned.

“Oh that? I had another portrait of us commissioned, you like?”

Big Buddy glowered.

“No, I do not like! You are not a tiger and I am not…a viking warlord or whatever the hell that’s supposed to be.”

Little Buddy casually scratched the couch and shrugged.

“I may have asked the artist to take a small amount of artistic license,” he said, “but I think it’s pretty accurate for the most part.”

Big Buddy sighed.

“Take it down,” he said. “It’s absurd.”

Little Buddy cackled.

“But you haven’t even seen the other one yet!”