human servants – Page 27 – Pain In The Bud

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Woman Breastfeeds Cat On Flight

“Emotional support snakes,” passengers breastfeeding cats, people being violent jerks to flight attendants: This is why airlines take away privileges.

As more airlines scoff at the idea of emotional support animals and banish pets to cargo compartments, selfish air travelers remind us why.

Like a woman on a Delta flight en route to Atlanta last week, who grossed out fellow passengers by breastfeeding her cat. Flight attendants asked the woman to stop and place her cat back inside its carrier, as per FAA rules, but she refused.

That prompted the pilot to send a message ahead to the destination airport via ACARS, short for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System:

acarscat — An ACARS message sent from Delta Air flight DL1360 to ATL, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

The pilot asked for a ground team to meet the passenger aircraft upon landing. It’s not clear if the woman was prohibited from traveling on the airline in the future.

Regardless, as press reports note, Delta has been dealing with an 84 percent uptick in emotional support animal-related incidents, which comes amid a dramatic spike in general incidents aboard passenger jets. As of September, there were already three times as many incidents compared to the whole of 2019, and the FAA had handed out more than $1 million in fines, a CNN report noted. (Data for 2020 isn’t particularly useful as a point of comparison because air travel remained restricted for months due to the pandemic.)

It’s gotten so bad that flight attendants are quitting and airlines are worried about being unable to staff flights, as most don’t have enough attendants to provide a full crew complement as it is. And who can blame these flight attendants, who are already overworked and perform an often thankless job that should not include acting as law enforcement at 40,000 feet?

One flight attendant told the New York Times she feels like her and her colleagues are “like punching bags for the public,” while others say the job has become dehumanizing.

“What really hurts are the people who won’t even look at you in the eye,” she said. “I don’t even feel like a human anymore.”

Emotional support animals are supposed to be fairly rare and reserved for people with extreme anxiety. Instead, we’ve had a parade of assholes in the past few years demanding they be allowed to travel with “emotional support snakes” among other ridiculous companion animals. A Delta spokesperson said the airline had fielded demands from people with “comfort turkeys, gliding possums known as sugar gliders, snakes, spiders, and more.”

Then there’s “Flirty the Emotional Service Horse,” whose owner also maintains an Instagram page for the animal which informs visitors that Flirty prefers the gendered pronouns “she/her.”

What. An. Asshole.

An "emotional service horse" — Above: A selfish person.

Speaking not only as a cat caretaker, but one who is very attached to my little dude, did I like the idea of leaving him back in New York for almost a month when I went to Japan before the pandemic? No. Of course not. I missed him terribly.

Did I enjoy the 14-plus hours it took to fly to Haneda Airport? Of course not. On top of existing anxiety issues I can’t vape on a plane and I don’t like confined spaces.

But boo fucking hoo.

The rest of us just get on with it. We’re already pampered and accommodated beyond what we deserve in most circumstances. We should all have empathy, and we should all have respect for people who suffer from anxiety, but your right to comfort yourself ends at the point where I have to smell a horse’s ass for the six hours it takes to cross from New York to LA. Are passengers just supposed to endure it when the horse defecates? Is a single person’s comfort more important than the discomfort of entire rows of passengers surrounding her?

There are animal welfare issues here as well. No one should be allowed to take a wild animal on a passenger flight, and there’s a strong argument to be made that bringing a damn horse — or even a duck, for that matter — onto a flight is tantamount to animal abuse. Given the choice, those animals would not be there.

We live in an era of living indictments of the American education system who think the Constitution grants them the right to shit all over everyone else as long as it makes them feel good. There is no such right.

And the more that people abuse the privilege of taking an emotional support animal on a flight, the greater the chance that the people who genuinely need them will no longer be allowed the option.

Sunday Cats: Moggie Chases Off Coyote, Sick Cat Enjoys Spa Time, Plus A 4-Eared Kitty!

A new list features gray cats for those who want their own Buddy. Meanwhile, a four-eared kitten in Turkey is capturing hearts around the world.

This cat is, uh, catatonic after his loving human wrapped him up snug in a towel and put a hot compress on his little head to help him feel better after he caught a cold. Look at his tongue! He loves it! (Click the image if the video doesn’t auto play.)

My cat got a cold and the vet recommended a warm compress for his eyes. I think he’s enjoying his spa time.
byu/sunshineandhomicide inaww

A fellow Redditor was so taken with the video that she sketched a get-well card for the sick-but-happy furball:

The Midas Touch

Little Midas was born in a backyard in Ankara, Turkey, and her unusual appearance could have led to a hard life, but she was adopted by a loving family. The gray kitten, who is now four months old, has a genetic mutation that resulted in her developing four ear flaps. She’s also got a deformed jaw, likely due to the same mutation, but that hasn’t stopped her from living like a typical energetic and curious baby cat.

Her family named her after Midas, the Greek king who was cursed with donkey ears by an angry Apollo.

Get off my lawn, coyote!

Coyotes are infamous predators of felines and small dogs, but cats can and do fight back, like this fearless kitty who didn’t appreciate the interloper straying into her territory. The coyote wanted no part of her.

We can’t embed the video, unfortunately, but you can click here to watch the 16-second clip in real time and slow motion.

catchasescoyote — “Get off my damn lawn!”

Gray is the warmest color

We all know gray is an awesome coat color for cats, as demonstrated by the Budster. If you’ve got your heart set on a slate Chartreux, a golden-eyed Korat or a silver tabby a la Bud, this list covers 15 breeds “worth purring over.” Note that it doesn’t include the Buddinese Tiger, probably because it’s illegal to own such a muscular and handsome cat in most jurisdictions.

Kiwi Cat Dad Builds Lift For His Aging Buddy

Frodo the Cat is 20 years old and doesn’t get around like he used to, so his handy human put his handy skills to work and built the little guy his own lift.

Liam Thompson is a 21-year-old Youtuber who’s known for building cool stuff.

His cat’s name may be Frodo, but Thompson said he’s in “Gandalf territory” at 20 years old and has been having trouble getting around to his favorite spots, especially a sunny corner of the backyard where he likes to sit poolside and enjoy the New Zealand warmth.

“Despite his ancient-ness, he still insists on hobbling down these stairs every day to sit out in the sun,” Thompson says in a video about his latest project. “That is, until today.”

The video shows the handy Kiwi building an “elevator” — more like a stair lift for a cat — out of wood, an electronic hoist and a handful of small hardware pieces. The passenger compartment is a simple cart, and at the press of a button the cart descends or ascends the stairs along a wooden track.

“Are you ready to go downstairs without having to move a muscle?” he asks his cat before the maiden ride. “I hope so, because it took me four days.”

Thompson is delighted as the elevator works perfectly and Frodo rides it without fear or protest, laughing as the orange senior cat makes himself comfortable during the ride. The current setup requires Thompson to push a button, but perhaps in the future he can add a simple button for Frodo directly on the cart.

Speaking of elevators, this cat thinks he’s Leslie Chow from The Hangover:

‘Time To Re-Home The Wife’: Redditors Furious At Wife Who Made Husband Surrender 18 YO Cat

A wife says she “feels bad” for her husband after telling him to surrender his elderly cat, but feels she made the right decision.

How could you force your husband to dump his beloved 18-year-old cat?

That’s the question many incredulous Redditors are asking after a woman told her story on a popular sub-Reddit called “Am I The Asshole?” for people second-guessing their decisions.

The woman who wrote the post said she and her husband got married about a year ago and they took the usual steps when introducing her pit bull to her husband’s cat. They started, she wrote, “by initially separating them, then by introducing them to each other’s smells, followed by letting them see each other whilst at a safe distance.”

“They appeared to get along, but after a day, the cat began making [its] dislike for the dog VERY clear,” she wrote.

The couple hasn’t been successful keeping the peace, she added, and a veterinarian who examined the cat said he was in perfect health, apparently eliminating health reasons for the cat’s alleged hostility toward the dog.

Finally, the wife “brought up the idea” of surrendering the cat. “Brought up” may mean “demanded” in this instance, but the nature of stories like this means both parties would be unreliable narrators. We just don’t know. She said she’s pregnant, which was another factor in her decision.

“We argued virtually nonstop about this for days, until my husband finally agreed to take his cat to said cat sanctuary,” she wrote. “However, he is still pretty upset with me.”

cute cat lying on pillow — Credit: cottonbro/Pexels

Most users weren’t too happy with the wife, others waved the post off as the work of a troll — albeit one who forgot the cardinal rule of trolling, that it should be funny — and some blamed the husband for caving.

“Anyone that rehomes an animal for someone they are screwing deserves the shit they will have to put up with being with that person,” one ticked-off user wrote.

Most of the condemnatory posts came from people who were incredulous not only that the wife made her husband give up his cat, but that the poor cat is 18 years old and has known nothing but a life with his human.

“Dear God, I hope this isn’t real,” one user wrote, while another summed it up succinctly: “Everything about this sucks.”

The feedback wasn’t split along gender lines either. Most users who identified themselves as female expressed concern for the cat.

“My husband’s cat passed 3 years ago at 18 years. And he would absolutely have rehomed me before he rehomed his cat,” one woman wrote. “Not that I would ever have suggested it, of course – I loved that little fart machine.”

I don’t have much to add to this, as the people who responded pretty much covered the bases. I’d like to believe this was someone’s misguided idea of humor, but in one sense it doesn’t matter because scenarios like this one play out all the time. If it is authentic, then the subtext says a lot: While the author says she “brought up the idea” of rehoming, she also says she and her husband “argued virtually nonstop” about the situation for days, and acknowledges that “he’s still pretty upset with me.”

It’s probably safe to say that’s an understatement, especially if she’s soliciting judgment from strangers on the internet as she second-guesses herself. (Side note: The idea of a sub-Reddit specifically for “catharsis for the frustrated moral philosopher in all of us, and a place to finally find out if you were wrong in an argument that’s been bothering you,” is pretty cool. All of us could use some outside perspective at times.)

As cat-lovers (and animal-lovers in general) know, rehoming is brutal on the pet, leads to depression and can cause serious physical ailments. For an 18-year-old cat, it’s even worse.

I hope the wife has a change of heart and they take the cat back, then get to work on figuring out how to keep the peace for real this time.

Cats and Stand-Up: George Carlin Talks Felines

The trail-blazing comedian talks about all the ways cats amuse — and perplex — him.

Our previous posts on cat-related stand-up featured Zoltan Kaszas and Corey Rodrigues from Dry Bar Comedy, which is a comedy channel that specializes in “clean” sets without vulgarities or obscenities.

This time around we’re checking in with George Carlin, so fair warning: There will be bad language, and Carlin pokes fun at cuteness aggression in a way that probably won’t go over well by people who take it literally.

It’s 100 percent Carlin. After all, we’re talking about the man who was pretty much single-handedly responsible for a 1978 Supreme Court decision on the government’s authority to censor public broadcasts after his now-legendary “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television” bit.

It’s obvious Carlin’s spent a lot of time around cats, as he’s got their behavior down and he finds humor in the feline tendency to be relentlessly one-minded. He laughs at the way cats make biscuits — “looks like they’re into some bad drug!” he says as he imitates a cat’s ecstatic kneading — and how quickly they become whirling tornadoes of claws and teeth as kittens.

“You take a baby baby — that is, a human — a baby dog and a baby cat, and you attack all three of them, which I try never to do if I can help it,” he says, drawing laughs. “You’ll get three different results. You attack a baby, he cries. You attack a puppy, he cowers. You attack a kitty cat, he fights!”

Carlin makes a meowing sound, swiping one hand like an annoyed cat.

“One day old and they’re looking for some sh–! They don’t even got their eyes open, they’ll get right in. Nasty cute little thing. Cute little nasty guy! Oh, they’re wonderful, God love ’em.”

While dogs love pets and never want you to stop, Carlin points out that with a cat “you just put your hand out and he’ll do all the work.”

Cats love rubbing against people so much that they’ll start to rub against your leg “even if you’re not there yet,” Carlin observes, imitating the way the little ones change their body language the instant they decide it’s rubbing time.

“They love to rub on you. If you’ve got a leg and a cat, whew, you’ve got a party! ‘Oh boy, oh boy, I’m rubbing on his leg!’ If you’ve got two legs, sh–, jubilee celebration time! ‘Oh boy, two legs! Hot sh–, I can do the figure eight! Oh boy!’” Carlin says, stalking across the stage.

“There’s one other quality cats have that I admire. Cats don’t accept blame and they don’t embarrass, at all. A cat does something dumb, you’ll never know it by lookin’ at him. Dog knocks over a lamp, you can tell who did it just by looking at the dog. Not the cat. Cat doesn’t accept any blame, cat moves along to the next activity. ‘What’s that? Not me, f— that, I’m a cat! Something break? Ask the dog.’“