Minerva, a long haired black feline, won on the mysteriously laconic slogan, “CRIME.”
Happy Meowscular Monday! As Little Buddy the Cat says, Monday’s a good day to get ripped with intense exercises like slapping treats out of puzzle feeders and moving from one nap spot to another.
The election started as a joke but the idea caught on, the media noticed, and soon people around the world were reading about the race between about 50 pets.
Most candidates were cats, but a few neighbors entered dogs, a parrot and a guinea pig.
It’s not clear if the new feline mayor was promising to end it, address it or solicit more of it, but the slogan resonated with voters and Minerva surged ahead of the pack, defeating incumbent mayor Berry the cat and original challenger Orange Cat.
People who live in the area said the election helped make the neighborhood friendlier, fostering connections between humans and pets. We can’t wait to see what Minerva does with crime.
A Youtuber spent four months creating a rideable subway system for his cats, and it’s magnificent!
Hello, proxy servants! Buddy here again, blogging in place of my pathetic human minion!
As you may be aware, I am not fond of foul human sorcery, like the evil room that eats people outside my domicile (humans call it an “elevator”), the evil and angry robot, vakuum, and various other products of vile human magicks, like those floppy fishes “toys.”
However, the interweb is not without its uses. After all, it allows me to communicate with you, my deputy servants, and there’s some interesting stuff, like this video of a very nice human named Xing who built an entire subway for his cats. Behold:
Now that’s a dedicated servant!
It looks like so much fun, like having your own not-scary roller coaster to ride all day.
Xing’s magnificent creations also throw into sharp relief the uninspired efforts of my own pathetic minion, who can barely put together a chair from Ikea.
You know what I would like? A Cat Cave, like Batman’s Bat Cave, except cat-size for me. It would have all sorts of awesome gadgets, control stations, surveillance capabilities, and a vehicle for my use when I venture out as a hero to fight crime, dogs and other undesirable elements.
But has anyone ever said “Hey Buddy, would you like a Cat Cave?” Of course not.
Do any of you have schemeowtics for a Cat Cave? If so, send them to me! In the meantime I’ll just have to watch wistfully as these other lucky cats ride their own subway and relax in their own beautiful apartments.
Twix the cat is a beautiful Calico living in sunny coastal Italy.
Wary as he may be of them sometimes, Bud is the “family cat” to my nieces.
Now 12 and 8, they’ve wanted a cat for a long time but were vetoed by their parents, since the family was moving to Italy and it appeared my younger niece had allergies.
Well, now they’re finally settled in Italy, tests have confirmed my niece is not allergic to cats, and it turns out their new home comes with a feline.
A beautiful, super-friendly and affectionate Calico named Twix, who was fed, spayed and given veterinary care by the home’s previous family.
“She is super affectionate and lets us pet her a lot,” my brother texted me along with photos of Twix on a window sill and on the grass outside, enjoying scritches from the kids. “Even rolls on her back and has her stomach scratched.”
“Shiiit,” I responded. “Touching the stomach would get you killed with Bud … Well, you got a cat, whether you like it or not.”
The friendly Twix with the girls.
It also looks like Bud will have a potential lady friend. I plan to visit for an extended amount of time and use my brother’s house as a base from which to explore Europe, and there’s just no way I’m going to leave Bud for months, especially when he’ll be 12.
He can handle a long weekend and even a couple of weeks, but months? I don’t think that would be good for either of us, and I worry that he may think I’m not coming back. We have never been separated for that long. He’s coming to Italy with me.
As for Twix, it looks like she’s been living on the property for quite a while. The kids have set up a little shelter for her with blankets. I advised my brother to make sure she has a water bowl that’s refilled regularly with fresh water, they’re feeding her wet food, and I’ll work on getting little Twix inside permanently if she isn’t already a house cat by the time I get there. I can be persistent! It looks like she can come and go as she pleases, so it may not be long before she decides it’s better to be inside and safe.
A friend once taught me that you can “speak Italian” by adding -are (“RA”) onto anything. “Grazie! La felinare!”
The costumed man has growled, hissed and meowed at passersby in the coastal area, reigniting old rumors of actual big cats prowling the area and freaking out people walking their dogs at night.
Ah, the things you can get away with in a country without guns.
A man in an all-black outfit has been prowling Wallasey beach in Wirral, a peninsula in northwest England, according to people who live in the area.
One witness said the man was “waving his hands in the air and making panther noises,” while others said they saw him approaching cars stopped at lights on roads near the coast.
“Anyone know who the freak in the cat mask and morph suit is at the coastal park near the harvester?” another local wrote online.
One thing was clear from witness accounts, photos and several short smartphone-shot videos: the costumed man wasn’t trying to imitate a friendly house cat.
“Was walking my dog tonight and heard a man making cat noises, shone a torch he was waving his arms at me before crawling up the hill. Never been so scared,” one witness posted to Facebook, per the BBC.
Sad as it may be, the first thing that came to mind when we read the witness accounts was that this doesn’t happen in the US, simply because odds are the costumed prankster would be shot.
“So I decided to bugger off home, had the rest of last night’s takeaway, had a laugh at the Sharons and Waynes on Blind Date, then went to see if any of the lads were up for a pint. Oi, I could really go for a Chinese! Anyone else wanna go for a Chinese?”
It’s possible whoever is behind the strange sightings is making light of decades-long rumors that mysterious and elusive big cats have been prowling the UK countryside.
Similar to persistent rumors of Bigfoot in the US, the phantom cats of the UK have their own believers who argue that there’s an extant population of leopards or pumas who are exceptionally adept at staying hidden from cameras but are occasionally spotted by farmers and motorists in the British countryside.
There’s a podcast dedicated to the topic, and proponents of the idea say it could explain a handful of cases in which livestock have gone missing.
The podcast, Big Cat Conversations, even dedicated a 2021 episode to “Wirral’s liminal leopards,” with its host interviewing several people who say they’ve encountered large melanistic felids on the peninsula over the decades.
Real big cats such as the leopard above tend to leave unmistakable evidence of their presence. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
But as big cat experts have pointed out, it’s difficult to miss the signs when such apex predators really do claim an area as home. From unmistakable pug marks, to trees scratched and scent-marked with urine, to calls that can echo for miles in right conditions, big cats have many ways of making their presence known— and it’s often advantageous for them to do so, since they’re highly territorial animals.
One man who was out walking his dog told the BBC he thinks the whole thing is a prank.
“I don’t know his name, I think it’s just a wind up. He’s definitely not out to frighten people, he does it for fun,” he said. “He just likes being a giant cat. He doesn’t frighten our dog.”
Local police say they’re aware of the sightings. Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner Emily Spurrell told local media that anyone who feels threatened by the suited figure should call law enforcement and report his whereabouts.
Pain In The Bud 