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 Queens woman is urging voters to support her cat as a write-in candidate for city council District 30 in an attempt to spoil a term-limited councilman’s “cronies” from sailing into office without opposition.
It’s an interesting time for politics in New York, and not just because of a mayoral race in which voters have apparently rejected Republicans and mainstream Democrats.
Over the last several weeks, stickers urging voters to cast their ballots for a house cat for a city council seat have been appearing in a Queens district.
In a story about the write-in campaign, the New York Post devotes most of the ink to political disagreements between Leo the cat’s human and the district’s councilman, Robert Holden. (He’s a moderate Democrat, she doesn’t think he’s progressive enough, but the things they’re arguing over are above the paygrade and influence of a city councilman.)
But the more interesting issue, for us at least, is what happens if Leo rides a wave of populist support and actually wins as a write-in candidate.
When asked what would happen if the nine-year-old feline earns an improbable victory at the polls, a humorless Board of Elections official asked a Post reporter if he was drunk, then told him “we can certainly say that only a human being — specifically a US citizen — can hold elected office in NYC.”
Oh well. It would be amusing if some clever attorney found a loophole to pave the way for a feline councilman, and there isn’t much chance Leo would be less productive than the rest of the council. He might even provide some fresh perspective on how to deal with the city’s eternal rat problem.
Positive contact with our furry friends releases happy chemicals for both human servant and feline master, improving their bond.
Happy Cater, uh, unday!
We’ve got no immature cat humor for you today, but I thought PITB readers might be interested in this essay from The Conversation, which despite its ominous title actually goes into some detail about research showing the positive effects of bonding with a cat.
Affection between you and your feline friend results in a burst of oxytocin — the happy brain chemical — for both of you.
But crucially (and here’s where I feel validated for constantly preaching this), your cat enjoys the benefit only if the little one is securely attached and is not forced into interaction.
I’ve said it so many times, I feel like a broken record, especially because the web is saturated with articles that ask “How Can I Make My Cat Like/Love Me?“
And the answer, of course, is that you can’t.
That’s part of what makes cats so awesome. We have to earn their trust and affection, and a major part of that process is respecting our cats’ feelings. That means we let them come to us, we stop petting them when they’ve had enough, and we don’t prevent them from leaving when they decide they want to lay on the couch or the floor instead of our laps.
Credir: TIVASEE/Pexels
Cats grant us benefits beyond oxytocin boosts, of course, and the linked article goes into that as well. It’s well worth a read, even if you’re an old pro at cat whispering.
President Buddy: Not Funny!
It’s obvious I model President Buddy’s behavior after a certain someone in addition to dialing his own traits up to 11, but in the wake of recent news, a story I’d written no longer feels funny.
Not because it was offensive, but because satirizing current events just feels inappropriate with all that’s been going on, from our extreme polarization and political violence, to the sad state of global affairs.
At the same time, I spent quite a bit of time making another denomination of Cat Dollars, and since there’s no longer any satirical story for it, I figured I’d share it here.
President Buddy sure does like seeing his portrait everywhere. This time I skipped the powdered wig and gave him a more modern appearance:
Meowster Money and Meowster Delicious are the treasurer and secretary of yums, respectively. A thousand cat bucks is a lot of cans! (Or snacks.)
In the meantime I’ve been working on some designs I hope to turn into t-shirts and possibly other things like prints. They range from a regal-looking lion to a jaguar roaring in the night with a retrofuturistic feel. Watch this space for more details in the near future!
Pixie the cat fought for his life and he’s now almost fully healed. Meanwhile, in Ohio, lawmakers want their state to become the sixth to ban declawing.
Back in April, a woman spotted a group of kids literally playing with fire, and was horrified when she got closer and realized they had set a cat ablaze.
She took the cat from the little demons and rushed him over to the ACCT Philly, where the stray — now dubbed Pixie — fought for his life as veterinary staff treated him.
Now Pixie, who doesn’t harbor any ill will toward people and is an affectionate, loving little dude, is all healed up and ready for his forever home.
Pixie lost most of his tail and he still suffers from some incontinence episodes — which is to be expected, given the trauma he endured — but his fur has grown back, he’s healthy and he’s ready to be loved.
“Pixie’s story is hard to read. It breaks our hearts. But it’s the reality we fight every single day,” ACCT Philly’s staff posted online. “It’s why we exist – because no animal should ever face such cruelty, and every animal deserves a second chance at life.”
Pixie has recovered from his injuries and he’s ready to go to a good home. Credit: Pennsylvania SPCA
Pixie’s “spirit has been untouched” by his ordeal. If you live in the area and think you can provide a good home for the little guy — and exhibit the patience he needs with his ongoing issues from the cruelty he endured — visit ACCT Philly to fill out an adoption form. We hope Pixie gets a great home and lives his best life.
Another state looks to ban declawing
Our representaves in congress are too busy embarrassing Americans, staging Jerry Springeresque arguments in the legislative chambers and chasing TV cameras, so naturally they have no time for an insignificant issue like animal welfare.
But if they won’t act to bring our barbarian nation in line with the civilized world when it comes to banning the mutilation of cats, at least some state governments are doing what they can.
Ohio’s representatives are pushing for their state to become the sixth to ban the cruel procedure, after New York, Maryland, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Washington, D.C., has also banned declawing, and a few dozen cities throughout the country have passed their own local prohibitions.
A bipartisan bill sponsored by a Republican and two Democrats has been introduced.
The usual villains in these efforts, the state’s Veterinary Medical Association, have trotted out the same tired arguments that declawing is “discouraged,” but shouldn’t be banned.
That argument doesn’t hold water when the veterinarians who hold VMA memberships are the types who offer package deals for kitten neutering and declawing. Not all or even most vets belong to state VMAs, and almost no veterinarians who specialize in feline care are members, but the vets who do support the group are the ones who see declawing as an income stream.
Their usual strategy is to call in favors from reps whose campaigns the group donates to, who in turn try to prevent declawing bans from ever reaching the floor for a vote.
After decades of successfully defeating such bans, the dam finally broke when New York passed its ban in June of 2019, becoming the first state to outlaw elective declawing.
We wish the bill’s sponsors, and their allies in local animal welfare groups, good luck in moving the legislation forward.
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.
For Maru, the smaller the box, the bigger the challenge. Credit: Mugumogu/Youtube
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.”
Pain In The Bud 