pets – Page 15 – Pain In The Bud

The moment Everest the cat was unceremoniously dumped at an Atlanta animal shelter, he freaked out.

The little guy had just lost the only home he’d ever known, his home since kittenhood, and the woman who agreed to be his caretaker for life simply ditched him with a curt “I don’t want this cat.”

No sentiment. No apologies. Just annoyance that Everest, a white cat, was apparently shedding too much for her liking.

Everest the Cat. Credit: FurKids Midtown Atlanta

Shelter employees realized a short time later that the woman had never taken Everest to a veterinarian, had never gotten him shots or had him neutered. Now they’re tasked with rehabilitating a very scared, confused little guy who doesn’t understand why he’s been abandoned.

“We also think he may be deaf but need to conduct tests,” the manager of Furkids Midtown Atlanta Center said in a post on TikTok. “If he is deaf, it’s even more heartbreaking. We don’t think his original owner knew he was deaf, she didn’t seem to care when she surrendered him – she walked in saying, ‘I don’t want this cat.'”

“Karen With A Cat Demanding To See The Manager,” oil on canvas by Buddy the Cat, aka an AI image of what I imagine Everest’s negligent owner looks like. And yes, I used Theresa Caputo in the prompt!

The upside is that the shelter is taking Everest’s health seriously, and they’ll have him neutered and nursed back to health before adopting him out. They’ll also make sure he goes to a home where he gets the love and respect he deserves as a sentient animal with feelings.

Staff at the shelter said they’re determined “to find him the best home. He deserves so much more than the life he’s lived so far.”

“He’s still a little scared,” the shelter manager said. “He is processing what’s happened since now he’s in a shelter where there’s a lot of noises and people.”

This incident, and many others like it, are precisely the reason we need databases listing people who are abusive or negligent to their pets, so they can’t ruin more innocent lives by abandoning cats and dogs when they simply tire of them, or decide they don’t like the fact that they behave precisely the way they’re supposed to as members of their respective species.

It should be done in a way that shelters and rescues in every state can access the database, and contributions should be limited to them as well, with shelters signing their names to the entries. That would prevent people from abusing the list for malicious purposes and ensure that abusive and negligent pet owners can’t simply go to another county or state to evade bans.

“I don’t like Karens.” – Buddy the Cat, The Book of Buddesian Wisdom

Every time I read about a case of cat abuse or an incident like this, I think of Bud and what his life could have been like if he was adopted by someone who didn’t appreciate him. His curiosity, boldness and fire would have been snuffed out, and he would not have been given the love he deserves. Likewise, he would have been deprived of giving back love, and he has a lot to give.

All cats are little buddies, and they all deserve people who love and care for them.

When I ran this by Buddy himself, he agreed.

“That’s right, human,” he said. “Now fetch me a snack!”

Buddy apparently has brawn and brains, according to a “cat IQ test” by researchers at the University of Maine.

The test is a survey designed by the people who work at the university’s Cat Lab, and it aims to employ some of the same techniques used to measure the intelligence of young children and dogs.

The test asks questions about memory, how closely felines read nonverbal cues from their humans, how attuned they are to human emotions, whether they’ve learned tricks, and whether they’ve improvised solutions to obstacles they’ve encountered.

I gave each question serious thought and tried to eliminate my own bias to the best of my ability.

“This is your brain on catnip. Any questions?”

For example, there’s absolutely no question Buddy is extremely communicative, curious, bold and friendly. He’s also figured out things on his own, like how to open doors and how to best manipulate me for as much food as possible. I’ll never forget watching with fascination when, as a kitten, he figured out how to wedge his body against the frame of my bedroom door with his feet while using his front paws to turn the handle.

On the other hand, he’s a hilariously inept hunter, he’s done some spectacularly dumb things, and he went through a whole phase in which he “boxed” the cat in the mirror before figuring out it was a reflection of himself.

I can still hear the “THWAP THWAP THWAP!” of his little kitty paws against the glass and his accompanying trills as he did battle with himself. To be fair, that was also in kittenhood, and he eventually figured out there was no other cat.

As I’ve detailed in this blog previously, Bud also seems to possess the precision of an atomic clock when it comes to meal times, and if I so much as shift in my chair as meal time approaches, he springs up and trills at me like “Are we going to the kitchen? Come on, dude, it’s Food O’clock! I want turkey, beef or tuna!”

According to the survey, Buddy has an IQ of 64 on a max-70 scale, good enough for the “Felix Forecaster” tier and just below “The McGonagall Mastermind.”

It’s probably for the best that he’s not in that very top tier anyway. We’re talking about a cat intelligent enough to understand I hate the sound of the flap on his litter box squeaking on its hinges, and has subsequently weaponized it to get me out of bed. If he gets any smarter, I’ll probably wake up to a machine that slaps me every time I hit the snooze button.

You can take the survey on behalf of your own cat(s) here. Don’t forget to share your results!