Buddy has worn many hats in his time, literally and figuratively. He’s a good boy!
In 2019, Buddy was called up to the Yankees from AAA Scranton in place of the injured Giancarlo Stanton. Batting behind team captain Aaron Judge, Buddy hit a terrific .328 with 117 runs, while his jersey became the top seller in the team’s official store.
Sgt. Buddy in his USMC dress blues.
In 2015, Buddy was promoted to the rank of sergeant (E-5) in the US Marine Corps, where he served as a drill instructor at Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island, South Carolina. A tough but fair DI, Buddy churned out some of the Corps’ finest Marines while pioneering new hand-to-paw combat techniques.
In 1627, Buddy ascended the Phoenix Throne of the Joseon dynasty, earning him the title “Jeonha,” or king. Jeonha Buddy led Joseon through a period of post-war turmoil and into recovery while also establishing trade eastward with a previously-unknown culture that raised a magnificent bird known as turkey.
In 2023, Buddy was chosen as the face of Armani’s newest line of sleek suits, cutting a dapper figure on the runway.
The series has become known for its whimsical feline-centric episodes, with cats who are always trying to save the world or conquer it.
Love, Death + Robots has had a thing with cats since the very beginning.
The science fiction anthology started off on the right paw with 3 Robots, an inaugural season episode about a trio of intelligent machines touring the ruins of human civilization on a post-apocalyptic Earth, only to discover it isn’t quite as lifeless as they thought, with cats happily ruling the ashes.
We’ve written about the episode before, and it ends, naturally, with cats making the robots their new servants.
The gray tabby who tricks the titular 3 Robots into becoming his servants.
A sequel to that episode added to the legend of feline dominance, and now the fourth season brings us two more cat-centric episodes, For He Can Creep and The Other Large Thing.
For He Can Creep is set in 1757 London, where a poet named Christopher is incarcerated at St. Luke’s Asylum for Lunatics (an actual place) with only his cat. Jeoffry, for company. Christopher’s talent is mistaken for madness by the asylum staff, but not by the devil, who realizes the poet’s words have a unique power.
The problem? Jeoffry stands in his way. It turns out felines have spectacular evil-fighting powers, and the very British, very 18th-century devil offers Jeoffry an endless supply of treats, plus dominion over the Earth, if he’ll simply stand aside and let his human fall under the influence of evil.
Jeoffry, of course, is not having it, but to have a chance of defeating such powerful evil, he’ll need to enlist the help of the nearby alley cats, including an adorable but ferocious kitten named Nighthunter Moppet…
Nighthunter Moppet may be a tiny kitten, but she’s ferocious!Jeoffry demonstrates the feline ability to teleport, a skill Bud has often used to confound me.
The Other Large Thing is a prequel to 3 Robots and 3 Robots: Exit Strategies, and focuses on a fluffy Persian whose humans call him Sanchez, a name he hates.
The humans are portrayed as jibberish-speaking morons for whom Sanchez has nothing but contempt, and when the “pathetic minions” bring home a domestic robot servant, Sanchez is infuriated — until he realizes the robot can “speak God’s language,” aka cat, and has opposable thumbs.
With the robot as his new minion, Sanchez finally sets out to conquer the world!
Sanchez realizes he’s struck gold when the new robot home assistant fetches as many cans of “the good stuff,” aka wet food, as he wants from the previously unreachable cupboard top shelf.
Both episodes are based on short stories, and they’re both written by people who clearly love cats.
Some episodes of LDR can get a little dark or somber. That includes Beyond the Aquila Rift and Sonny’s Edge, written by Alastair Reynolds and Peter Hamilton, two of my favorite novelists. Both episodes are spectacular, but they leave you with a chill and some disturbing thoughts that linger long after the credits end.
The feline-themed episodes are the perfect digestifs, offering doses of whimsy and levity to counter the existential dread and nightmarish visions of the future of other installments.
With no more humans to do their bidding, cats seize the opportunity and conscript the visiting robots as their new minions.
If you haven’t had the chance to check out the series, which streams on Netflix, I highly recommend starting with the aforementioned first season episodes 3 Robots and Beyond the Aquila Rift, then working your way through the rest of the cat episodes.
Not all of the episodes are great. The 400 Boys, one of the new episodes, is little more than inane and pointless violence, and the ubiquitous, creepy smiling “Mr. Beast” makes an appearance in another installment in an unnecessary attempt to attract new viewers. Thankfully most are strong, with more hits than misses.
Other highlights include the Christmas-themed short, All Through the House, Harlan Ellison’s Life Hutch, Reynolds’ Zima Blue, and Snow In The Desert.
Bud and I wish the best of days to all of our readers who are mothers, as well as sons and daughters spending time with their moms today. And how can we forget all the cat moms out there who put so much care and love into raising their babies?
As the expressions of some of these cat moms make clear, whether human or animal, kiddos and kittens have a way of making sure there’s never a dull moment. But that’s just one awesome thing about moms: no matter how much we might drive them crazy sometimes, they still love us!
And to my own mom, thank you for being there for me no matter what I’ve stressed over or how stupid I’ve been, and thank you for teaching me to strive to be a decent person.
In Switzerland you can be charged with a crime and face significant fines for feeding other people’s cats. Meanwhile. the “kids identifying as cats” culture war rumors are back and as inane as ever.
The Swiss seem to take cat theft pretty seriously, to the point where they’re perfectly willing to drag people to court for feeding other people’s cats.
That’s what happened to a 68-year-old woman in Zurich who is accused of being so nice to Leo, a neighbor’s cat, that the little guy decided her house was now his house.
According to local media reports, a Zurich prosecutor wants to fine her 3,600CHF (Swiss francs), which is $4,370 in ‘Merican greenbacks! That’s a lot of money for giving a cat some Temps and cans of tuna.
To be fair, Leo’s original family isn’t happy, especially because they specifically asked the woman to stop feeding their cat. She can’t claim she accidentally adopted him, since she let him into her apartment and even installed a cat flap for him, according to Swiss media reports.
“Cases like this are increasingly ending up in court because the rightful owners report the “feeders”. Under Swiss law, cats are “other people’s property” and systematic feeding and giving a home to another person’s cat is considered unlawful appropriation.
But if a neighbour’s cats are only fed occasionally, this is not a punishable offence in Switzerland.”
There’s really not enough information to form an opinion about this particular case. Was Leo mistreated or not getting enough to eat? Did his new human have designs on him from the beginning? Did she just think she was doing the right thing?
“Gimme the nomnoms, human!” Credit: Wikimedia Commons
As for me, this is another good reason to keep Bud inside. If I let him roam the halls of the building unsupervised, he’d probably start a bidding war between me and neighbors in two or three other apartments, making it clear that whoever supplies him with the most delicious and most frequent snacks will enjoy the great honor of serving him.
Kids identifying as cats: the fake controversy that won’t die
Just a quick recap, for anyone who hasn’t been keeping up on this uniquely American culture war spectacle: Politicians of a certain stripe really like rumors about kids identifying as cats, so much so that they’ve confidently asserted it’s happening all over America, telling anecdotes about it while on the campaign trail during the 2020, 2022, and 2024 political cycles.
That encompasses two presidential elections and a midterm year, but it’s not relegated to federal cycles. State-level pols love to talk about it too.
It’s a culture war dog whistle, and politicians from both parties love stuff like this because it gets everyone all riled up, which means no one’s talking about all the grift, insider trading and other fun activities our “leaders” involve themselves in.
The thing is, to date not a single one of the claims has been backed up by proof. I know this because I’ve investigated every one of them, and invariably they turn out to be rumors. I’ve gotten emails and comments telling me I’m a fool for debunking the claims, and I’ve literally begged people to give me a real example of cat-identifying kids dropping deuces in litter boxes, but again, all the claims collapse under minimal scrutiny.
Every time a politician has told a story about allegedly cat-identifying kids and litter boxes in schools, it follows the same pattern: they insist it’s true, double down on the claim, try to change the goalposts, and finally, they grudgingly admit they can’t point to a single example.
In a week or two, we go from righteous condemnation and fury to “Well, my wife’s best friend teaches sixth grade, and she said she heard from a teacher in another district that kids were meowing in class.”
Furries outside a convention, not a school. Credit: Furscience
Texas state Rep. Stan Gerdes is in the righteous condemnation stage after introducing the Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying In Education Act, aka the FURRIES Act.
Gerdes wants to ban meowing, hissing, barking, litter boxes, leashes and animal costumes from school grounds and events, but in his wisdom he’s excluded school mascots and Halloween costumes.
He is, however, fast approaching the “my cousin’s best friend’s co-worker said” stage, after he couldn’t point to a single cat- or furry-related incident when pressed during a committee meeting on May 1. He eventually named a school district, saying he’d gotten a “extremely concerning” and verified account of an incident there, only for the district to issue a statement saying it didn’t happen.
Gerdes did call to ask if there were litter boxes in the school, the district said, and when he was told there was not, he insisted a manual check of all school bathrooms, which also came up empty. Let’s see how long he sticks to his story before he finally admits he has no proof.
The quest for clicks and attention is a race to the bottom, and “petfluencers” are willing to dive deep to differentiate themselves from the thousands of others trying to build an audience.
Clothes, sneakers and hats. Vitamin supplements, energy drinks and probiotics. Backpacks and costumes.
What do all those things have in common? People are buying them for their pets, not themselves, and they’re part of the reason people in the UK spent more on pets in 2024 than childcare, hobbies or dating, according to Nationwide UK.
The problem is, they’re not doing it for their pets. Experts, including veterinarians and animal behaviorists, tell The Guardian that most cats, aside from hairless varieties like Sphynx cats, don’t like wearing clothing, nor do they like wearing costumes, or taking baths with heavy perfumes and essential oils.
Portrait of Hipster White Cat wearing sunglasses and shirt
Influencers — or petfluencers — stage elaborate “pampering” scenes, and make their pets wear different clothes to show off their shopping “hauls.” Some pose their animals like dolls and find ways to coerce them to remain still. Audiences think it’s cute. It’s not.
As for me, I’ve got a handy chart when I’m unsure if Bud will be cool with something:
Make him wear clothes. Result: Get clawed to death
Give him baths with essential oils. Result: Get clawed to death
Make him wear sneakers. Result: Death by bite to the jugular
Force him to eat supplements or guzzle energy drinks. Result: Shredded skin and lots of blood, perhaps some light homicide.
While the animals themselves aren’t thrilled with these new trends, they probably won’t go away any time soon. There’s just too much money involved.
The average pet owner in the UK spent the equivalent of $163 per month on their companions, and only half of UK households have pets compared to 66 percent in the US. Although there’s not an apples to apples comparison of total expenses on pets per month by household in the US, Americans spend $68 a month on cats on average, according to research by ValuePenguin. For dogs, it’s about $110 a month.
‘Salty liquorice’ cats owe their unique coats to a missing snip of DNA
It’s always an interesting occasion when nature gives us something new, and the salmiak cat is definitely unprecedented in the world of feline aesthetics.
The unique cats, named after a popular liquorice candy from Finland, have a coat pattern that results from a gradient on individual strands of fur, starting out black and getting lighter toward the tip. It gives their coats a singular peppered look, and in photographs the unusual felines almost look as if they’re rendered in monochrome stippling.
Credit: Ari KankainenThe Finnish candy the cats are named for.
The salmiak cat wasn’t the product of any breeding program, and reports in Finnish media say strays with the new coat pattern/color first emerged in 2007.
To find out how the salmiak emerged, a team of Finnish, British and American scientists sequenced the genomes of two salmiak cats. They found a mutation in genes that express coat color that resulted in a missing sequence of DNA, and they confirmed the mutation is recessive. That means to get salmiak kittens, both parents have to have the mutation.
In 2019, Buddy was called up to the Yankees from AAA Scranton in place of the injured Giancarlo Stanton. Batting behind team captain Aaron Judge, Buddy hit a terrific .328 with 117 runs, while his jersey became the top seller in the team’s official store.
In 1627, Buddy ascended the Phoenix Throne of the Joseon dynasty, earning him the title “Jeonha,” or king. Jeonha Buddy led Joseon through a period of post-war turmoil and into recovery while also establishing trade eastward with a previously-unknown culture that raised a magnificent bird known as turkey.
In 2023, Buddy was chosen as the face of Armani’s newest line of sleek suits, cutting a dapper figure on the runway.
Pain In The Bud 