It’s a one-off with the possibility of more for my niece who “loves kitties!”
My niece is six years old and she “loves kitties!”
Unfortunately she’s allergic to cats. Hopefully her allergies become less severe with time as mine did and she can adopt a cat at some point, but until then she has to settle for admiring felines at a distance and occasionally petting Buddy.
Even though my niece can’t have a cat of her own I can still encourage her love of cats, so I made a cat t-shirt for her as one of her Christmas gifts this year:
I’m using the same image for February in Buddy’s Meownificent 2024 Catlendar, which should be available soon. I’ll post the link when it’s live on Redbubble.
This is now the second t-shirt with my custom artwork featuring cats. I have a t-shirt of the photoshop image I created of Bud playing basketball:
The print came out surprisingly well, but in the future I’m going to stick with artwork rather than composites of photographs/photoshops like this one, for the simple fact that the simpler color schemes and cleaner lines work better on t-shirts than photographs.
Gacek the cat went viral earlier this year, commanding international headlines as thousands of tourists rated him the top attraction in his home city in Poland.
But as the feline’s renown grew so did his waistline, with tourists flocking to his little wooden home on the street to snap photos of the rotund tuxedo and — despite signs pleading with them not to feed him — gift him with snacks.
That wasn’t the only problem. Gacek couldn’t walk around most of the time without an entourage following him, and in March a woman tried to snatch “The King of Szczecin” in broad daylight. Her catnapping caper was quickly canned when Gacek slipped out of her arms and took refuge under a car while his admirers turned their phone cameras on his would-be abductor, who sheepishly retreated to a cab and took off.
The last straw was a recent veterinary exam which found the tubby tux was as many as 11 pounds overweight.
Something had to change.
Szczecin’s municipal animal shelter took the little big guy in their care and put him on a diet while looking for an appropriate home for him. Now Gacek has been adopted, the shelter wrote in a series of social media posts, and he’s starting to slim down after six years of livin’ la vida treats with a steady stream of visitors to his court, seeking his favor with offerings of yums crunchy and soft.
That’s okay. He’ll be a different kind of king now, with dedicated servants to see to his needs 24/7.
And although his old wooden cat house was cozy, well-maintained and lined with blankets, it wasn’t enough to keep him warm on cold winter nights. Now he’ll snooze indoors with the option to use a human pillow should he desire additional body heat.
A popular X account posts “cute” cat videos that aren’t always so cute, another consequence of people misunderstanding cats and their behavior.
This dude thinks he’s speaking to a cat in her native tongue, but what he’s doing is the equivalent of running up to a bunch of Klingons and shouting “I shall impale you on the edge of my bat’leth!” while mistaking it for a friendly greeting.
It looks like someone hired this guy to rescue the kitty, who like so many of her kind are prone to do, climbed up too high and then decided she didn’t like her odds on the way down. I don’t think his intention was to scare the hell out of her, but that’s exactly what he’s done:
That’s not “Hi, kitty, I’m here to rescue you! Be calm, we’ll get you down in no time!”
It’s “I’m here, I speak your language, and I have bad intentions!”
If you listen with headphones or turn the volume up, you can hear the poor cat crying in distress, the kind of cry that felines make when they’re seriously freaked out and worried for their safety. No wonder kitty backed up. Her fur is raised and her posture aligns with her vocalizations and the rest of her body language.
Like most things posted to Twitter X, this is utterly lacking in context and we don’t know what happened next. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rescue attempt went horribly wrong. I hope not, but man, that’s not how you rescue a cat.
The video was posted by the account “place where cat shouldn’t be,” or @catshouldnt, and a common theme in the images and videos on that feed is cats in distress. They’re mistaken for “cute” situations by viewers, the majority of whom aren’t familiar with feline behavior.
Like, for instance, this photo. The tuxedo kitten is undeniably cute and he doesn’t look distressed…yet. But getting out is going to be a lot more difficult than getting in, and when people are willing to do just about anything for clicks, attention and the associated dopamine hit, cats often end up with the short end of the stick.
Bud would be jealous of this cat. Thankfully he’s too, uh, meowscular to fit. Yeah, that’s it. Too meowscular. Nothing to do with a few extra pounds…
The annual tournament pitted more than 20 furry emcees against each other in a battle of rhymes and wit.
NEW YORK — Gripping the microphone in his paw, Panther the Pulverizer took aim at Buddy the Funky Feline and, when the beat dropped, launched into a blistering verse filled with punchlines about his opponent.
“You got no chance, so say sayonara,” the Pulverizer rhymed. “You’re so fat, cats thought you was a capybara!”
“My flow’s a gale, in a storm you’re supposed to bail. How you gonna carry weight when you broke the scale?” he rapped, drawing laughter from the crowd. “You’re known to fail, terrified with a bloated tail, so walk your ass home ’cause you won’t prevail!”
Hektah tha Headhunta, one half of duo Spliff an’ Wessin’, earned himself a quarterfinal berth with a raucous verse that dismantled Boss the Bocelot.
“Oh, snap!” one cat exclaimed and the all-feline crowd whooped and cheered as the Pulverizer continued his verbal assault.
The Pulverizer pressed forward, invading his opponent’s personal space as he fired the next salvo of punchlines.
“What’s wrong, lil’ Bud? Is it hard to diss us? You couldn’t move these cats if you farted citrus. Pardon it’s cause you’re avoiding this bout, knowing I’ll make you bounce like your primordial pouch.”
A collective “Dayum!” echoed throughout the crowd while the DJ doubled over with laughter. Meanwhile, Buddy sucked in his gut, suddenly self-conscious.
“My man got punchlines about primordial pouches, yo!” an approving member of the audience shouted, his tail swishing with excitement.
“Am I supposed to be intimidated? Hell no! You sound like a constipated Elmo. Truth is both my waistline and my raps are leaner,” he rhymed, gesturing toward Buddy. “While this cat runs screaming from a vacuum cleaner. Face it lil’ Bud, we ain’t rivals. You came here dead on arrival!”
The crowd roared for several seconds after the beat cut out as the Pulverizer basked in the audience’s approval.
Panther the Pulverizer, a kitty rapper from Astoria, Queens.
Buddy, dressed in oversized Tommy Hilfiger jeans, a bubble jacket and a Yankees cap turned sideways, took the mic for his turn and wasted no time launching into his retaliatory verse.
“My name’s Buddy, I’m ferocious in fights. Little known fact: also dope on the mic!” he rapped. “You’re a joke over-hyped, frozen with fright, lookin’ like a ghost you’re so white! It’s hopeless, allright? You’re a featherweight, I’m Mike Tyson tonight.”
Lay-Z is a New York-based kit hop artist who admits to an easy housecat life, with his rhymes often boasting of stainless steel bowls, palatial cat condos and fine dining on human delicacies.
“Get ’em, champ!” a supporter shouted from the crowd.
“You don’t have the balls to diss me, that’s truth in fact! I’m the real tom, you’re just a neutered cat. Your whole crew is wack, don’t even try to diss! Buddy’s a lion, you’re just a pride of wimps.”
The Pulverizer glowered as the crowd roared with laughter.
“I got fans across the world, it’s me they’re feeling, the only fans you got are spinning on your ceiling,” Buddy the Funky Feline rapped, waving a paw at the roof. “Buddy’s the illest, thats why I spit it hot. You’re full of shit like an unscooped litter box.”
“Damn! Damn, damn, damn!” host Meowthod Man of the Mew Tang Clan shouted, waving off the beat. “Let’s hear what the judges have to say!”
The judges called the battle 2-1 in favor of Buddy, granting him the split decision and sending him to the semifinals.
The Funky Feline is due to face Crouching Tiger, the highly favored big cat with a smoky voice and crisp flow. The winner of that bout will advance to the finals to battle the winner of the semifinal match pitting the Deft Leopard against MC Hektah the Headhunta.
Buddy tha Funky Feline, also known as Snackmaster Flex, is known for his vivid lyricism about life in the ‘hood and exuberant rhymes about junk food.
Buddy the Funky Feline has been the target of criticism claiming that while he rhymes about “life in the hood” as a hardscrabble stray, he actually grew up as a pampered house cat in the suburbs. He seeks to burnish his street cred ahead of his new album, Chillmatic, which is expected to break record sales when it’s released later this month. It’s the first full-length release from the New York-based kitty rapper since 2020’s Got 2 Have Turkeys and his 2021 EP, Fowl Play.
While promoting the former record during a concert stop in Tokyo, Buddy’s tour bus was infamously overturned by a crowd of screaming female fans, who pelted the bus with bras and held signs professing their love for him.
His entry into the Cat Fight 2023 battle rap tournament is meant to signal that he’s more than just a prettyboy, with an appeal beyond his massive female fanbase.
“Buddy is so kawaii, we love him,” gushed Kei Kikuno, one of Bud’s many Japanese admirers. “I just want to pinch those little cheeks!”
If humans are talking about it, surely cats care too, right?
Humans can’t stop talking about Taylor Swift showing up to cheer her rumored boyfriend Tristan Kenney’s Atlanta Braves as they took on the Chicago Bulls last weekend.
And it’s not just Swifties! The game’s announcers were naturally more interested in Tay Tay than the boring events on the field, with the cameras capturing every grin, grimace and shocked expression on the pop star’s face as the teams traded three-pointers and penalty kicks.
We asked cats: What do you think of Taylor and Terrence?
Photo: Wojciech Kumpicki/Pexels
Creamy, 3
“How can one compare the savory crunch of Temptations to the silky texture of pâté? You cannot ask me to pick one, human.”
Photo: Stijn Dijkstra/Pexels
Chester, 9
“I saw the most curious thing through the front window yesterday: a dog no larger than kitten, wagging its tail furiously as it tried to free its head from a Beefaroni can.”
Photo: Ling/Pexels
Ellie, 11
“I ‘re-organized’ every shelf in the house while my humans slept. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Photo: Larissa Barbosa/Pexels
Mr. Mewp, 18 weeks
“There is a kitten who looks exactly like me behind that glass! See how he mocks me? What vile sorcery is this?”
Pain In The Bud 