“I’m a damn cat!” Brimley said. “Beverly, can you believe I’m a cat?!”
SALT LAKE CITY — American actor Wilford Brimley was reincarnated as a kitten this week, retaining his trademark mustache — and his beloved diabeetus — in his new feline form.
Brimley, who is known for appearing in films like 1982 classic The Thing, 80s sitcom Our House and decades of commercials raising awareness about diabeetus, said he went to bed Tuesday night feeling sick and fatigued.
“I thought I had that there Corona flu,” the 85-year-old American actor said. “I had me one of them dreams about heaven, where I met Jesus and we talked about diabeetus. Then when I woke up I went to reach for my glasses and realized, ‘Holy mackerel, I’ve got paws!‘”
(American actor Wilford Brimley in his human form, left, and as a kitten.)
Brimley, who is known to generations of Americans as a Quaker Oats spokesman, said he suddenly had an urge for raw meat.
“But that don’t sit well with my diabeetus,” he said. “So I went downstairs and I called to my wife Beverly, and I says ‘Beverly, I’m a kitten!’ And Beverly, she says ‘Wilford, is that you? Oh my stars, you still have your mustache!’”
Although it’s been years since Brimley’s days as a pitchman, the actor says he’ll return to TV — this time in commercials for Blue Buffalo canned food.
“Blue’s all natural ingredients will keep your cat healthy,” Brimley says in one of the new adverts, “whether she has diabeetus or not.”
The Gladiator actor was training for a new role when he found a mewing kitten just off a path near his home in rural Australia.
Russell Crowe was training for the 2005 movie Cinderella Man, in which he plays boxer James J. Braddock, when he “took the bunch of blokes who had been beating me up for their pay check” — his trainers and fellow actors playing boxers in the movie — on a mountain bike ride in rural Australia.
After cresting a “particularly punishing hill” and stopping for a sip of water, Crowe wrote, he heard plaintive mews coming from the trees off the rural Australian trail.
“Underneath the swirl of sounds I heard something out of place. Was that a meow? I started to look around me. I heard it again. I took a few steps of the track into the rain forest. Thick with ferns and vines. One more step and then I saw it. A kitten…”
The baby cat was abandoned, and Crowe says he thinks the cat might have been dumped by a driver who passed the bicyclists a few minutes earlier.
“I looked back down the track and the boys were gaining on me,” he wrote. “I put the kitten in my backpack and rode on.”
Cinders as an adult. Credit: Russell Crowe
After returning to camp, Crowe took the kitten out of his pack, showed it to his friends and told them he was going to give it to his mother, who had been talking about adopting a cat.
“There’s something reassuring in a bunch of big sweaty boxers going crazy over a kitten,” Crowe wrote. “We flew down the hill in a tight group and arrived back at my farm together where I presented my mother with this tiny baby kitten. She was floored. So happy.”
That was in 2003. Cinders lived for 17 years and died on June 9. Crowe shared the story of finding and adopting the beloved cat in a Twitter thread.
Crowe, who was living with his mother while training for the movie, said he was originally opposed to getting a cat because felines are “the notorious enemy of bird life.”
When he found Cinders, he wrote, he felt “this was the universe telling me to respect my mother and give her what she wanted.”
“She had never grown to be fully trusting of humans, but, she loved my mum and my mum loved her.”
Russell Crowe is perhaps best known for his role as the Roman general Maximus in Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic “Gladiator.”
Sometimes it seems like writers at the New York Times are in a competition with each other to prove who’s the most out-of-touch.
The latest effort comes courtesy of Alexandra Marvar, who begins her profile of a designer cat breeder by reminiscing about the good old days when those lacking sense or self-awareness could be fabulous by keeping wild animals as “chic pets”:
Not so long ago, wild cat companions were associated with glamour, class and creativity. Salvador Dalí brought his ocelot to the St. Regis. Tippi Hedren lounged with her lions in her Los Angeles living room. Josephine Baker’s cheetah, collared in diamonds, strolled the Champs-Élysées. In their time, these wild creatures made chic pets.
But, Marvar writes, those animal welfare activists had to come and ruin things for fabulous people:
But by the mid-1970s, a wave of awareness and wildlife protection legislation changed both the optics of owning a big cat, and the ability to legally purchase one.
Killjoys. Don’t they know Dali, Hedren and Baker were just being fabulous? They were being classy and creative! Who has time for people who claim it’s wrong to keep a wild animal that ranges 50 miles a day confined in a living room? They have gilded cages, diamond collars and meals of filet mignon!
Hedren being fabulous with one of her fabulous lions in 1971. Credit: Michael Rougier/LIFE
Now that wild cat ownership has been relegated to mulleted felons and gun-toting Texans who keep exotic cats to hold on tight to “muh freedoms” — stripping the practice of all glamour, class and fabulousness — where can the wealthy turn when they don’t just want pets, but status symbols?
The creators of the latest designer breeds, Toygers and Bengals, of course. Meet our heroes, the late breeder Jean Mill and her daughter, Judy Sugden:
Meanwhile, a cat breeder named Jean Mill was working on a more practical alternative: her leopard-spotted companion was just ten inches tall. At her cattery in Southern California, Ms. Mill invented a breed of domestic cat called the Bengal, which would offer wild cat admirers the best of both worlds: an impeccable leopard-like coat, and an indoor-cat size and demeanor.
Note: If you think a Persian makes you fabulous, surrender that cat to the nearest shelter immediately. Persians are so 2013!
[A Bengal cat breeder] recalled there used to be “tons” of ads for Persian cats in the back of Cat Fancy magazine. But the Persian’s prim, manicured aesthetic is no longer en vogue. “That look doesn’t say, ‘I can survive in the jungle,’” Mr. Hutcherson said. “It says, ‘I need somebody to open this can of cat food because there’s no way this cat is catching a mouse.’”
Carole Baskin, the founder of Big Cat Rescue and a star of Netflix’s “Tiger King,” has called toyger owners “selfish” and said creating new breeds is “strapping a nuclear warhead to the feral cat problem.” Others might argue that compared with shelter pets, designer species (the rarer of which may cost as much tens of thousands of dollars per kitten) are a different beast altogether.
Others might argue! Who are those others? Uh, Marvar and…and…nevermind. The important thing to realize is that there are cats — the riff-raff adopted from animal shelters by plebs — and there are chic, elegant, glamorous beasts. To compare a shelter pet to a Toyger would be like comparing a Geo Metro to an Aston Martin.
Brigette Helm being fabulous with her cheetah in 1932.A close-up of Josephine Baker’s cheetah, Chiquita, and her diamond collar, photographed in the 1920s. Credit: FrockFlicks
In the glowing profile of Mill’s daughter, the toyger breeder — whose cats the Times compares to the Mona Lisa and whose work it describes as a “creative effort” in “cultivating” perfect “beasts” — the newspaper devotes a single line to those who object to the industrial manufacture of designer pets when shelters are forced to euthanize cats who aren’t adopted:
…the designer cat market is a thriving one where supply rarely meets demand, and in its service, more than 40,000 registered house cat breeders around the world are devoted to supplying pet owners with Ragdoll, Sphynx and other prized breeds. (PETA has argued this clientele should instead adopt cats from a shelter.)
The fact that 1.4 million pets are put down every year in the US wasn’t considered important enough to mention in the Times story. Too much of a buzzkill. Ain’t no one got time for that!
The rest of the Times’ editorial staff and its stable of contributors will have a tough time topping Marvar’s masterpiece. But as they try — and try they will — remember these are the same people who want to teach the rest of us about privilege and inequality in modern society as they social distance in their Scarsdale homes and file their stories from their couches next to their $10,000 pets.
Hedren enjoying a fabulous ride on one of her chic, fabulous lions in 1971. Credit: LIFEWild cats are the preferred fabulous pets of ultra-wealthy twats who want to show off their wealth on social media.More than 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, while Paris Hilton’s dog lives in a two-story air-conditioned mansion.
Buddy can sympathize, as he’s been subjected to the horrors of my singing voice in the car. I’m pretty sure he would’ve smacked me in the mouth too if he wasn’t in his carrier.
It seems we humans still have a lot of work to do in figuring out what kind of music sounds good to kitties. Bud was not a fan of Music for Cats, but he seems to dig funky music. And gangsta rap. He knows all the lyrics to every Notorious BIG track.
Pain In The Bud 