Category: pop culture

Memo From Buddy The Cat, Re: My Human’s Failure To Buy Me A Roomba

Buddy the Cat wants his human to provide him with alternatives to his long-desired Roomba. Nothing fancy, of course.

Sept. 1, 2025 (11 A.B., or After Buddy)
To: Big Buddy
From: Little Buddy

Dear Buddy the Larger,

Since you have failed to secure a Roomba as my personal steed, as per my repeated demands, I have commissioned several other ideas for my personal conveyance.

Please find the enclosed image of a less complex, human-powered method of mobility fitting my station and status as an awesome feline. I have also attached an image of an appropriate seat designated for my use: humble yet regal, comfortable yet authoritative, offering supplicants the chance to to approach my feline personage while also clearly delineating the difference in power between myself, on my raised dais, and the lowly humans who seek my favor.

Note the dog pelt as a carpet beneath my throne…er, I mean my chair. Any dog who seeks an audience will be reminded that I’m, like, a jaguar and stuff, and they’d better be sufficiently deferential and pay tribute with delicious gifts.

Your friend and master,

Buddy

This design eschews all the complex and expensive machinery of a Roomba for good, old-fashioned human labor. I will require six Royal Buddy Guards: four to carry me at normal times, and six to carry me after I’ve feasted. I told the concept artist not to go too crazy with the ornamentation. Nothing too ostentatious, as you can see.

This design, inspired by Kublai Khan’s court in Khanbaliq (Cambulac), his winter capital. Unfortunately I couldn’t find much about the throne in his summer capital, Xanadu, but I have commissioned a designer to cook up something appropriate and will forward that to you shortly as well.

As you can see, nothing particularly fancy here, just good, sturdy, common sense necessities. I’m sure you’ll get right on it.

New Crime-Comedy ‘Caught Stealing’ Stars A NY Cat Named Bud

A bartender gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to watch his neighbor’s cat in the new comedic crime flick Caught Stealing.

In Caught Stealing, the newest film from director Darren Aronofsky, a seedy guy named Russ (Matt Smith) asks his neighbor Hank (Austin Butler) to watch his cat for a few days while he’s out of town.

The cat is not only a handsome little fellow, he’s got a spiffy name: Bud.

The problem? Russ has seriously pissed off New York’s criminal element, and Hank is unaware a category five shitstorm is about to make landfall. No matter how many beatings he takes from gangsters who mistake him for his neighbor, the Lower East Side bartender takes his cat-sitting duties seriously.

“Bud remains central to the action,” the New York Times notes. “His skeptical gazes punctuate scenes and his presence endears the audience to Hank, who goes out of his way to protect the somewhat ornery creature when the going gets rough.”

Tonic and his co-star, Austin Butler. Credit: Melissa Millett

Alas, Caught Stealing‘s Bud is not our Bud, although that’s probably for the better. Our Bud would drive the on-set catering crew mad with his turkey-related demands, and he’d run off camera to hide behind my legs during fight scenes.

Instead, Bud is played by a pro, a cat named Tonic who has appeared in the remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and the horror flick Thanksgiving.

Aronofsky tells the Times about the on-set cat wrangling, noting felines are usually “not very notorious for their collaboration skills.”

Still, Charlie Huston, who wrote the book the movie’s based on as well as the screenplay, said the team didn’t take any shortcuts with Bud.

“I don’t feel like we made it as easy for ourselves as some people would have wanted,” Huston told the Times. “I remember a lot of conversations about, ‘Do we have to have the [expletive] cat in this scene?’”

The fact that they did keep him squarely in the action is testament to Tonic. Before the little guy got the role, the team had it narrowed down to him and one other cat. Tonic made the decision easy for them.

“It was just such a no-brainer because the other cat was fine, but Tonic was such a rock star on Day 1 and that was without prep,” Huston said.

Tonic with trainer Melissa Millett. Credit: Melissa Millett

Tonic is so accustomed to performing in live events and movie appearances, he was ready to show off his skills — and to get his paws on his rewards.

“The second he came out of his crate,” trainer Melissa Millett said, “he looked like he thought he was the king of the world and he was ready for all the chicken.”

This Dude Built An Entire Subway System For His Cats

A Youtuber spent four months creating a rideable subway system for his cats, and it’s magnificent!

Hello, proxy servants! Buddy here again, blogging in place of my pathetic human minion!

As you may be aware, I am not fond of foul human sorcery, like the evil room that eats people outside my domicile (humans call it an “elevator”), the evil and angry robot, vakuum, and various other products of vile human magicks, like those floppy fishes “toys.”

However, the interweb is not without its uses. After all, it allows me to communicate with you, my deputy servants, and there’s some interesting stuff, like this video of a very nice human named Xing who built an entire subway for his cats. Behold:

Now that’s a dedicated servant!

It looks like so much fun, like having your own not-scary roller coaster to ride all day.

Xing’s magnificent creations also throw into sharp relief the uninspired efforts of my own pathetic minion, who can barely put together a chair from Ikea.

You know what I would like? A Cat Cave, like Batman’s Bat Cave, except cat-size for me. It would have all sorts of awesome gadgets, control stations, surveillance capabilities, and a vehicle for my use when I venture out as a hero to fight crime, dogs and other undesirable elements.

But has anyone ever said “Hey Buddy, would you like a Cat Cave?” Of course not.

Do any of you have schemeowtics for a Cat Cave? If so, send them to me! In the meantime I’ll just have to watch wistfully as these other lucky cats ride their own subway and relax in their own beautiful apartments.

Boxer Jake Paul Set For Dec. 31 Bout Against Buddy The Cat

In a match-up hailed by boxing promoter Don King as “a magnificatious spectacle of pugulisticary skillsmanship,” Jake Paul will square off against Buddy the Cat at Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve.

He’s defeated men more than twice his age, hammered opponents 70 pounds lighter than him into submission, and made his mark as a six-time winner of the Billy Blanks Tae Bo Championship.

Now Jake Paul, the Youtuber-turned-boxer, will step in the ring with Buddy the Cat, a gray tabby from New York.

Despite the 190 pound weight advantage and Paul’s 76-inch reach vs Buddy’s 4.5-inch reach, Paul’s manager, Nakisa Bidarian, said the 6 foot 1 Paul and the 11-inch Buddy were evenly matched.

“Buddy the Cat is probably Jake’s most vicious opponent yet,” Bidarian told reporters. “Jake is taking this fight seriously, as seriously as he took the fight with Nate [Robinson],” a 41-year-old, 5 foot 9 former NBA player who had no boxing experience before stepping in the ring with Paul.

An early poster promoting the fight, which has since been postponed to New Year’s Eve.

Asked by another reporter what Paul and his team make of critics blasting him for “making a mockery of the sport” by fighting a succession of cans, geriatric opponents and people without boxing training, Bidarian waved a hand in dismissal.

“Buddy’s a cat, isn’t he? Tigers are cats, too. We’ve all seen how dangerous tigers can be, so obviously Jake is taking a huge risk here by fighting an animal who is, in essence, a slightly smaller version of a tiger.”

Buddy the Cat

As for Buddy, the massive differences in height, weight, reach, species and training haven’t deterred him. The 11-pound southpaw feline promised to “tear into Paul like a bag of Temptations” and “chew him up and spit him out like diet kibble.”

“You see this wand toy?” Buddy told reporters, throwing punches at a colorful felt parrot that dangled from the end of a stick. “That’s what I’m gonna do to Jake’s face. And if it’s legal to attack his feet, I’m gonna do that too. I’m awesome at attacking feet.”

Longtime boxing promoter Don King called the bout “a magnificatious spectacle of pugulisticary skillsmanship.”

Paul vs Buddy is set for Dec. 31 at Madison Square Garden, only six weeks after Paul is scheduled to duke it out with retired super featherweight Geronta “Tank” Davis. Despite Davis giving up more than 70 pounds and eight inches in height, Bidarian insisted the bout will be “about as evenly matched as possible.”

While most traditional boxing fans and critics dismissed the Paul vs Buddy fight as another gimmick, legendary boxing promoter Don King hailed it as “a monumentilacious rejuvenalizationary occasion” for the sport.

“Jason Paul is a heraldific resplendinizer of pugilistic entertainmentized sportulations,” King gushed, “while Buddy is the most splendiferously sanguinarius felid fighter to ever set paw in the ring. I can’t think of a better match-up between two pugnaciously bellicoserized combatulants anywhere. This is gonna be epic!”

Man Wilts Under Cat’s Disapproving Gaze In Humorous New Apple Ad

Every cat lover’s camera roll is dominated by photos of our fluffy little overlords. It’s the natural order of things.

I’ve always said Bud’s silent treatment can be worse than his vocal protests when it comes to gauging the intensity of his disapproval.

Howling at me to fetch him a snack? That’s normal. Sitting down two feet away and fixing me with his wide-eyed, accusatory stare as I eat a snack without getting one for him? Now that’s serious.

Andreas Nilsson, the director of a new ad highlighting a recently-introduced Apple feature, clearly understands the hierarchy of feline displeasure:

In the spot, a man uses Apple Intelligence to remove his cat, Garrett, from a photo he just snapped of his wife relaxing and reading a book.

“Look, I deleted Garrett,” he says, holding up the photo and clearly expecting something along the lines of “Wow, that’s a pretty cool feature!”

Instead, she gives him a dry “I always knew you hated Garrett” and goes back to her book.

But Garrett himself doesn’t have to utter a single meow. His reproachful gaze is all the prompting the man needs to undo his mistake with the tap of his screen.

The commercial ends with a slow close-in on Garrett’s face, which has “You’re on thin ice, human!” written all over it.

I like this spot. The creative team took a risk in showing off a new feature in a way that made the characters react negatively, but cat people will love it, and viewers aren’t likely to forget what they saw.

Android users have had something very much like it for quite a while now. Sometimes it really does work the way it does in the commercials, with seamless results, but other images are a bit more difficult to clean up and require some manual tinkering. If Apple’s figured out a way to measurably improve this sort of thing, that’s a pretty big positive for the future of smartphone photography and editing.

In any case, cheers to Nilsson for knowing who holds real power in human-feline households. Now if you’ll excuse me, the king is demanding my attention, no doubt to have me scratch his chin, open a door for him, or serve him second breakfast…