Coco the cat was caught going through the kitchen cabinets, but he had the last laugh.
The internet has so many cat videos that an episode of Netflix’s Love, Death + Robots imagined future archaeologists poking through the ruins of our civilization and concluding the global communications system was built specifically so people could share images of felines.
But out of the millions that exist, this instantly became one of our favorites thanks to its star, a mischievous cat named Coco, and his unambiguous reaction when he realizes he’s being watched by his humans even when they’re not home.
As far as Coco’s concerned, toilet paper is for shredding. Credit: Emily Chaplin
Coco “loves opening cabinets and sleeping in them, getting his own food out of the cabinets when it is dinner time and shredding paper towels when he is bored,” according to one of his servants, Emily Chaplin. The little guy was home alone one day and in the kitchen when he opened a cabinet door as usual.
“Excuse me, sir, what are you doing?” Chaplin’s husband asked through the camera’s microphone when he spotted the rascally feline already halfway into the cabinet.
A shocked Coco backed out of the cabinet, turning toward the sound in disbelief.
“Coco, get out of there!” Chaplin’s husband added.
At first it looked like Coco would be obedient, but shortly afterward his face appeared right in front of the camera — looking none too pleased — and he gave it a hard paw-smack, knocking it from its perch and restoring Coco’s privacy from snooping, meddling humans.
“He knocked the camera down! He was upset that we were watching him,” Chaplin told The Dodo. “My husband and I were hysterical [reviewing the footage]!”
One meat lover’s pie with extra pate coming right up!
I’m pretty sure Buddy regrets teaching me all about animal cognition and emotion, which led me to adopting a vegetarian diet in 2015.
He’s never gone on the kitchen counters (such a good boy!) and when he does express interest in the fridge, it’s more of a rote status check, a defeatest confirmation that there’s nothing of interest for him in there aside from cheese.
But Bentley has no such scruples. The feisty feline from Oregon got his greasy little paws on a pizza one night and loved it so much that he’s become obsessed with the microwave, which is where he found that fateful slice.
Bentley’s human, Britney Shizo, said she put the leftover pizza in the microwave, then forgot about it until she returned to the kitchen and found Bentley happily feasting.
“The microwave is wide open and the pizza is on the floor and it’s gone, pretty much,” Shizo said.
Footage of Bentley, which has since gone viral, shows him determinedly trying to open the microwave door, gripping the handle with both front paws and using all the strength in his little body to get to that sweet, delicious pizza.
But, alas, he’s foiled by a child safety lock, which he refuses to accept as he strains, pulls and pushes the microwave in the hilarious footage:
I have to admit, as cute as Buddy was as a kitten, I don’t miss the “war on sleep” phase.
A woman who adopted a kitten set up a camera to film what happens while she sleeps, like the main characters of the surprisingly scary 2007 film Paranormal Activity, except instead of doors opening and slamming shut by themselves, TVs turning on randomly and other freaky ghost stuff, she got footage of her new kitty gleefully waking her, mostly by belly-flopping on her snoozing human:
I know the experience all too well, and I’d imagine most people who have had a kitten know it too.
Buddy was absolutely ruthless as a baby! He’d scurry into a corner or hide under my desk, wait until I was snoring or just on the cusp of sleep, then climb up and screech the kitten equivalent of “Geronimo!” as he kamikaze’d himself onto my stomach.
Not a fun way to wake up. At all.
Bud would celebrate with delighted trilling, then pad back into the shadows to wait for his next opportunity. Oftentimes I’d hear squeaky little kitten chirps and imagine him laughing as he planned his next attack. He had entirely too much fun torturing me at night.
But fear not, Jenna, it gets better! I’m happy to report the Budster is much sweeter and more considerate as an adult cat. He still wakes me up, but often not to the level of fully awake, and instead of a cat landing a triple lutz, double axle on my stomach, I’m treated to super-soft fur against my face and the calming vibration of the little dude’s purrs.
It might take the better part of a year, but your kitten will chill out, adjust to your sleep schedule and realize a peaceful snooze is more satisfying than nighty games of Harass the Human.
The feline tendency to sit on your face and screech into your ear if your cat’s hungry or really wants your attention? Unfortunately that never goes away…
Why not let our feline friends have a taste of human-grade food every once in a while?
The star of the internet’s newest viral cat video knows what she wants, and she isn’t going to part with it easily.
In the video below, kitty growls at the humans who want to take away her delicious chicken wing. Ultimately it requires three people to take the wing from her, and she licks her lips before the evil humans can wipe the hot sauce away too:
Personally I’d have let her keep it. It’s already in her mouth. Clearly she’s not bothered by the hot sauce. And maybe it’ll be a good lesson if she eats the wing and doesn’t feel well afterward, so she won’t go for a plate of wings next time.
This reminds me of the time I made a late-night Burger King run when Bud was just a kitten, before I went vegetarian. I came home, unwrapped my burger, removed the fries from the bag and went to the kitchen for napkins or ketchup or something, only to return and find the burger had vanished!
Bud left a trail of discarded pieces of bread leading to his eating nook, where he’d unceremoniously dumped the rest of the bun.
It was my fault and it was funny, so how could I be mad at the little guy? I don’t remember if the burger upset his stomach, but I do clearly remember he paid dearly and learned another kitten lesson when he scarfed down a bunch of pistachios. He even ate the closed nuts, shells and all! Several hours later he was in his litter box, straining like someone who’d taken three times the recommended dose of ex lax and hadn’t pooped in a week.
Sometimes you can’t teach things. If an upset stomach or a rough evening in the litter box is the price of a lesson, and the food isn’t going to kill your feline friend, why not let them learn the hard way?
As for Buddy, would he have turned into the strapping and meowscular cat we know today if he hadn’t learned those lessons?
Despite a torrent of criticism, an Alabama police chief says his officers were justified in arresting two women who were managing a cat colony.
You might think if you were the police chief of Wetumpka, Alabama, you’d be embarrassed to learn your officers arrested and cuffed two women — one of them 85 years old — for the alleged crime of managing a cat colony.
Heck, you might be outright mortified that the public saw a video of that outrageous arrest, with your officers laughing about “a bunch of cops beatin’ up on some old ladies” after treating the aforementioned ladies like hardened criminals instead of good local people you’re sworn to protect and serve.
Lastly, you might be furious at your officers for demonstrating abysmal judgment by escalating a situation instead of keeping the peace.
Especially if video of the incident proceeded to go viral, drawing widespread mockery and condemnation of your entire police department
But if you’re Wetumpka Police Chief Greg Benton, apparently none of those things would occur to you.
Instead of apologizing to his community for traumatizing two women doing trap, neuter return (TNR) work in a public park, Benton is doubling down.
Benton told the Montgomery Advertiser that Mary Alston, 60, and Beverly Roberts, 85, were exacerbating a “nuisance” by spending their own money to spay/neuter strays, working with local shelters to find homes for them, and managing a stray cat colony that others were content to ignore.
Benton says the women were warned that they were “trespassing” in a public park — built and maintained with their tax dollars — and were warned not to feed the cats.
A Wetumpka police officer wags a finger at Roberts, who was 84 years old at the time, before handcuffing her hands behind her back and rifling through her personal possessions.
The women were arrested on June 25, but the media and public are just now learning the details because police pushed back on local media freedom of information requests for copies of the body camera footage.
Apparently Benton does not understand the distinction between tossing treats at strays and managing a colony at personal expense to reduce the stray population and get the cats adopted. Or maybe he’s one of those guys who thinks the solution is to kill the cats.
Either way, he’s chosen to ignore policing best practices, disregarding time-honored — and evidence-supported — protocols of community policing by endorsing the sort of behavior his officers engaged in.
Instead of charging into a public park, practically screaming “I am the law!” and gleefully cuffing two women while telling them “You’re too old to be acting this way,” a minimally-trained, minimally decent rookie cop almost anywhere else in America would immediately understand Alston and Roberts are not criminals.
That cop would understand the women are part of the community, they have to live with these people, and the productive thing would be to get the police chief, animal control officer, colony managers and local shelter supervisors together, so they can figure out how to support each other and combine their resources to humanely manage local cat colonies.
Instead, we have police moving forward with misdemeanor charges against the women. They’re both charged with criminal trespassing, while Alston faces an additional count of interfering with government operations, and Roberts faces a disorderly conduct charge.
Their attorney, Terry Luck, told the Advertiser that he believes the charges are baseless. Alston and Roberts were originally scheduled for an Oct. 20 trial, but it’s been postponed due to scheduling conflicts. A new date hasn’t been set yet.
Pain In The Bud 