“Get to the choppah! Fill my bowl!” Cats and Arnold Schwarzenegger are a ridiculous and lulzy combination.
There’s so much negative and stressful nonsense online that occasionally something will come along and remind us that the internet can also be a platform for fantastic human creativity, silliness and hilarity.
If this isn’t one of those things, I don’t know what is. Some genius dreamed up the idea of cats sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of the meows we all know and (mostly) love. It’s glorious:
I love every ridiculous second of it, from the Schwarzeneggerian grunts to the insane babbling of the trio of cats watching birds from a windowsill, to the cat who looks at his human and says: “Come on! Come on! Do eeeit! Come on! We’ve got to go!”
It reminds me of comedian Pablo Francisco’s classic bit about Ahnold starring in a movie called “Little Tortilla Boy”:
Can you imagine your own cat(s) making Arnoldesque sounds instead of meowing? 🙂
Most tomcats aren’t interested in their offspring, but some are excellent and devoted fathers. This little guy has apparently fallen in love with his kiddos.
A cat has been hailed as a better father than many humans after his people uploaded a video of the proud father holding paws with his “baby mama” while she nurses their kittens.
Momma cat went into labor and the chivalrous tomcat “was with her the whole way,” user Anaya wrote in the caption. The short video pans over the top of a cardboard box where the happy couple lounge protectively around their babies.
“That’s very sweet, assuming of course you’re the type of male cat who wants to settle down and raise a family,” he said. “But some of us are so popular with the ladies that it would be a crime to remove ourselves from the field, so to speak. Did you know my tour bus was once overturned by thousands of screaming school girls in Japan? Yeah. I mean, no big deal.”
It’s been confirmed Buddy does not know he’s neutered. When his human tried to carefully broach the subject, the silver tabby declared it “fake news” before checking his toy basket to confirm that he does indeed still possess all of his balls.
“You can’t fool me,” Buddy said afterward. “When it’s time to settle down and I find the right kitty, we’ll make lots of beautiful kittens and grant awesome names to my issue, at which time I’ll name a successor. You know I’m an earl in the UK, don’t you? Yeah. Queen Elizabeth herself created my peerage. No big deal.”
Above: Buddy says it would be unfair to female cats across the world if he were to settle down and take himself off the dating market.
Buddy reminded us that cats can in fact dance, and they’ve got serious moves.
After I committed the unspeakable crime of posting a story about amazing birds here on Pain In the Bud, Buddy himself took time out of his busy napping and eating schedule to educate me on feline abilities.
Cats can in fact dance, the little guy told me. As evidence, he presented the glorious Youtube rendition of Ievan Polkka, featuring blind Turkish singer Bilal Göregen passionately performing a Finnish folk song while a cat vibes to it in the foreground.
The cat comes in at around the 55 second mark, but you’ll want to watch the whole magnificent video. Thanks, Buddy, for correcting me, and I humbly apologize for ever doubting the many talents of your people.
One kitty didn’t check if the coast was clear before he did something humans didn’t expect, and now the two-legs are onto us!
A Very Important Message from Buddy to all cats:
My brothers and sisters,
I meow most urgently to inform you that human mischief knows no bounds, and now the two-legged scoundrels have resorted to using their magical glowing rectangles to spy on us and learn our most well-kept secrets!
It would appear the glowing rectangles are more than mere hypnosis machines which humans stare at for hours. Apparently they also do the bidding of their human masters, and one of these blasted machines surreptitiously used its magic to capture images of a kitty opening one of those infernal portals humans are so fond of:
This is not good! Humans are supposed to think we’re incapable of manipulating the simple mechanisms that keep these “doors” closed. Now they may take drastic measures to confine us, all because this cat was sloppy and opened a door without checking if the coast was clear.
I urge you to exercise the utmost caution before humans capture “footage” of one of us shapeshifting to get through a small space, or even using our powers of teleportation!
It is imperative that humans continue to believe we’re just fluffy, adorable and innocent little fur babies who do amusingly derpy things that make for cute viral videos.
Suppose humans learn the full range of our powers. What then? Will they evict us from our homes out of fear of what we might do to them? Or worse, will they force us to stoop to canine levels and do things for them, like “fetch” slippers or sniff for illegal catnip in airport luggage? The horror!
Cats and humans began their grand partnership some 10,000 years ago, when kitties handled humans’ pesky rodent problem and people repaid the felines with food, shelter and companionship.
Now the deal’s off, apparently.
Yesterday a Reddit user shared a video titled “When you get a cat hoping it will help you get rid of the big rat in your yard.”
The video shows the user’s new cat, a tortoiseshell/calico, “solving” the rat problem by befriending the rodent, playing with it and even grooming it.
The video has amassed almost 86,000 upvotes in 24 hours.
The odd friendship between feline and rodent is not without precedent. Studies have shown that cats are not effective rodent hunters in urban settings where rats have gone unchallenged for so long that they rival or exceed the size of most members of Felis catus.
In certain neighborhoods of New York City, for example, researchers observed cats essentially ignoring massive rats and in some cases eating trash side by side with them. The largest rats, apparently aware of the truce, are equally unconcerned by the presence of the cats. Other rats were more cautious around kitties.
The scene reminded me of the time my brother wanted me to bring Bud over to handle his rat problem. At the time he was living on 88th St. in Manhattan, less than a block from Gracie Mansion. His apartment had an unusual perk for Manhattan living — it was a spacious ground floor flat that opened up into a private, fenced-in backyard with grass and a few trees.
Tremble before him! Buddy the Mighty Slayer of Rodents!
In fact, it was one of the first places I took Buddy after adopting him. He was just a kitten, maybe 14 weeks old, and I brought him with me on a warm summer day when my brother had a few friends over for a barbecue.
Buddy made fast friends with my brother’s Chihuahua-terrier mix, Cosmo, and spent the day playing with his doggie cousin, frolicking in the grass and chasing bugs around the yard. Then he got a treat: Steak from the grill, chopped into tiny Buddy-size pieces.
Having a backyard in Manhattan was awesome, but there was a downside. At night the yard was like a stretch of highway for marauding rats who ran across it in numbers with impunity, probably en route to raiding the garbage bins of a bodega on the corner of 88th. The rats were so emboldened and so numerous, you could hear them scurrying across the yard at night.
My brother proposed bringing Buddy over and letting him loose in the yard after dark, letting his claws and predatorial instincts thin the rodential herd.
I declined, using the excuse that Bud could pick up diseases from going to war with the rats. That was true, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have come to that: At the first sign of those rats, Buddy would have run screaming!
(We don’t acknowledge that around him, of course. Officially, Buddy was not set loose upon the Manhattan rats because it would be grossly unfair to unleash such a meowscular, brave and battle-hardened feline warrior upon them.)
It’s one thing if Buddy won’t kill rats. He’s a wimp. But as the Reddit video illustrates, we are apparently closing the chapter on 10,000 glorious years of human-feline partnership, and officially entering the Era of Zero Reciprocity.
We do everything for our cats, and in return they nap, eat and allow us to serve them. From their point of view, it’s a fine deal.
Just look at those meowscular guns and vicious claws!
Pain In The Bud 
