adoption – Pain In The Bud

Opening Your Heart To A Crazy Cat: The Story Of Kevin

A writer reminds us that feline friendships don’t always come easy, but some of the hardest-won are the most rewarding.

When San Francisco’s KQED, the local public radio affiliate, asked its culture writers to reflect on “one beautiful thing” from 2025, Rae Alexander chose her cat, Kevin.

Kevin is “chaos in cat form,” a feline “sociopath” who doesn’t realize how much damage he does with his claws. The tabby, Alexander writes, is “never not screaming at us for food” and pads around as if he owns the place. (That sounds awfully familiar!)

After bringing Kevin’s heavily pregnant mother in from the cold earlier this year, Alexander adopted Kevin’s mother and his “well-behaved sister,” but was repeatedly rebuffed when she tried to get rid of Kevin himself.

Three potential adopters fell through while Kevin was growing out of his kitten stage, drastically reducing his chances of finding a home.

Then something crazy happened: cat and human came to a mutual understanding and the beginnings of trust led to friendship and love. As with any progress in gaining a cat’s trust, it was not a quick process, but Kevin eventually showed another side — a much softer, appreciative version of himself who enjoys cuddling and expresses love despite his quirks.

“As this fraught year draws to a close, I want Kevin to be a pertinent reminder to us all that the little things bumming us out today might just lead to the things that make us happiest tomorrow,” Alexander wrote. “Start putting all those everyday stresses on the stairs. You never know where that might lead in 2026.”

Read the whole thing here:

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13983150/kevin-favorite-cat-sociopath

We’re back after a brief interruption!

Apologies for going radio silent over the past week. This past Saturday I sat down to write and my computer was dead. As in completely dead — I couldn’t even trick it into loading BIOS or getting a boot screen.

So I said farewell to a machine that had served me well since 2018, that served as my primary platform for writing, producing music and gaming.

Now I’ve got an absolute beast of a machine centered on one of the new Ryzen chipsets, and it takes quite a bit of restraint not to go into nerdy details. I’m still setting things up, especially the music production workflow.

The important thing is, I’m able to properly sit at a desk and write again, and Buddy can properly supervise me from his desktop perch again, so we are now back!

Happy National Cat Day From The Buddies!

Shelters are full of felines who need forever homes, and National Cat Day was founded to make sure they’re not forgotten.

The number of “cat days” keeps growing, with separate dates for national and international cat days, dates honoring black cats, tabbies, calicos and tortoiseshells, and more.

But National Cat Day is one of the OGs, beginning 21 years ago, and it’s endorsed by the ASPCA. The main purpose of National Cat Day, per its founders, is to help homeless kitties find forever homes by inspiring people to adopt.

So we’ll say what we always do: shelters are full of little buddies who are just as lovable and deserving as Little Buddy himself, and all they need is a home, some love and patience to help them feel secure. Once they know they’re safe and loved, their personalities shine through.

If you like feline-centric fiction, Mollie Hunt released her 12th Crazy Cat Lady Mystery novel today. It’s called Cold Case Cat and you can read more about it here.

Meanwhile over at Catwoods, Leah writes about — and includes great photos of — her “Halloween cat,” Shelley. She also revisits the Facebook hoax posts we wrote about a few weeks ago, in which users claim the big cat was spotted in places as varied as Louisiana’s bayou, the Houston region, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Finally, the satirists at McSweeney’s have a new post titled “A Brief Questionnaire Before You Adopt This Rescue Cat,” which takes aim at overzealous shelter/rescue operators who make the process of child adoption look easy by comparison, and are constantly at capacity because they’ve made perfect the enemy of good.

Wanna adopt this cat? Hand over a list of every person you associate with along with their addresses, phone numbers and social security numbers, prepare for a 30-day in-home evaluation by a shelter staffer, and agree to feed kitty a diet of sushi-grade tuna!

While it seems outlandish, I encountered some contracts that were only slightly less onerous before I adopted Bud, and it’s obviously the McSweeney’s team has too.

Now I understand a bit more why some shelter staff are so cautious. They see some of the worst behavior, after all, including people who return cats because they’re too affectionate, animal abuse cases, and cats on death’s door because their humans ignored decades of research and tried to turn their obligate carnivore pets into vegans.

They want to make sure the cats go to good homes, which is admirable, but they shouldn’t overlook potential adopters who are well-intentioned and looking for a little pal.

Morbidly Obese Cat Completely Transformed After Shedding Half His Weight

Patches was the biggest cat the staff at a Virginia animal shelter had ever seen, and was within snacking distance of the all-time record.

When Patches was surrendered to a Virginia animal shelter in mid-April of 2023, the staff — including longtime veterans of cat rescue — were taken aback.

The six-year-old feline weighed in at a staggering 40-plus pounds and was so big, the shelter staff had to keep him in an office because the largest crates they had were barely large enough for Patches to turn around.

“We thought we had seen big cats before, but he was definitely the biggest that we’ve ever seen,” Richmond Animal Care and Control’s Robin Young told the Washington Post at the time.

Patches was in dangerous territory for his personal health, and if allowed to continue gaining weight, he’d threaten the world record for a domestic cat, which is more than 46 pounds. (Guiness World Records stopped recognizing the heaviest cats decades ago because the organization didn’t want to encourage people to overfeed their cats in pursuit of the record.)

Top row: Patches in the early days shortly after his adoption. Bottom row: Patches after losing a significant amount of weight.

Last week, Patches reached a new milestone, weighing in at 18.94 pounds after more than two years of eating healthy and getting exercise with the help of Kay Ford, a retired businesswoman who adopted him.

It’s an incredible achievement, and one that was hard-fought, as anyone familiar with cats will know. Many well-fed cats can convince almost anyone they’re starving.

Ford’s pitch to the shelter made it easy for them as they fielded a flood of adoption applications for the chonkster, who had attracted plenty of attention as soon as the shelter posted about him online.

Ford told the shelter she was experienced, committed to helping Patches get down to a healthy weight, and would look forward to the challenge. She’d put on a few pounds during the pandemic, she added, and would lose weight alongside her new pal.

“I’ve had cats all my life,” Ford told the Post at the time. “It just seemed like the right thing.”

Ford with Patches shortly after meeting him. Credit: Richmond Animal Care and Control

She agreed to meetings at the shelter to review a weight loss plan and began documenting Patches’ progress on a Facebook page, Patches’ Journey, which now has more than 53,000 people following the feline’s transformation.

His diet isn’t over, and it’s a lifestyle change meant to be permanent, but there are a lot of people who are proud of the (much less) big guy, who now looks like a completely different cat.

Images via Patch’s Journey/Facebook

Brave Kitty Ready For Forever Home After Recovering From Being Set On Fire, Plus: Ohio Looks To Ban Declawing

Pixie the cat fought for his life and he’s now almost fully healed. Meanwhile, in Ohio, lawmakers want their state to become the sixth to ban declawing.

Back in April, a woman spotted a group of kids literally playing with fire, and was horrified when she got closer and realized they had set a cat ablaze.

She took the cat from the little demons and rushed him over to the ACCT Philly, where the stray — now dubbed Pixie — fought for his life as veterinary staff treated him.

Now Pixie, who doesn’t harbor any ill will toward people and is an affectionate, loving little dude, is all healed up and ready for his forever home.

Pixie lost most of his tail and he still suffers from some incontinence episodes — which is to be expected, given the trauma he endured — but his fur has grown back, he’s healthy and he’s ready to be loved.

“Pixie’s story is hard to read. It breaks our hearts. But it’s the reality we fight every single day,” ACCT Philly’s staff posted online. “It’s why we exist – because no animal should ever face such cruelty, and every animal deserves a second chance at life.”

Pixie has recovered from his injuries and he’s ready to go to a good home. Credit: Pennsylvania SPCA

Pixie’s “spirit has been untouched” by his ordeal. If you live in the area and think you can provide a good home for the little guy — and exhibit the patience he needs with his ongoing issues from the cruelty he endured — visit ACCT Philly to fill out an adoption form. We hope Pixie gets a great home and lives his best life.

Another state looks to ban declawing

Our representaves in congress are too busy embarrassing Americans, staging Jerry Springeresque arguments in the legislative chambers and chasing TV cameras, so naturally they have no time for an insignificant issue like animal welfare.

But if they won’t act to bring our barbarian nation in line with the civilized world when it comes to banning the mutilation of cats, at least some state governments are doing what they can.

Ohio’s representatives are pushing for their state to become the sixth to ban the cruel procedure, after New York, Maryland, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Washington, D.C., has also banned declawing, and a few dozen cities throughout the country have passed their own local prohibitions.

A bipartisan bill sponsored by a Republican and two Democrats has been introduced.

The usual villains in these efforts, the state’s Veterinary Medical Association, have trotted out the same tired arguments that declawing is “discouraged,” but shouldn’t be banned.

That argument doesn’t hold water when the veterinarians who hold VMA memberships are the types who offer package deals for kitten neutering and declawing. Not all or even most vets belong to state VMAs, and almost no veterinarians who specialize in feline care are members, but the vets who do support the group are the ones who see declawing as an income stream.

Their usual strategy is to call in favors from reps whose campaigns the group donates to, who in turn try to prevent declawing bans from ever reaching the floor for a vote.

After decades of successfully defeating such bans, the dam finally broke when New York passed its ban in June of 2019, becoming the first state to outlaw elective declawing.

We wish the bill’s sponsors, and their allies in local animal welfare groups, good luck in moving the legislation forward.

Fearless Cat Forces Bear To Retreat, PLUS: Flow’s Void Sparks Interest In Black Moggies

Flow’s Cat has improved things for his fellow voids, who are drawing more interest from adopters.

This video is bonkers!

A cat who is definitely not Buddy stared down a bear and made the ursine interloper retreat in fear in a confrontation caught on camera.

The stand-off happened in Pike County, Pa., and the cat’s name is T’Challa, after the titular hero of Marvel’s Black Panther franchise.

“I think perhaps this young bear woke this kitty cat up because he was not happy that he was sharing his deck with him when he woke up and he expressed himself,” said the homeowner whose security cameras caught the exchange.

After T’Challa made a series of feints, the bear — who is orders of magnitude larger — beat a hasty (for a bear) retreat.

Well done, T’Challa! Someone get that good boy a treat!

Go with the Flow

Part of what makes Flow so spectacular — aside from the breathtaking visuals, clever narrative and the strange world it portrays — is how endearing its star, Cat, is.

The little guy shows enormous resilience as he survives a biblical flood, gets chased by a flock of angry secretary birds, learns to swim, and finds his confidence in situations that would terrify any feline. He’s incredibly expressive, revealing his emotions with every twitch of his tail and whiskers, as well as his distinctive meow and, most of all, his bright yellow eyes.

He’s also the first feline star to win an Oscar and a Golden Globe, as well as many other film awards for the universally praised film.

Now he’s got another accomplishment to his name: he’s improved the way people view black cats, who have long been the victims of absurd human superstition and have a hard time finding forever homes because of the stigma.

Animal welfare organizations are reporting heightened interest in black cats (good), but not a manic rush to adopt them as has happened when other species and breeds are popularized in films. (Bad, because those pets are often discarded when the novelty wears off.)

In other words, Cat may have inspired something close to parity in adoptions in some places.

Cat is beloved in director Gints Zilbalodis’ home country of Lithuania. The capital, Riga, is now adorned with street art of the little guy, including a statue sitting atop a major monument in the heart of the city.