A woman asks Reddit if she overreacted when she tossed her friend out over the way the friend treated her cat.
A Redditor has been assured she didn’t overreact after recounting a disturbing incident involving one of her friends and her cat.
Describing her cat as “super friendly, but a little skittish” and prefacing the anecdote by noting she always asks guests “to be gentle with her,” the Redditor relayed what happened when her cat jumped onto the couch near the seated guest.
“Out of nowhere, my friend shoved her off the couch. Not a little nudge—an actual shove that made her hit the floor hard. My cat ran and hid under my bed, and I lost it. I asked them what the hell that was, and they just laughed and said, ‘Relax, it’s just a cat.'”
“I told them to get out immediately. They acted like I was overreacting, saying they didn’t mean to hurt her and that it wasn’t a big deal. But my cat was terrified, and I don’t care if it was intentional or not—that kind of reaction to an innocent animal is not okay with me.”
The offending party is telling mutual friends that the Redditor “threw them out over ‘nothing,'” but others in their social circle have “admitted they never liked how this friend treated animals.”
Still, some told the woman she may have been too harsh for telling the cat-shover to leave immediately.
What do you think?
Tornado of claws!
For what it’s worth, most people who responded to the AITA (“Am I The Asshole?”) thread sided with the poster, and others pointed out that someone who will casually shove a cat off a couch while the caretaker is right there might do much worse if no one’s around. In other words, don’t let that person watch your cat under any circumstances.
I have never had this problem, obviously, because no one would dare shove my incredibly ripped and meowscular cat.
Jokes aside, I can’t imagine anyone I’m friends with would harm him when they know how much little dude means to me.
And as much of a wimp Bud is when it comes to vacuums, loudly crinkling paper bags and Swiffers, he has absolutely no fear of people. If someone tried to shove or toss him off a couch, I’d actually feel sorry for them, because the next instant would involve 11 pounds of furball screeching like a furious Elmo while producing a tornado of claws.
Reddit’s AITA is a reliable source of insight into antisocial behavior and social faux pas, which makes it fun to browse, but it also offers people a chance to gauge if they’ve overreacted in heated situations.
What would you have done if you were in the Redditor’s shoes?
Veterinary science and research still focuses primarily on dogs, but scientists are trying to change that and help us better understand how to care for our little feline buddies.
“It’s just a cat.”
I’ve heard that so many times, and if you’re a cat lover, you probably have too.
It’s an insinuation that cats are throwaway animals, fungible pets who can be replaced by others of their species because, some people claim, they don’t express themselves as individuals, never really warm to humans in the first place, and besides, it’s not like they have emotions.
Countering those persistent myths is one of the reasons I write this blog. I still didn’t have a full appreciation for how singular and smart cats can be until I brought Buddy home. I never fathomed the depth of his emotions, the strength of his convictions or his willingness to make his opinions known about everything.
In some ways, I’m still shocked at how much he communicates and how well we understand each other.
However, one of my biggest fears is not doing right by him, especially missing signs of declining health as he gets older.
That’s the subject of a column today in the New York Times, in which science write Emily Anthes recalls the subtle signs that her cat, Olive, was sick, and the veterinarian’s assessment that she wasn’t just ill, she was on death’s door.
Credit: Pexels
Anthes points out that, to this day, veterinary training uses canines as the default, and treatments for cats are often just adapted from treatments for dogs, even if there’s no data suggesting those methods actually work for feline patients.
“My anatomy book was ‘Anatomy of the Dog,’” Maggie Placer, veterinary science programs manager at EveryCat Health Foundation, told the Times. “We had PowerPoints and supplements for the cats.”
The differences go beyond body plan, organs and behavior: drugs that work for dogs can be ineffective or dangerous for cats. Treatments otherwise regarded as effective in other animals could be harmful to felines too.
“It’s not reasonable to assume that everything that works in a dog will work in a cat,” Bruce Kornreich, director of the Cornell Feline Health Center, told Anthes. “There’s a lot that we still need to learn.”
Credit: Pexels
The situation with feline veterinary science mirrors the gap in behavioral studies between cats and dogs.
Over the past decade, research teams in countries like the US and Japan have made efforts to close the gap by recognizing that studies must be crafted to feline points of view, and that laboratories are not suitable places for studying the behavior of such notoriously territorial animals. Cats behave differently outside of their environments, rendering data useless if it’s captured in settings where kitties are stressed, unsure of themselves or even just miffed that they’re not at home enjoying a nap.
There are unique challenges when it comes to studying effective veterinary treatments in cats as well. Primary among them is feline stoicism, an evolutionary adaptation.
Simply put, cats will do everything they can to mask injury and sickness because they don’t want to become prey. Unfortunately that means by the time a cat cannot conceal an ailment anymore, the disease or injury has progressed. Even if a cat has lived indoors her entire life, the directive to disguise her pain is hardcoded into her DNA.
Anthes’ cat, Olive, didn’t make it. But her litter mate is chugging along, and to help advance the cause of understanding cat health, Anthes submitted both cats’ fur clippings to geneticist Dr. Elinor Karlsson’s Darwin’s Cats, a “non-profit community science project” that uses DNA submitted by cat owners to better understand our furry friends and unlock the secrets of their health and behavior.
Let’s hope that such projects spark a renaissance in studying cat health, like they have with research into feline behavior, so we can do right by our little buddies.
Buddy’s back at it, trying to befriend big cats. Emboldened by his success with the tolerant and wise jaguars, the reckless tabby has his sights set on the savanna and its temperamental predators, the leopards. Can Buddy win the admiration of these notoriously dangerous felids, or will he end up as a light snack for a spotted cat?
VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — “What the heck is that?”
A leopardess raised her head in response to her mate’s question, gazing down from the sturdy limb of an acacia tree where she’d taken refuge from the scorching midday sun.
Two hundred yards ahead, a tiny gray cat was padding toward them, picking his way carefully around rocks and occasionally disappearing in the high grass.
“There’s nothin’ that a hundred men on Mars could ever do,” the little feline sang as he walked. “I bless the rains down in Africa! I bless the rains down in…”
The diminutive feline stopped near the base of the tree and looked up at the leopards.
The adult leopards were momentarily stunned until one of the cubs awoke from her nap, spotted Buddy and exclaimed: “Look, mommy, lunch!”
The small cat flashed a wide smile.
“That’s a great idea! I’ve already eaten, but you know what they say: a lunch a day barely keeps the rumbles at bay! I’m a three-lunch cat, myself. So what are we having?”
Another cub piped up.
“That’s not lunch, that’s a snack!” he told his sister.
“And what a cute little snack he is!” the female cub said, gracefully dropping from her napping spot in the tree.
Buddy’s eyes bulged.
“You’re…you’re talking about me?”
The male cub did a squeaky impression of a roar.
“Do you see any other single-serve snacks around?”
Buddy licked his lips, his effort to hide his fear betrayed by his rising hackles and tail, which now resembled a quivering spiked club.
“I…I…I am a cat,” he said in his best impression of an authoritative meow. “I’m practically your cousin!”
The female was just paces away now and moving too fast for Buddy’s liking as he backpedaled.
“The question is,” she said, “are you tasty like cousin Serval or cousin cheetah?”
Credit: RudiHulshof/iStock
Buddy changed tactics.
“This is an outrage! Not even the tigers tried to eat me! This is…this is, uh, catibalism!”
The cubs were circling him now.
“Mommy, can we have a snack?” the male cub called, looking back at his mother on the tree.
“As long as it doesn’t spoil your dinner later,” came the reply.
“It won’t, mamma!”
Buddy gulped.
The cubs closed the distance, ready to strike, and Buddy was babbling while pleading for his life when the earth itself shook.
Branches jolted and leaves dropped. A flock of birds nesting in a nearby tree took off, silhouettes etching ephemeral geometric patterns in the sky. In the distance, a baboon shrieked a warning to its troop.
The cubs went from aggressive to retreat in the span of an instant, and even their parents looked alarmed, taking off after their young.
Buddy watched them flee, wondering if he should bolt in another direction as something incomprehensibly gargantuan lumbered toward him, shaking the trees.
He’d emptied his bowels by the time a gigantic head poked through the foliage, followed by the rest of the colossal beast. It was gray-skinned, leathery and bizarre, unlike anything Buddy had ever seen.
“Giant space aliens!” he screamed, turning around and running right into a tree trunk.
“Ahhhhh! Don’t eat me!”
Buddy awoke in a sweat, his fur damp in the soupy, stifling heat.
An entire platoon of the peculiar beasts stood around him, their sizes ranging from 25 Buddies in mass to freakishly large individuals sporting pairs of prodigious teeth that looked like scimitars made of bone.
“Einstein’s awake,” one of them rumbled, and the rest turned from stuffing themselves with leaves to get a better look at the Liliputian animal before them.
“What is that thing?” one of them asked.
“It’s a fun-size cheetah!” one exclaimed confidently.
“No, it’s a baby Serval!” another said. “But the color’s all wrong.”
In the distance, a giraffe poked its head above the tree line, pausing to munch on the silky pink flowers of a mimosa tree.
Buddy was saved from hungry leopards by friendly giant space aliens!
Buddy cautiously pushed himself up on his paws. These aliens did not seem interested in eating him.
“Greetings,” he said. “I am a feline, a cat from planet Earth! What planet do you come from?”
There was a pause, then trumpeting, cacaphonic laughter.
“‘What planet are you from?'” one of the great beasts mimicked, sparking a second round of giggles that sounded like the trombone section of an orchestra, if someone had slipped the players psychedelics.
“We are elephants, and this is our home,” said the leader, a magnificent female. “And you, little one, are fortunate we happened by.”
Buddy puffed himself up.
“I think you mean the leopards were lucky,” he said, flexing his meowscles. “They didn’t want to tangle with these guns.”
The elephants chortled. “Can we keep him? He’s funny!”
The matriarch shook her massive head.
“He is far from home, and he should return before he runs into leopards again, or something worse,” she said.
Buddy looked unsure of himself.
“But I’m homies with the jaguars and the tigers! I thought…you know, I could be down with the leopards too. Us big cats gotta stick together, ya know? It’s hard out there for an apex predator. By the way, got any lunch?”
One of the elephants raised her trunk, pointing east toward a herd of intimidating horned beasts.
“Lunch,” she said. “Think you can take them?”
Buddy gulped.
“Go home, little one.”
Buddy’s version of events!
“So anyway,” Buddy said, addressing his human, “that’s how I impressed the leopards, and they made me their king. In fact, they bestowed the honorific ‘Paka mkubwa na mwenye misuli hodari,’ which means ‘great and mighty muscled cat’ in Swahili!”
“Sounds like you had quite an adventure! That’s impressive, Bud!” Big Buddy said.
“It is! It is!” Buddy said, nodding vigorously.
Big Buddy made a whistling sound.
“Was that before or after you peed yourself in terror?”
“What? I…no, I told you, they made me their king! Where did you hear this, this slander?”
Big Buddy reached for his iPad, pulling up images of a terrified Little Buddy running from leopard cubs on the savanna, Buddy running head-first into a tree, and Buddy cowering before a herd of elephants.
“A wildlife tour was nearby during your ‘coronation,’ but this is probably just a gray tabby who looks exactly like you and happened to be right where you were crowned,” he said. “Congratulations, Your Meowjesty!”
Is your cat a genius or not the sharpest claw on the paw? The University of Maine’s Cat Lab wants your help as researchers seek to measure feline intelligence.
Buddy apparently has brawn and brains, according to a “cat IQ test” by researchers at the University of Maine.
The test is a survey designed by the people who work at the university’s Cat Lab, and it aims to employ some of the same techniques used to measure the intelligence of young children and dogs.
The test asks questions about memory, how closely felines read nonverbal cues from their humans, how attuned they are to human emotions, whether they’ve learned tricks, and whether they’ve improvised solutions to obstacles they’ve encountered.
I gave each question serious thought and tried to eliminate my own bias to the best of my ability.
“This is your brain on catnip. Any questions?”
For example, there’s absolutely no question Buddy is extremely communicative, curious, bold and friendly. He’s also figured out things on his own, like how to open doors and how to best manipulate me for as much food as possible. I’ll never forget watching with fascination when, as a kitten, he figured out how to wedge his body against the frame of my bedroom door with his feet while using his front paws to turn the handle.
On the other hand, he’s a hilariously inept hunter, he’s done some spectacularly dumb things, and he went through a whole phase in which he “boxed” the cat in the mirror before figuring out it was a reflection of himself.
I can still hear the “THWAP THWAP THWAP!” of his little kitty paws against the glass and his accompanying trills as he did battle with himself. To be fair, that was also in kittenhood, and he eventually figured out there was no other cat.
As I’ve detailed in this blog previously, Bud also seems to possess the precision of an atomic clock when it comes to meal times, and if I so much as shift in my chair as meal time approaches, he springs up and trills at me like “Are we going to the kitchen? Come on, dude, it’s Food O’clock! I want turkey, beef or tuna!”
According to the survey, Buddy has an IQ of 64 on a max-70 scale, good enough for the “Felix Forecaster” tier and just below “The McGonagall Mastermind.”
It’s probably for the best that he’s not in that very top tier anyway. We’re talking about a cat intelligent enough to understand I hate the sound of the flap on his litter box squeaking on its hinges, and has subsequently weaponized it to get me out of bed. If he gets any smarter, I’ll probably wake up to a machine that slaps me every time I hit the snooze button.
You can take the survey on behalf of your own cat(s) here. Don’t forget to share your results!
The cat survived but her personality has radically changed from loving and affectionate to distant and wary, her human said.
A councilman in a rural UK village resigned from his post and is the subject of renewed police scrutiny after allegedly trying to blow up a neighbor’s cat twice in 2023.
Councillor James Garnor was reportedly trying to stop the cat from climbing into a bird feeder, and decided the best way to do it was to rig the feeder with explosives and lure the curious feline in, according to a report on UK broadcaster LBC’s website.
Garnor was apparently so amused by his handiwork that he distributed video of the incidents to his friends. The footage shows a cat named Suki leaping onto the bird feeder on April 9, 2023, and nibbling on some of the bird feed before the explosive detonated. An injured Suki took off immediately and ran home.
She “came home one day missing her whiskers on her face – they looked like they’d been dissolved – so I put a post in my local community page on Facebook… just to warn people in case there was something she’d rolled in that had dissolved them,” said Suki’s human, a woman named Nikki.
Suki’s whiskers were singed off by the heat from the explosion. Image credit: Provided by owner to LBC News
“But somebody contacted me to tell me it wasn’t what I thought it was, that somebody had actually blown my cat up – and that it was my neighbour and local councillor. It made me feel physically sick.”
After she received the video, Nikki filed a complaint with local police, who elected not to arrest Garnor. However, after a second video surfaced with a clearer view of Garnor’s alleged actions, police responded to the public outcry and said they were reviewing the case again.
Per LBC, which broke the story:
“The incident is one of at least two occasions that cats in Whittlebury, Northamptonshire, were allegedly targeted by Councillor James Garnor in 2023 using remote-detonated explosives.”
It’s not clear if the new video shows a second attempt, or a different angle on the first. Garnor “was dealt with using anti-social behavior legislation,” a type of civil admonishment usually associated with things like noise complaints, littering and damaging public property, not trying to kill an animal.
Still images from a video showing Garnor allegedly setting off an explosion targeting Suki the cat. Credit: Photos provided by owner to LBC
Garnor resigned from his post on Feb. 7, and the council distanced itself from him, saying its members “understand the concerns raised by the community and want to assure everyone that we take all matters of animal welfare seriously.”
That hasn’t mollified people living in the small community, who are wondering why police didn’t press charges the first time they were presented with evidence of the attempt on Suki’s life.
“You can clearly see the videos have been slowed down [and] edited. It’s very set-up: the animal has been enticed on the bird table with food whilst said individual was sitting there with the detonator waiting for [the cat] to appear,” a neighbor told LBC. “He is a member of our parish council, so it makes you worry what decisions are being made there by the individual… he has offered no apology [and] shown no remorse.”
In the meantime, Suki has been permanently impacted by the incidents. The tabby was affectionate and friendly, Nikki said, wrapping her little body “like a scarf around your neck.”
“Now she very rarely comes near you, and if she does, she’s got her claws out – she hisses, she growls,” Nikki added. “She’s not the loving cat she used to be – and I don’t blame her… the change in her happened pretty much overnight.”
Pain In The Bud 