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.”
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 birthday to us, happy birthday to us! Happy birthday dear Buddies, happy birthday to us!
We received a notification from WordPress congratulating us on four years with WordPress, although this blog isn’t technically four years old. It started as a place for my random scribbles about Buddy and as a sort of travelogue for my trip to Japan, and it wasn’t until September of 2019 that I registered the domain and started blogging in earnest, transforming the site into the Pain In The Bud we all know and love today.
Over the last few years we’ve been fortunate enough to merit the attention of critics, who have lavished praise on us:
“There’s a reason young kittens the world over have posters of Buddy on their walls. He’s effortlessly charming, possessed of inimitable wit and he’s got one hell of a singing voice.” – Fat Cats magazine
“An indictment of the American education system. I feel dumber for having read it.” – Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine’s guide to the Worst Blogs On The Internet
“An extraordinary blog focused on an exceptional cat whose wit is sharper than Valyrian steel. Endlessly entertaining.” – The Buddesian Times
“A catnip junkie and the human who enables him. Gives all cats a bad rep.” – Veterinary Association of America
“Has there ever been a cat more handsome and interesting than Buddy? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.” – The Chronicle of Higher Buddy
“It’s difficult to tell who’s the bigger moron, the human or the cat. They enable each other, launching their idiotic schemes to take over the world and horde its turkey. Thankfully they’re as incompetent as they are clueless.” – Jefferson Nebula, host of My Cat From Hades
Of course we would not be here if not for our readers. Thanks for finding us, sending us your ideas and most of all, feeding Buddy’s ego by telling him what a charming, interesting and ferocious tiger he is.
On a related note, since I’m not sure of Buddy’s exact birth date, we celebrate his birthday and adoptiversary around the third weekend of April.
Happy birthday, Bud!
Bud, you sexy beast, you!
How the heck is the little guy nine years old? That doesn’t seem possible. The age equivalency chart says that’s the equivalent of 52 human years, but Bud still has a spring in his stride, meows like a little baby and likes playing with his toys, especially the game called “Mighty Hunter” in which I manipulate wand toys like prey and he ambushes them. Since he doesn’t know he’s supposed to deliver a “kill bite” and hasn’t made the connection that hunting = food, he happily bobbles the toy with his front paws while bouncing around on his feet, then rushes to cover to reset the game.
I will not dwell on or speculate about how long he’ll be with us because I turn into a blubbering mess despite being a grown ass man, so I’ll just say I’m extremely grateful that he’s healthy and happy, and I’ll continue to enjoy every minute with him.
Except when he meows really annoyingly when his food is late. And when he wakes me up by grooming my face. Oh, and his insistence on walking 1/10th of a stride in front of me so I’m always in danger of tripping on him. Also, when he goes into super annoying determined mode and tries to wake me by punching the door flap on his litter box, knowing the squeak of the hinges drives me crazy.
He is very accomplished at annoying me, but that’s okay. He’s my little Buddy.
Plagiarized, you say?
Thanks to those of you who alerted us to a PITB story that was plagiarized by a pet-focused site recently. We’re aware of it, and unfortunately it’s not the first time.
It takes a lot of time and effort to create readable, entertaining content, and there are people who simply don’t care and help themselves to the content without scruples. Almost all of them are based in countries whose authorities don’t respect US intellectual property rights and won’t cooperate with any takedown notices or legal threats.
The Drudge Report, for example, famously links to DNUYZ, a site run by an Armenian guy who steals content from the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Financial Times and other news sites. Google canceled DNUYZ’s AdSense account, but the operator simply signed up with a different ad server, and he makes a tidy profit by stealing content en masse.
If major media organizations can’t stop this nonsense, I have no hope. I’ve had some luck petitioning sites that host third-party content, but many don’t respond and I don’t even get an apology from those who do acknowledge that my content was posted to their sites, earning them pageviews and ad revenue.
There is a way you can help, however. Every time someone links to a PITB article, it incrementally increases our legitimacy in the eyes of Google, and that’s important because it means PITB shows up first when people search for an article or topic on this site, rather than the plagiarized versions copied by content scrapers in countries like India and Russia.
I am not asking people to randomly link to PITB. That wouldn’t help anyway. However, if there’s a story you really like, consider sharing it on social media and help spread the word. Organic virality is the name of the game, and Buddy and I think we do offer something relatively unique in the cat-o-sphere with a blog from a dudely perspective with a focus on absurdist cat humor, big cat conservation and important news stories that impact our furry little friends.
And if that’s not reason enough, well, just look at him. He’s a sexy beast, and surely your cat-loving friends would be angry with you if you did not tell them all about Buddy and his adventures. Don’t make them upset. Do them a solid and invite them to the Wonderful World of Buddy!
Buddy wants YOU to feature your cat on Pain In The Bud!
The only thing better than cats is, well, more cats.
That’s why we’d like to introduce a new feature in which we profile our readers’ little buddies. It’s a win-win: You get your unique kitty featured on the blog, and the rest of us get to see more cats.
Buddy, in his infinite wisdom and generosity, has allowed me to implement this feature, “as long as the other cats don’t upstage me.” I also had to bribe him by promising to buy him a pirate eyepatch and a plush canary for his shoulder.
Interested in having your kitty featured? Head to the contact page, say hello and tell us a little bit about your cat. We’ll respond with a handful of questions. We’ll also need at least three good, high-res images of your cat, so have them ready to send when we correspond. (Don’t worry if they’re not pro quality! Mostly we’re looking for clear, close shots.)
That’s it! Right now the plan is for this to be an occasional feature, but if we get enough responses we’d be delighted to make this a regular weekly or twice-weekly thing.
Lots of catnip, turkey and photos of the little dude.
Join us, dear readers, as we celebrate the one-year anniversary of Pain In The Bud!
We’ve reached a modest 700 million readers in our first year and plan to do even better in our second year, replacing Google and Facebook at the very top of the traffic rankings and becoming the number one internet destination for people looking to waste their time.
Critics and readers alike are united in their effusive praise for Pain In The Bud:
“Absolute idiots. It’s difficult to tell which one has fewer brain cells, the human or the cat.” – Time
“Doesn’t even qualify as decent bathroom reading material.” – Rolling Stone
“Outstanding! Easily the best blog on the Internet!” – The Buddy Review
“An indictment of the American education system. I feel dumber for having read it.” – Oprah Winfrey
“Why should you care about the exploits of Buddy the Cat? You shouldn’t. His catnip-addled mind is limited to producing tedious fart jokes and dispensing mind-numbingly ridiculous advice to readers misguided enough to seek out his opinion.” – Wall Street Journal
“An extraordinary blog focused on an exceptional cat whose wit is sharper than Valyrian steel. Endlessly entertaining.” – The Buddesian Times
“A catnip junkie and the human who enables him. Gives all cats a bad rep.” – Veterinary Association of America
“An unfiltered look into the depraved depths of the feline psyche. The blog mostly works as a celebration of legendary stupidity.” – Psychology Today
“Has there ever been a cat more handsome and interesting than Buddy? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.” – The Chronicle of Higher Buddy
Meanwhile, we’re celebrating Buddy’s adoptaversary! Well, celebrating is probably not the right word since we’re stuck indoors in the middle of a pandemic, in the area with the most infections if you don’t count Wuhan’s fake statistics.
Still, celebrate we will. No matter how dark these times are, there’s always turkey and catnip!
Pain In The Bud 