Tag: Buddy the Cat

For Some Cats, Food Shortages Mean Hardship and Starvation

Buddy the Cat gets dramatic as he goes weeks without his precious turkey.

NEW YORK — It’s early in the morning and Buddy the Cat is wide awake, meowing insistently for breakfast.

The tabby cat’s familiar muscular physique has wasted away, replaced by a gaunt, sickly appearance. Squint and you can almost make out his ribs, while his coat — normally silky and glowing — is now coarse and dull.

After a few minutes Buddy gives up and collapses with a sigh, resigning himself to the same tasteless kibble and unsatisfying salmon, chicken, beef and tuna wet food he’s been eating for weeks.

“I haven’t had a morsel of turkey since Oct. 6,” Buddy said mournfully. “If I don’t get turkey soon, I’m not sure I’ll make it.”

With demand outpacing supply, logistical gridlock in the shipping industry and the country suffering from inflation levels not seen in decades, Americans are finding it more difficult to find and afford the foods they need.

Turkey has been especially scarce, leaving families bereft of the bird with Thanksgiving approaching, but perhaps no one has suffered more than Buddy the Cat, who normally subsists almost entirely on turkey.

“Our forecasts show things are not going to improve even after Thanksgiving,” said James McCann, a supply chain analyst and economist at Boston University. “That’s bad news for American families and the larger economy, but it’s terrible news for Buddy the Cat.”

Angry Buddy
A visibly angry Buddy, pictured above, hasn’t had turkey in weeks.

Buddy’s hopes were further dashed on Thursday when his human servant logged onto Chewy.com and found his favorite brands of wet turkey on back order.

Pet food manufacturers have been “working hard to make sure America’s pets are getting the nutrition they need,” said Jan Schroeder, communications director for the National Association of Yums.

“We realize this has been hard on cats, especially Buddy,” Schroeder said. “The situation is urgent, and Buddy needs his turkey. That’s why we’ve asked suppliers to expedite shipments of the good stuff, particularly to Buddy’s home state of New York.”

But suppliers may not realize how dire things really are. Back in New York, Buddy’s once-loud meow has become a scratchy mew as his body reacts to the lack of turkey.

“Can’t…survive…much longer,” Buddy said as he was forced to eat Blue Buffalo chicken treats and moist salmon Bursts. “Need…turkey. When will…this nightmare…be over?”

 

 

I Was A Good Boy On Halloween, Now Give Me Snacks!

Buddy agrees to dress up for Halloween in exchange for catnip and treats.

Bud won’t tolerate a costume and I wouldn’t make him wear one, but he’s cool with wearing a festive scarf courtesy of my mom, who insists she doesn’t like him but somehow ends up buying stuff for him.

The cool thing about having an unusually curious and friendly cat is that he dashes to the door like a dog whenever someone knocks. Halloween is no exception, and Bud has been helping me hand out candy since he was a kitten.

When trick or treaters come by, the little guy can’t wait to see who’s in the other side of the door. He sits on the threshold and just takes it all in — the new people, the funny costumes, the strange human ritual that involves helping children get an epic sugar high and upset stomach.

For Bud it’s a night of excitement without any anxiety since no one’s actually stepping into his territory. They all keep a respectful distance, like supplicants with an audience before a powerful but benevolent king, and in turn the king allows his servant to reward their fealty with gifts of candy.

Bud on Halloween
“Let’s just get this over with, human. Remember, you said I could have catnip AND extra yums if I wear this infernal scarf!”

Sadly Halloween was a dud this year even more than last year, which was our first pandemic All Hallow’s Eve. Living in an apartment building, especially on the first floor, usually means a steady stream of kids, but this year I had maybe six or seven knocks on the door, and the kids were trick or treating in ones and twos. (All kids are chaperoned by parents these days too. It makes me wonder how my brother and I — and our friends — survived as kids, going out into the big bad world ourselves to trick or treat!)

unrecognizable men in glowing halloween masks driving car at night
You’d think Halloween was Purge Night by how parents hover over their kids. Credit: Erik Mclean/Pexels.com

 

Dear Buddy: Why Do Cats Follow Their Humans Around?

Buddy dispels the myth that cats follow their people around, as if they would stoop so low!

Dear Buddy,

Why do cats always follow their humans around? I mean, you guys might not want us to pet you all the time, but you sure do go everywhere we go.

Human in Honolulu

Dear Human,

This is a common misconception, one of those myths about cats like the one that says we love milk or we like it when you talk to us in baby voices.

The sad reality is that you follow us around but you don’t want to admit it, so you come up with elaborate fictions about our habits. My human believes I weave around his legs to rub against them after he wakes up, which is absurd. Clearly he steps in my path and I have to swerve, causing incidental contact. I would prefer not to, but he makes it impossible.

Or how about the myth that we like to bother you guys in the bathroom? Big Buddy knows that every day at certain times I like to put my paws under the bathroom door and cry. I mean, I do it all the time and he knows it, so he decides to use the bathroom at those times and tricks himself into believing that somehow I go into hysterics if I’m not actually inside the bathroom with him.

Do you see how delusional you people are?

What kind of crazy people say “I know my cat is going to knead and purr in this spot in the next 5 to 10 minutes, so I’m going to sit here and force him to knead on me”?

I think you guys need to get help.

Buddy

Buddy Tears Up The Dance Floor!

Buddy is the king of disco dancing!

NEW YORK –John Tra-who?

Buddy the Cat is known for his movie star good looks, charm and wit, but one fact remained little known until recently — he’s meowgnificent on the dance floor.

The tabby cat set the dance floor on fire this week when he dropped in at New York’s most popular disco club and showed off a series of spectacular moves that left observers shocked — and sparked several cat fights among his admirers.

All jokes aside, how awesome is this commercial?

I’m curious about how this was done. We’re not seeing people in cat costumes. It looks like the paws are practical effects, but the cat faces are rendered with something similar to deepfake tech, with the render following the actors’ performances. Or it may have been done the labor intensive way, with full modeling. Either way, the effect is fantastic: Look at the two cats at the end talking about how Disco Cat learned to slide.

Any readers out there with FX backgrounds who might have some insight?

Temptations Releases ‘Tasty Human’ Flavor Treats For Halloween

From the makers of kitty crack: “Human” flavored kitty crack!

I’ve never been more grateful that I’ve weaned Buddy off of Temptations.

The treats, which are famously irresistible to cats thanks to some strange alchemy that definitely isn’t healthy for them, now come in Tasty Human flavor in a new promotion for Halloween. (They’re heavy on corn and other fillers, as usual, but the meat ingredients in Tasty Human flavor come from chicken, liver and beef. Apparently we taste like KFC and burgers.)

The commercial spots are clever and humorous.

“I read that if our cats were bigger, they’d try to eat us!” a man whispers as ominous music plays and his cute cat grooms himself in the background. “So this Halloween, I’m gonna keep him satisfied with these.”

The man tosses a nervous look over his shoulder at his cat as the music swells with a horror movie-style orchestral stab, then he shakes the bag.

I won’t be buying any.

The popular cat treats are made by Mars, the almost $40 billion pet food and candy multinational that has had its own significant controversies, particularly with the use of slave labor in sourcing particular ingredients. Many of its pet food brands, such as Whiskas, are loaded with cheap carbohydrates and use by-product meal as their primary protein sources.

But I stopped feeding the Budster Temptations before I knew any of that, and for an entirely different reason: The little guy turned into a full-fledged kitty crack addict when he ate them.

Like any cat, Bud loves his treats, but when I fed him Temptations he had a one-track mind: The first thing he’d do in the morning was follow me to the kitchen, sit in front of the treat cabinet and meow incessantly for his precious Temps. It got to the point where he was turning his nose up at wet food he’d always liked and pestering me for Temptations instead. He was going full-on Gollum from Lord of the Rings.

I weaned him off once, stupidly folded less than a year later when I bought a bag for him on impulse (we were out of treats and the grocery store did not have any other kind), and had to wean him off the kitty crack a second time when he returned to his cracktastic ways.

Nowadays the little dude gets natural treats with non by-product meat as the main ingredients, and he behaves like a normal cat: He still loves his snacks, but he doesn’t ignore his wet food and howl at me for kitty crack.

tl;dr: Serve the Temps at your own risk. 🙂