“Cat shaming” can include photos of cats with handwritten signs listing their crimes, or it can be as simple as photos of cats in action, doing what they do best. Like this little guy, who is presented with evidence of his malfeasance and responds with a look that says: “Yep. I did that shit!”
“Yep, that was me. I thought you’d admire the precise cut and clawmanship on display in this piece.”
Or this cat, who waited until the coast was clear to hop up on the kitchen counter and turn a bowl of rice into an improvised litter box:
“Not a litter box, you say? It is now!”
Then there’s the classic cat-shaming, the handwritten signs confessing things like “I gave all the furniture the distressed look,” or “I folded the carpet over my poop to make a poop sandwich, then sat on it”:
There’s even a variety of cat-shaming calendars:
I don’t have a good cat-shaming photo to hand. I know I’ve got at least one of Bud caught red-handed as he’s scratching the couch, laying there frozen with his paw against the fabric and a “This isn’t what it looks like!” look on his face. It’s likely in the bowels of an old hard drive in a folder of unsorted photos, so I’ll have to do some hunting.
Aside from infrequently scratching the couch (even though he’s got a massive tower scratcher and he uses it all the time), Buddy’s biggest “crime” is his unwavering commitment to swiping every moveable object off of all existing flat surfaces at home.
We’ve reached an uneasy sort of truce in which I don’t hassle him about swiping less important, usually unbreakable stuff — like bottles of water or hand sanitizer — as long as he doesn’t swipe anything fragile. And by fragile, he seems to understand objects made of hard material with a bit of heft to them are not to be swiped. For the most part he gets it.
So, my friends: What about your cats? How do they misbehave?
Buddy wants a name that better reflects his personality.
NEW YORK — After seeing photos of Gandalf, a tabby who grew a magnificent coat worthy of his namesake after he was rescued, Buddy the Cat demanded a more epic name on Monday, sources said.
“Look at this one,” Buddy said, waving a paw at an Instagram page for Grolgoth the Unstoppable, a four-year-old tuxedo from Skokie, Illinois.
“Or even something like this guy,” Buddy scrolled to a photo of a pantherine black cat named Razorclaw. “Why can’t I be a Razorclaw, a Duke Destructo or an Ares the Annihilator? Come to think of it, what the heck is a Buddy?”
The annoyed cat looked up the definition of his name, becoming even more perturbed at the Miriam-Webster entry:
“What am I, a furry little toddler? I mean come on!”
“I mean, you could’ve named me something awesome like Brutus the Bone Cruncher,” Buddy complained to his human, Big Buddy. “Or Maximus! Or…or Steel Fang!”
(Above: Gandalf a year ago when he was rescued, left, and Gandalf now with his badass beard.)
As of press time, Buddy’s human reminded him that even his own toys terrify him, and the last time he got scared, he hid behind Big Buddy’s leg and cried.
“Those are false allegations!” Buddy said. “Retract them, or I shall poop in your shoes when you least expect it!”
The Floppy Fish has been a big hit with other cats. How will the Budster respond to it?
The toy: Floppy Fish, a rechargeable, lithium-ion battery powered soft toy fish that flops around to simulate the behavior of real fish and trigger cats’ predatory instincts.
Price: Between $15 and $25 online and in pet stores. The toy is sold as Floppy Fish, Flippity Fish, Floppy Fishy, Fish Cat Kicker and other names. Some come with catnip and a pouch inside the fish for “infusing” the toy with the ‘nip.
The cat: Buddy
The result: After charging the fish with its included charging cable, I located the on switch and set the fish on the floor, where it started doing its flopping thing.
A cautious but curious Buddy approached. I could see the gears turning in his head: “What is this thing? Is it for me? It must be. Big Buddy placed it on the floor and called to me, and now he’s looking expectantly at me.
But…it’s scary! Look at it flipping and flopping! That’s terrifying! Oh man. I don’t like the sound it’s making. Look, it’s getting closer! Run!
Okay. Safe distance. It’s stopped flopping. Now I can approach, give it a sniff, maybe slap it with my paw and…
It’s moving again!!! RUN!!!
Is this what salmon is like? I don’t think I can ever eat fish again. Who knew they were such terrifying monsters?
I have to hide. It should be all right if I come out in an hour, right?”
Verdict: This is obviously a well-received cat toy, as it’s got positive ratings online and there are plenty of Youtube videos showing cats having fun with it. It’s lithium-ion rechargeable, so you won’t have to buy separate batteries, and it’s motion-activated with an off timer so the battery won’t drain during periods of inactivity. Overall it looks and feels pretty durable.
However, if your cat is incredibly brave and daring a big wimp, it may not be the toy for him or her. Bud’s 0 for 3 so far on attempted play sessions.
Buddy may yet come around and relax enough around the fish to play with it. If he does, I’ll update this post accordingly.
Cats were recognized for their efforts to transform laziness into an art form.
NEW YORK — Domestic cats swept the Laziest Species category at the 212th Annual Animal Awards on Friday night.
Accepting the award on behalf of all cats, Chonkmatic the Magnificent waddled on stage, took a short nap, then was helped up to the podium, where he yawned and addressed the audience.
“Thank you!” Chonkmatic said, allowing others to hoist the award for him. “We didn’t work hard at all to earn this recognition, and that makes it even more satisfying.”
Chonkmatic went on to list several other cats who made the award possible by demonstrating remarkable laziness, before handing off the list to his assistant so he could be carried off stage for a snack and another nap.
Jaguars, the apex predators of South America, were recognized in the wild cat category for the remarkable achievement of ruling more than two million square miles of rainforest while napping approximately 70 percent of the time.
Prolific nappers: Panthera Onca, the jaguar.
The big cats of the Amazon prerecorded an acceptance speech because the award show was scheduled to interfere with their napping schedule.
“We are honored to receive this award,” Ahau-K’in, the King of Jaguars, said in the message. “If you could just deliver it to us, that’d be great. In fact, you can leave it at the Temple of Palenque, but bring it up the stairs, mind. We don’t want to have to drag that thing up here.”
Buddy the Cat sleeping on Big Buddy the Human.
Sharing in the recognition was Buddy the Cat, who “showed us all that a new style of napping is possible by training our humans never to move if we’re sleeping on top of them.”
“The New York cat also developed new techniques for prompting humans to deliver snacks directly to their feline overlords,” the judges wrote. “After all, why should we come running at the sound of a crinkly bag being opened? The snacks should be placed before us, requiring as little effort as possible to eat them and leaving more time for yawning, stretching and lazing.”
BRING THE SNACKS TO ME.
Chonkmatic the Cat has been chosen to negotiate on behalf of all living beings on Earth. Credit: SPCA of Wake County
MeowTalk uses machine learning and algorithmic AI to learn cat vocalizations and what they mean.
It’s gonna be the future soon, and I can’t wait!
It was only a matter of time before someone leveraged machine learning and algorithmic AI to parse cat vocalizations, and thanks to Javier Sanchez, translating your cat’s meows — and trills, huffs and chirps — is now a reality.
Sanchez was a member of Amazon’s machine learning team contributing to the development of Alexa, the now-ubiquitous virtual assistant operated by voice commands.
“I got to see how the sausage was made, how they train their models and work with all the data science platforms,” Sanchez said. “So I was fresh off the heels of that and I was thinking, ‘Well, we could do something similar with cats and it could be an app.’”
Sanchez with his cat.
Sanchez’s new employers at the tech firm Akvelon saw promise in the idea and gave him the green light.
The resulting app, MeowTalk, is now available on iOS and Android.
There are two layers to the concept: The first one involves nine or 10 “intents” common to all or most cats. They include vocalizations for “Feed me,” “Hey human!”, “Let me out,” and “Pay attention to me,” among others.
Sanchez didn’t guess or intuit the meanings — they’re based on research by a team at the University of Milan, who built a data set of cat vocalizations by attaching tiny microphones to cats and recording everything the fluffsters say. Each feline utterance was analyzed and catalogued by frequency, rhythmic quality and context, among other traits.
Two cats who participated in the University of Milan study: Note the small black microphones on their collars.
The second layer is where it starts to get really interesting: By using MeowTalk like Shazam, the app will start recording your cat’s particular trills, chirps and meows and — with your help — eventually piece together what they mean.
As with dictation software and machine learning in general, the more data the app gets, the better its translations become.
This is important because, while cats share many sounds, each cat develops its own unique vocalizations:
With MeowTalk, you can create a profile for your cat and start using its auto-recognition to translate your cat’s meows and start mapping its language. While some translations are built-in and inherent to the app, translations specific to your cat require you to train the app to recognize your cat’s specific vocabulary and intentions. Translations you deem to be incorrect can be corrected via the app. MeowTalk is not static; instead it learns and evolves with each translation that you confirm, adding to its corpus, just as we would add new words into our own memory banks or language processing programs.
At the same time thousands of other cat owners are also using the app, feeding the algorithm more data, which the app uses to improve itself. Development is ongoing, with future changes reflective of user (and cat) feedback.
“A tool like this can help certain people bond even more with their cats, especially if they can’t be in contact with other people on a regular basis,” Sanchez said. “So this could be a real game changer for a key demographic that have cats.”
MeowTalk’s user interface.
Applying what they’re learning via the app, Sanchez and his team are also working toward their next goal: Giving your cat a human voice. They’re developing a small device that clips on a cat’s collar and translates meows into human speech in real time.
That tech has the potential to give me nightmares. Imagine Buddy having a human voice and saying “Gimme snacks now, servant!” “Open the door, butler!” “You’re 23 seconds late with dinner!”
Maybe I’ll pass on the collar device. In the meantime I plan to download the iOS version of MeowTalk and give it a spin. I’ll report back in a week or two after giving it some time to adjust to the Budster. If any of our readers give it a shot, we’d like to hear your impressions as well.
Did you know? The Buddinese language includes 22 separate words for “jerk” and 37 different ways of demanding food.
Pain In The Bud 