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!
NEW YORK — A ship carrying half a million pounds of frozen turkey was hijacked off shore on Friday night by a criminal gang that appeared to take orders from a cat, authorities said.
MV Fowl Call, a US-flagged cargo freighter, was less than 20 nautical miles from port when it was redirected back toward the ocean and its comms went quiet. Witnesses reported seeing a small cat issuing orders to an assault team and cackling with delight as he padded around on the deck of the freighter.
Several members of the assault team reappeared a few minutes later, holding two men at gunpoint.
“Sample the wares, boss?” one of the pirates asked, opening a case of turkey in front of the cat.
The small tabby leaned forward, took a sniff, then took a cautious bite, his expression impassive.
“T-T-T-TIGHT!” the cat shouted. “Oh, TIGHT, TIGHT, yeah! Oh blue, yellow, pink, whatever man! Keep bringing me that!”
Turkey: Food of the gods.
The crew methodically packed the cases of turkey into three smaller boats, then departed the larger ship, leaving the crew tied up on deck.
A witness told investigators he spotted black-clad men loading cases of frozen turkey into a Los Pollos Hermanos delivery van, then drive off.
“Any suggestion that we were involved in this apparent turkey heist is absurd,” franchise owner Gus “Gustavo” Fringe said. “Los Pollos Hermanos serves the community and supports our police, in addition to serving the most delicious deep-fried chicken and turkey.”
A bizarre new study concludes some cats are depressed because they live with men, among other questionable claims.
A Brazilian research team wanted to find out if cats experience separation anxiety when their owners aren’t home, so they visited the homes of 200 cat servants, wired them up with cameras and microphones, and conducted a rigorous study in which they first established a behavioral baseline, then compared the cats’ normal behavior with their actions when their humans weren’t home.
Just kidding.
In what might be the laziest, most assumptive attempt at conducting animal behavioral research thus far in 2020, the team from Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora handed out questionnaires to 130 cat owners that asked, among other things, about the body language and behavior of their cats when they weren’t at home to witness it.
Did these cat caretakers have Palantirs that allowed them to spy, Sauruman-style, on their kitties at home? Nah.
“Since there weren’t any cameras observing the cats, the owners answered based on evidence from reports by other residents, neighbors or any signs the cat left in the home, such as feces, urine or broken objects, [study author Aline Cristina] Sant’Anna said.”
My neighbor’s friend’s Uber driver, who parked outside for 16 minutes, said my cat looked angry when he briefly appeared in the window, so I’m gonna go ahead and write in this here questionnaire that Mr. Socks has terrible separation anxiety. Yep.
But suppose the data was reliable, instead of fuzzy third-hand accounts from cat owners who quizzed their apparently nosy neighbors about what their cats do in their down time. How do we know a smashed vase is separation anxiety, and not the result of a cat with the zoomies just knocking stuff over?
How do we know a cat who misses the litter box doesn’t have a UTI, or refused to use a dirty box?
But it gets better, dear reader. This team of superstar scientists decided the reason some cats were supposedly depressed or destructive is because they live with male caretakers instead of women:
Cats with behavior problems also tended to live in households without any female adults or more than one female adult; households with owners ages 18 to 35 years old; single pet households; and households with no toys.
“Maybe, for different reasons, the animals raised in households with no female adults or more than one female adult were less likely to develop secure and mentally healthy types of attachments with their owners in the sampled population,” [study author Aline Cristina] Sant’Anna said.
Or maybe the authors are getting paid to make wild, unsupported assumptions and combine them with worthless data.
The CNN version of the story doubles down by quoting a self-appointed expert who expounds on the cats-and-females theory:
Additionally, female cat owners tended to be more affectionate and doting, said Ingrid Johnson, a certified cat behavior consultant for more than 20 years.
Cats might be a little more distressed in the absence of their owners if they are younger adults who are busy and not focused on the fact that they have a pet, the researchers theorized.
“They’re happy to have a pet, but they’re going out, being social, [going on] dates and having parties,” added Johnson.
Right
For those who aren’t keeping score, we now have an academic and a certified behaviorist telling us cats who live with men or adults younger than 35 are more likely to be depressed because they, like, totally heard we don’t scoop the litter boxes as frequently or something.
That’s because all men refuse to be affectionate with their cats, and people under 35 are party animals who snort cocaine off the posteriors of strippers when they should be feeding Fluffy, according to our experts.
Johnson’s credentials include working at a hospital for cats and running her own “cat behavior house call and toy business.”
It’s worth noting that there are dozens of organizations that certify people as cat behaviorists. Sometimes the difference between a certified behaviorist and one without certification is the former simply paid dues to a member group that issues the certificates.
“Where’s the jabroni who claimed men aren’t affectionate with their cats?”
By now my opinion on this study is abundantly clear. The methods and conclusions wouldn’t pass muster in most undergraduate classes, let alone a research paper published in an academic journal. (The researchers published their work to PLOS ONE, an open access journal.)
What I don’t understand is, why bother? According to the study, 13.5 percent of the cats demonstrated at least one behavior consistent with separation anxiety, but for reasons I elaborated on earlier, the data is worthless. I’m not a fan of questionnaire studies in the first place, let alone questionnaire studies asking people what other people told them about difficult-to-interpret animal body language.
And lastly, I’m not a fan of this idea that there’s a certain “type” of person who is the best kind of cat owner.
We should be dispelling crazy cat lady stereotypes, not perpetuating them. Maybe men are in the minority when it comes to adopting cats, but nothing other than unfounded assumption suggests we men aren’t loving and affectionate with our little buddies, just like there’s nothing but anecdotal evidence to suggest caretakers younger than 35 neglect their pets.
The past few years have seen an authentic boom in research into feline cognition, behavior and emotion, and for that I’m grateful. But we can do better than this.
I see you are a cat of taste and culture. Join us in our effort to practice prolific laziness!
There’s this thing Buddy does when he’s been napping on my legs or in my lap and he wants to get down.
Whereas the vast majority of living creatures would simply stand up and hop off, Buddy doesn’t bother with that. He yawns, stretches and shifts his weight forward until he’s hanging off me, then allows himself to sag into a ponderous drop, letting gravity do all the work as he practically oozes onto the floor. He’s like water taking the path of least resistance, committing absolutely no energy to the “effort” of moving.
The sequence is complete when he plops down on the floor like sentient slime — paradoxically furry yet gelatinous — then finally picks himself up to pad toward his bowl, his litterbox or the kitchen, where he’ll stand yowling in three second intervals until I give him a snack just to get him to shut up.
It’s horribly manipulative behavior, and I shouldn’t reward it, but sometimes I do because damn, he’s really, really good at being annoying when he wants to be.
If there were an Olympics for being lazy and annoying, Buddy would be its Michael Phelps, pioneering spectacular new ways to do things without expending a single millicalorie more than is absolutely necessary.
And yet, like all cats, he’ll randomly decide it’s time to release all that hoarded energy at once, trilling an enthusiastic “BRRRRUPPP!” before rocketing around the house, ricocheting like a bullet in a sensory deprivation chamber.
Of course I wouldn’t have it any other way. These quirks are part of Buddy, just like his kitten voice, his unintentionally hilarious behavior and his big heart.
We salute you, dear Buddy, for elevating laziness into an art form.
Participate in our reader survey and tell us what you’d like to see on Buddy’s site!
Hello and welcome to our Spring 2020 reader survey! We here at Pain In The Bud (littlebuddythecat.com) appreciate our readers, all four million of them, and we’d like to know what kind of content YOU want to see on this illustrious blog.
So without further adieu, here are the reader survey questions:
1) How often would you like to see new photos of Buddy?
a) Daily
b) Twice a day
c) Every hour!
2) How much should Buddy charge for his pawtograph?
a) One bag of Temptations turkey flavor.
b) One bag of Blue Buffalo moist turkey treats.
c) A whole turkey.
d) Two (2) cans of delicious turkey pate.
3) Are you interested in stories about other cats?
a) Nope, I just want to read about Buddy!
b) Maybe, but not if that means fewer Buddy stories!
c) Yes. I love all cat stories, but Buddy is my favorite.
4) How would you describe Buddy if you were recommending his site to friends and other cat lovers?
a) He’s roguishly handsome.
b) He has big muscles.
c) He’s roguishly handsome, he has big muscles and he’s incredibly charming.
5) What’s your favorite thing about Buddy?
a) He’s a mastermind! He always comes up with brilliant schemes that never, ever backfire.
b) He’s astonishingly brave! Most cats are terrified of vacuums, kitchen blenders and garbage trucks, but Buddy isn’t like most cats.
c) He’s possessed of exceptional intuition. His powers of deduction, such as his investigation linking Coronavirus to Corona beer, are second to none.
d) He’s remarkably humble. He has the body of Cadonis, the strength of a tiger, the roar of a lion and the stealth of a jaguar melting into the jungle, but he never brags.
6) Have you told your friends and family about Buddy?
a) Does a bear poop in the woods?
b) I never stop talking about him! He’s so dreamy!
c) I have been derelict in my duty to inform others of how delightful he is. I apologize and will correct my error!
Thanks in advance for your answers! Your responses constitute valuable data that we’ll use to improve this blog, and have absolutely nothing to do with massaging Buddy’s ego. Cheers!
Pain In The Bud 