Whether you’re staying home on Valentine’s Day or spending it with your longtime significant other, there’s reason to celebrate with this special Valentine’s Day message from Little Buddy.
Lounging like the Fabio of cats, locking onto the camera with his soulful green eyes, Buddy embodies the romantic aspect of the holiday.
Valentine’s Day With Buddy the Cat
Already a major heartthrob to felines all over the world, Buddy is guaranteed to set human hearts fluttering as well with his meowscular good looks and remarkable charm.
Gaze upon this Adonis of Cats, ye mighty, and tremble!
Buddy the Cupid!
And finally, if you already have enough little buddies in your life, Buddy the Cupid will help you find your significant other…for a nominal fee of canned turkey pate and only during hours not designated for nap time, of course.
Some friendly felines boast five-star ratings in their listings, beating out top restaurants, hotels and nightclubs for highest-rated tourist attractions in their cities.
People have been listing their cats as tourist attractions on Google Maps, drawing five-star reviews from feline fans who come bearing snacks.
Titan the orange tabby, an absolute unit of a chonky cat who lives in Athens and is regularly fed by admirers, as well as “friendly neighborhood cats” in cities like Sydney, Australia, are earning ratings that most restaurateurs would envy.
“Visitors are evaluating a cat’s overall behaviour: enthusiastic purring, chonkiness, politeness and general adorability,” a story in The Guardian notes.
Titan, who likes to hang out in the ruins of the Acropolis, is the venerated subject of hundreds of glowing reviews on Google Maps.
“If there was a king in Athens, it would be him,” one reviewer declared, while another was laconic but no less enthralled: “HE IS GLORIOUS!”
In Sydney, where listing affable cats has become a trend, a moggie simply known as “friendly orange cat” had 117 reviews and a 4.9 rating before someone, presumably the cat’s caretaker, removed the listing.
Friendly orange cat’s listing before it blew up in popularity and the feline’s humans took the little one’s page down. Credit: Google Maps
Perhaps they were concerned F.O.C. was in danger of becoming the next Gacek, a famous chonkster in Poland who was the highest-rated tourist attraction in Szczecin, a city of almost 400,000.
Gacek had his own little house on the street complete with a bed, blankets, a spot where admirers could leave treats, and a note asking them to hold off on feeding him directly because he was gaining too much weight.
While Gacek’s popularity never waned, and in fact increased with each new press story or Youtube video about him, his humans made him an indoor-only cat after too many people ignored their pleas not to feed him. There were also a handful of incidents involving people who tried to take him, which was another factor in the decision to move him inside. It’s a reminder that there are dangers that come with publicly listing cats.
Buddy the Cat was giddy when he learned tourists were visiting specific cats and showering them with treats.
That said, Buddy is enamored with this idea. He envisions a Google Maps listing headlined: “MAGNIFICENT Cat In New York!” and a court of sorts where he can lounge on a gilded throne with red velvet cushions while “supplicants” line up to pay tribute to him in Tempations and Sheba Meaty Sticks.
“Your Grace, it is my life’s honor to greet your esteemed personage and to tell you that I have always been…”
“Yes, yes! What are those, crunchies? Leave them at the base of the steps to my dais and move along, there’s a whole crowd of people here who want to lavish snacks on me. Did anyone here bring any of those soft Blue turkey treats? Well, step forward! Lay ’em on me!”
It really is his dream: to get attention and an endless supply of snacks without having to actually do anything. He could spend the entire day lounging and napping, and people will simply bring him food and give him head scratches when he wants them.
Although, now that I think about it, I’m not sure how that’s really different than the arrangement he has now.
Dissatisfied with the limited variety of flavors and textures in his regular meal rotation, Buddy the Cat unveiled a sweeping new sanctions package designed to force his human to do better.
NEW YORK — Angry over his servant’s failure to broaden his selection of regular meals, Buddy the Cat announced new sanctions on Saturday aimed at forcing the uncooperative human to comply.
“President Buddy feels he’s been patient and magnanimous in dealing with his human’s shortcomings, but even a saint’s patience has limits,” Buddy’s spokesman told reporters. “This new sanctions package clearly communicates President Buddy’s disappointment and ensures swift compliance.”
The sanctions include prohibitive measures against sleep duration and quality, with Buddy promising to yowl at regular intervals and to wake his human by slapping him in the face every morning.
In addition, affection will be cut by 50 percent, increasing to 75 percent within two weeks if there is no improvement in the variety of flavors and textures of wet food served to Buddy.
“Buddy has made it clear that he expects more than a simple rotation of turkey, chicken and salmon pate,” the feline’s spokesman said. “He wants chunky tuna, he wants beef, he wants shredded duck served in gravy.”
President Buddy had threatened to pull his ambassadors and enact legislation declaring all shoes, sneakers and boots as legal litter boxes if the cheese sharing protocol was not observed. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The latest round of sanctions follows the Buddesian Diplomatic Crisis of 2023, when Buddy threatened to begin using his Big Buddy’s shoes, boots and sneakers as litter boxes in retaliation for the latter failing to “equitably share cheese as per article IV, sub-clause C of the gastronomic distribution protocol.”
All-out war was avoided when both parties agreed that Little Buddy’s share of Gouda, American, provolone and other cheeses, excluding ricotta, feta and mozzarella, would be increased by 15 percent.
Buddy the Cat’s quest for world domination has moved into the realm of music. Listen to the new single here!
NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat made history as the first feline to top the charts in multiple genres this week with the release of “Move Your Ass” by The Buddies.
Listen to it here, but before you do, make room to get funky. (“And use proper headphones or speakers please!” Buddy says. “Don’t do us dirty by playing it through a phone or a laptop. You’ll miss all the bassy goodness that makes it funky!”)
The incredibly funktacular nu-disco track pays homage to the talented feline, who played guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion, while his human assisted him with certain particulars that required an opposable thumb.
“Obviously I could have done this on my own,” Buddy says, “but I like my human to feel like he’s involved in things, you know? Camaraderie and all that. But for future documentaries, ‘Behind the Music’ episodes and other retrospectives, it should be clear I’m the musical genius and the talent. The brains and the brawn, so to speak. Also the beauty. Obviously.”
“Move Your Ass” hit the top of Japan’s pop charts after an early release on Jan. 20 in that country, while it’s dominated the dance music charts in Luxembourg, the Principality of Sealand, Monaco and France. After its Jan. 30 release in the US and UK, it was steadily climbing the charts on Spotify and terrestrial radio.
Asked about his musical influences, Buddy waxed poetic about the funk, disco, French house and nu-disco he grew up listening to.
“From my earliest days of kittenhood, I remember Big Buddy playing Earth, Wind and Fire, Kool and the Gang, McFadden and Whitehead, The Brothers Johnson, Daft Punk, the Galactik Knights and Televisor. I love Televisor! I would dance around and joyfully smack my human on the head, then go hide in his shoes.”
Buddy’s already hard at work on his next single, which he promises “will be just as delicious as this one.”
A 23-second clip of a cat growling and yowling has become one of the most-used sound effects over the past three decades. The Guardian traced the clip back to the man who recorded it and got the full story.
We’ve all heard Cheeta the cat yowling, we just don’t know it.
Cheeta was a house cat who belonged to Wylie Stateman, a sound engineer who lives in LA.
In 1988, Stateman recorded an argument between Cheeta, a “remarkably small” half-Siamese void, and her mate, a tomcat named Sylvester.
The 23-second clip made it onto The Premiere Edition, a 20-CD library of sound effects Stateman produced in 1990.
Stateman, called “one of the great recorders of the time” by a colleague, told The Guardian he brought his sound recorder with him everywhere he went for three decades, recording thousands of sounds that have been used in movies for 35 years.
Buddy is also an accomplished sound effects cat.
Cheeta’s yowls are one of his greatest successes. The cranky cat can be heard in Toy Story, Home Alone 3, Les Miserables, Pet Sematary, 101 Dalmations, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Babe, End of Days, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and many more.
Although it’s difficult to get an exact count, it’s believed Cheeta’s distinct voice can be heard in some 330 films over the years. If you’re interested in learning more, check out The Guardian’s deep dive into the sound effect and its origins.
Buddy the Magnanimous
I went to visit my brother and his family in Washington this past week, leaving Buddy in the care of my mom.
Regular readers will recall that Bud has a bad reputation for trying to maul his cat sitters, which obviously complicates things.
The incorrigible little lunatic.
Sue, his regular sitter, has known Bud since he was a kitten. She’s literally one of the first humans he met, yet that has not stopped him from ambushing and attacking her. Incredibly, she still agrees to care for him in my absence despite his belligerence, though she’ll no longer play with him. She feeds him and gets out ASAP. I can’t blame her.
This time my mom cared for the little stinker. He’s also tried to murder her when she’s watched him on previous occasions, including one incident in which his bites and scratches necessitated a trip to urgent care and a round of antibiotics.
So yeah, the happy news is that he didn’t attack her this time, although she told me every time she came back, he’d be waiting right by the door, and when he saw it wasn’t me, he would sniff derisively before turning and padding away.
They have an uneasy truce, but I’ll take it. You know you have small dreams when you celebrate a trip in which your cat doesn’t try to maul anyone in your absence.
On a tangential note, I had a first phone interview with a wild cat conservation organization this week, and for the first time in a long time, Bud didn’t make a peep.
He’s meowed loudly during other phone interviews, he’s put his butt in front of the camera like it’s his job during video calls, and he won’t shut up at any other time, but the one time when having a cat might benefit me, he decides to be silent. Thanks, Bud. You’re the best.
Pain In The Bud 