WASHINGTON — When President Buddy launched an offensive against Jazmin and Xerxes, Persian cats belonging to a neighbor, he said he expected the besieged felines to capitulate in “two weeks, maybe three.”
Six weeks later not only have the Persian cats refused to meet the president’s demands, they’ve closed the Passage of Four Moose, a key alley that connects the residential area to the rear of a plaza where dumpsters overflow with with yums discarded by a restaurant, a bagel and breakfast cafe, and a bakery.
Without dumpster food supplementing the meals they get from neighbors, local cats are growing increasingly impatient with the war.
President Buddy dismissed their concerns, saying negotiations were going smoothly shortly before expressing anger that talks with the Persians weren’t moving fast enough.
“My envoys say we’re getting close on a deal,” President Buddy told reporters. “A big, beautiful deal unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. It’s gonna be incredible!”
But just three hours later the president took to his personal social media platform, Meow Social, to issue a direct threat to the felines who continued to defy him.
“If they don’t open the alley, we’re gonna blast them to oblivion!” he wrote. “We’re gonna send them back to the stone ages with the — and by the way, my weapons are very powerful. Everyone says it. Open the alley you crazy bastards!”
The president separately posted an AI generated image of himself “as a physician who just happens to be wearing robes” during his war of words with Leo, an Italian lion and spiritual leader.
Previously, President Buddy had threatened to “destroy,” “obliterate,” “armageddonize,” “vaporize” and “unleash fury the likes of which they’ve never seen” on five different occasions, setting deadlines only to pull back at the last minute because, he said, meows between the parties were more favorable.
A spokescat for the Persians said negotiations were “nowhere close to reaching a resolution” and warned they would keep the alley closed until President Buddy recalled his forces. They also expressed frustration, saying that six weeks into the conflict, they still weren’t sure what the president wants or seeks to accomplish.
“He just rambles about ‘tremendous words’ and ‘powerful numbers,”” one source close to Xerxes and Jazmin meowed. “We were able to get his attention by offering access to the coveted McDonald’s trash bins four blocks away because we know he loves Big Macs, but he insisted we give him yellow cake. We don’t have any cake.”
Despite the Persians’ insistence on a withdrawal, Buddesian forces continued to surround the alley, with the aircat carrier USS Tremendous patrolling one end.
Although President Buddy faces growing concern about the standoff with cats in his own party, he told felines at a Friday rally that a favorable resolution was imminent.
“I wrote the Deal of the Art,” the president told the crowd. “Nobody negotiates like I do. I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like – and friends of mine that are English professors – they say it’s the most brilliant thing they’ve ever seen. So the Persians – and by the way, Tuesday will be litter box day, and food bowl day. They’ll be gone, obliterated in one day. So those are very powerful numbers, and we’re gonna attack the Siamese next.”
