Twix and Gollum are in the process of converting my brother’s family into their dedicated servants.
My nieces have wanted a cat for a long time, but my brother and his wife had a few good reasons to hold off.
First and foremost, they were moving to a new country, and adding pets to a complex move that includes furniture, belongings and a long flight — plus adjusting to an entirely new country, new jobs and new schools — was a hassle they didn’t want.
In addition, I know they all deeply miss their dog, Cosmo, who passed away in the summer of 2023. Heck, I miss the little dude dearly. If he hadn’t burrowed his way into my heart, I wouldn’t have even thought of adopting a little buddy of my own.
But the Cat Distribution System cares little for the plans of mere mortals, and when my brother and his family arrived at their new home in coastal Italy, they soon discovered it came with a cat: Twix, a fixed calico who lives on the property.
It wasn’t long before the friendly Twix established that these new humans could be trusted, which is when she introduced an orange tabby who is either her brother or companion. No one’s quite sure.
Now my nieces have two cats to play with, and they’re making Bud look bad. As cats who have lived outdoors on the property, they’re much more accustomed to noise and change, and they adjust more quickly. Buddy, by contrast, is used to a quiet apartment with me, and while he is friendly to guests, he’s also a bit wary of kids.
Here are Twix and Gollum:
In the meantime, Buddy’s second term as President of the Americats is chugging along. After recognizing the need for a new denomination, President Buddy has introduced the new $11 cat dollar bill featuring his presidential likeness:
We’re not sure a powdered wig is a particularly good look for the little fellow, but I know better than to raise that concern.
Why would anyone need an $11 bill, you ask? Because cats don’t have pockets, so they don’t do change!
Cat dollars are legal feline tender and entitle the bearer to the equivalent value in cat food cans or snacks, when presented at any accredited feline bank.
Buddy, pleased with his new currency, has ordered his treasury to get started on a new $7 cat bill, which will also feature his likeness.
The makers of Temptations want you to feed your cats more snacks, as if they don’t get enough!
In yet another indication that some people don’t seem to pay attention to their feline masters, the Wall Street Journal reports on Mars and its internal operation “Cattitude,” which as far as I can tell amounts to a few people within the company realizing they haven’t squeezed every last dollar of revenue from people who have cats.
That’s a problem, the company realized, because more people are adopting cats, younger generations are more likely to adopt felines, and anyone who hasn’t had their head in the sand knows the little ones rule the internet with their cuteness.
Through “Cattitude,” which apparently involves everything from executives walking around the office wearing cat ears, to handing out “I Love Cats” decals and consulting with “cat parents” on products, the company says it’s identified a “treat gap” between felines and canines, with dogs as the far more frequent beneficiary of yums:
“Feline insecurity can be self-fulfilling. If you think your cat doesn’t care, you might be less likely to shower them with perks. That may be why dogs get way more treats.
Mars launched a campaign in May that spotlights the “treat gap” by the numbers: Dogs are nearly 32% more likely to get daily treats than cats in dogs-only and cats-only households; in homes with both, 38% of parents said they don’t give the same number of treats.“
The story does not say how the company arrived at those numbers. Probably market research in the form of surveys. Not exactly scientific, as these things go.
This is one of those stories that makes me wonder if these people actually have cats.
From the moment I wake up until the second I settle into bed, Bud shrieks at me for snacks. He won’t even let me stumble into the bathroom before the first shrill reminders. He demands snacks before dinner, after dinner, after he’s had snacks, and sometimes while he’s eating them.
If he could speak English and hold a bull horn, I have no doubt he’d spend the majority of his day blasting the demands into my ears: “MOAR SNACKS, BIG BUDDY! MOAR! MOAR!”
Mars should know this. One of its most popular products, Temptations, turns cats into slobbering addicts. I had to wean the Budster off them, then stupidly bought them again months later and had to wean him off the Temps again because he has a one-track mind when they’re in his bloodstream. Two are not enough. Six are not enough. Ten are not enough.
One time, I left a big tub of the damn things unattended for a minute and he managed to pop the top off by knocking it off the coffee table. When I walked back into the living room, he was dragging his jaw along the floor like a bulldozer, inhaling as many as was felinely possible into his little mouth.
Frantically, I shooed him away and began picking them up, but the damage was done. He threw up a few minutes later. Then he shrieked for more!
He always looks innocent, doesn’t he?
Interestingly, the WSJ notes that if you type “Does my cat” into Google, the first two auto-complete suggestions are “Does my cat love me?” and “Does my cat know I love her?”
And that brings us to a point on which I agree with the people at Mars: cats still aren’t well understood.
Dogs happily slobber over their people. Cats show their love in subtle ways, like proximity, head bunting and momentary contact.
Just like the whole “cats love milk” thing is half myth, half misunderstanding, so is the idea that your cat doesn’t love you unless he’s leaping into your arms to hug you as saccharine orchestral music swells in the background.
While there are always outliers, most cats don’t like being hugged or picked up, and most have hard limits when it comes to the amount of physical affection they’ll tolerate. It’s not because they don’t care for us, but because they’re semi-domesticated carnivores who still retain the skittish tendencies of their wild brethren, and because they get easily overstimulated, among other reasons.
If Mars’ Cattitude is an ongoing thing, I hope the decision-makers in the company come to what I believe are two of the most important conclusions to keep in mind when it comes to cats. Giving them your love means giving them your time and attention, and treating them like the sentient, emotional creatures they are.
The best piece of advice I ever got was to always take your cat’s emotions into consideration.
It really is that simple.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have snacks to dispense.
“I found myself subconsciously rationing my popcorn as I sat in the theater,” one critic wrote of the harrowing experience that is ‘The Empty Bowl.’
With a Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 94 percent and an equally enthusiastic reception by fans, Buddy the Cat’s directorial debut. “The Empty Bowl,” has already cemented his place among the modern masters of the horror genre.
The movie follows Dubby, a tabby cat from New York who awakens one day to find his human gone, and most horrifically, his food bowl essentially empty, with just a few morsels pushed to the sides of the ominously hollow container.
Time is measured in the growls of Dubby’s stomach and the lengthening shadows inside his domicile as a sinister score ratchets up the tension.
“Buddy the Cat presents a master class in exploring trauma via the absence of yums,” Associated Press critic Misty Lemire wrote. “We feel Dubby’s hunger as he carefully rations out his remaining pieces of kibble, made worse by the unknowns in front of him: when will Dubby’s human return? Will it be five minutes from now, or five hours? What if there’s nothing left in the cat food cupboard, and he has to go to the store? These are harrowing questions the audience is asked to ponder.”
The film “makes us feel Dubby’s hunger on a visceral level,” feline horror aficionado site YummyDisgusting noted in its review.
Indeed, test audiences indicated they “felt guilty” chowing down as they watched Dubby writhe with hunger.
“I found myself subconsciously rationing my popcorn as I sat in the theater,” New York Times critic Meowchio Mewkatani wrote. “How could I enjoy the buttery goodness in the bucket on my lap as Dubby’s stomach growled in excruciating Dolby surround sound? This is a film that really makes you stop and consider.”
The director told reporters he “wanted to tap into authentic fear, not the fantasy violence that often comes with genre cinema.”
“Obviously there’s something aesthetically primal about an evil, slobbering dog emerging from the shadows,” he said. “But I’m interested in pushing boundaries, not taking the well-padded path. The fear that our minds create is often much more terrifying than any trope.”
In one particularly brutal sequence, Dubby’s human returns home toting several heavy grocery bags, and the snap of a tin can of tuna opening is precisely timed to the crescendo of the orchestral score.
The camera focuses on the meaty morsels tumbling into the bowl, landing with saliva-inducing, moist thuds.
Dubby races toward the feast, his tongue comes within millimeters of the juicy tuna…and he awakes tragically in a cold sweat to find himself laying in a still-empty apartment rendered dark as the last of the sun’s rays disappear over the horizon.
“If that doesn’t hit you right in the feels,” Lemire wrote, “then you’re not a real feline.”
Sheba and a geneticist who specializes in cats are looking for felines descended from ancient Egypt’s royal buddies.
“You may call me Budtum Ra Budhotep Bhufu Amun Buddeses, human. Now serve me!”
Bud’s already enormous ego just got a little bigger after I used Sheba’s Pharaoh Cat Finder to analyze his pharaohness.
The online tool says he’s up to 75 percent pharaoh:
I didn’t do it entirely out of altruism to give the little guy an ego boost. The winner of the Pharaoh Cat contest gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Bud’s been eating Sheba for 10 years. We’ve never endorsed any particular cat food here on PITB, partly because every cat is different, some have special nutritional needs and what works for one furry overlord may not work for another.
But as food motivated as he is, Buddy cannot scarf down more than half a can of wet food at a time, and he’s an enormous pain in the Bud when it comes to leftovers, so Sheba’s Perfect Portions saves me from wasting food.
While the online Pharaoh Cat Finder tool looks like it may be RNG combined with clever marketing, there’s a genetic basis for the search. The company is working with Dr. Leslie A. Lyons, a geneticist who specializes in the DNA of our furry little friends at the University of Missouri’s Feline Genetics and Comparative Medicine Lab.
The legendary funerary mask of pharaonic feline Buddankhamun Budstet Ra Budshepsut, Buddy’s royal Egyptian ancestor. Credit: The Grand Museum of Magnificent Feline Stuff
Lyons was part of a research team that extracted DNA from mummified cats buried in ancient Egyptian tombs and sequenced their genetic code.
While the project verified that the Egyptians domesticated cats long before they began mummifying them and affording them revered status, Lyons says a DNA sequence from the ancient felines “has only been found in cats in Egypt and the U.S., unlocking even more questions to be explored.”
“We are looking at mitochondrial DNA only found in these pharaoh cats and a few cats in the U.S. So it’s really hard to find these cats, hence this hunt with Sheba pet food,” she said. “We’re on that quest to find the cats that went from Egypt into the U.S. and are the divine cats of the pharaohs. They should be worshiped like they were.”
The Temple of Amun Bud is guarded by gold statues of domestic cats instead of sphynxes. Credit: National Gallery of Buddesian Artifacts
I don’t think there’s any doubt that the aptly named Dr. Lyons is on team cat.
So here’s to hoping Bud gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Dr. Lyons is successful in her quest to find the elusive pharaoh cat lineage. In the meantime, we should probably start work on an impressive new pyramid here in the US, lest we disappoint our new feline pharaoh.
A woman taunts her cat with ultra-processed snacks, then laughs at his disgusted reaction when he gets a taste. The “cute” video has gone viral.
From the bowels of TikTok comes the latest “cute” video of an attention monger abusing her cat, this time by feeding him Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
The user opened the bag in front of Butters the cat, waved the Cheetos in his face, held them up to his nose, then feebly protested “These are my snacks! It’s spicy!” after getting the little dude interested.
She allowed Butters to eat Cheetos from her hand and lick her fingers, and his reaction is about what you’d expect from an obligate carnivore who just ate ultra-processed food made from cheap corn filler, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and cancer-causing artificial food dyes. He’s disgusted and uncomfortable.
“You can’t have these! Let me wave them in your face and taunt you, so you know you can’t have them! Haha, isn’t that clever?”
The difference is, Butters can’t guzzle milk or water to wash the taste away, so he settles for angrily swatting at his human while she laughs at him.
The woman thought her video was so clever, she’s shared it online and is enjoying the cheap dopamine hit that comes with accumulating internet points, aka likes.
Here’s a question for people who make social media “content” at the expense of their pets: how many likes are worth destroying the trust between you and your cat(s)?
I’m sure some people think I’m a scold, but all it takes is one clown to start a viral trend, and then all of a sudden you have thousands of people, all of them desperate for validation from strangers on the internet, foisting Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Takis on their unsuspecting cats. As a general rule, the dumbest and most abusive trends go viral.
Pain In The Bud 