cat lovers – Pain In The Bud

An Actress Might Lose Out On An Oscar Because She Says She Hates Cats

The reaction says volumes about our society’s sense of proportionality, our collective understanding of animals, and our ability to politely disagree on topics we feel strongly about.

This hasn’t been a great week for feline PR.

Not only did two celebrities come out with bizarrely forceful anti-cat sentiments, but from their statements, they both “hate” cats because they’ve misinterpreted feline behavior.

The fallout hasn’t been good either, for the actress and rapper involved, or for the more extreme animal lovers who have responded with disproportionate rage.

The first comes from rapper Docheii, who insists cats “genuinely aren’t friendly animals.”

“yall be scratched and beat tf up by your own animals I can’t lmaoooo,” the towering intellect from Florida wrote on social media.

Cats, she asserted, “don’t wanna be domesticated.”

Presumably she got that information from the Pew Center for Feline Public Opinion, and the rest of us simply aren’t privy to the latest opinion polls among cats. And here I thought our furry friends were mostly ambivalent about anything that doesn’t involve napping, playing and eating. (I took an informal poll of Bud. He responded with a simple “Fetch me a snack, will you, human?”)

A promo shot of Doechii, real name Jaylah Ji’mya Hickmon

Regardless, even if there was some way to ascertain how cats feel about a process their ancestors initiated — one that takes thousands of years to result in speciation — it’s irrelevant. The decision was made 10,000 years ago when The First Kitteh was drawn to a human settlement by the promise of rodential prey in abundance.

Modern cats have no more say in the matter than we have in our ancestors slaughtering dodos. It happened. We can’t change the past.

The actress vs the ‘pedigree bitch’

The second bit of anti-feline sentiment comes from Jessie Buckley, an Irish actress who is weirdly proud of forcing her husband to ditch his two pet cats when they began dating. She talks as if she’s been waging a personal war against the species, and her reason for disliking felines also indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their behavior.

Buckley’s comments were made on a podcast late in 2025, but resurfaced this week and went viral as her Oscar buzz reached its peak. On the podcast, Buckley said one of her husband’s cats was a “pedigree model bitch” who was orchestrating a “coup” against her.

She thinks the cat had it out for her: “I’d come home and there’d just be, like, poo on my pillow.”

This is actually sad, because people who really know cats, who understand why they behave certain ways, will immediately understand that they don’t have accidents out of spite. If the cat was eliminating outside her litter box, there was a legitimate underlying problem causing her a great deal of stress.

She could have been injured, she could have been sick, or she could have been plagued by the cumulative stress brought on by the presence of a hostile woman who ludicrously saw her as competition. Our furry friends are much more perceptive than generally realized, especially when it comes to our emotional states, and Buckley’s hostility would have been immediately apparent.

Buckley with co-star Paul Mezcal, who was equally enthusiastic in his intense dislike of felines, telling an interviewer: “Yeah, f— cats!”

Alas, Buckley didn’t reluctantly ask her then-boyfriend to give up his cats. She demanded it, then did a victory lap when he complied, which makes me suspect she was merely taking the whip out for a test drive before further commitment. If he’s willing to abandon two pets, he’s almost certainly going to be a pushover when she begins to prune his friends from his life, starts dressing him the way she likes, maybe even monitors his phone. *shudder*

“It’s me or the cats,” Buckley said she told her husband. “But I won!”

Congratulations, I guess?

The rage of cat lovers

As ludicrous as it seems, the backlash may cost Buckley an Oscar. Personally I don’t keep up with the approximately 200 awards ceremonies actors hold to fete themselves annually, but apparently Buckley turned in a solid performance in a movie called Hamnet.

She was considered the front-runner for an Academy Award. Now critics are openly wondering about her chances.

As always, these sorts of statements reveal a lot more about the people involved than they do about cats. I just wish people understood the species a little better, so maybe attitudes won’t default to anger or hostility if, say, a scared cat scratches a person who corners her, or a kitty with a stomach bug pukes on the carpet.

When a toddler gets sick, we don’t respond by yelling at the kid, blaming him and chasing him off. We make sure he’s okay, give him some medicine or take him to the doctor, and clean up the mess. Cats are essentially furry little toddlers, with the same innocence as children. When we adopt them, we agree to care for them.

Both Buckley and Docheii have been hammered on social media since their comments went viral, and it’s important to address that too. They expressed opinions. That doesn’t make them “pieces of s—,” “worthless human beings,” “scum” or any of the other nasty things some people have been saying.

We can disagree with them without overreacting, even in the age of dehumanizing online conversation.

Maintain yourselves!

And honestly, it makes all of us look bad. The day Walter Palmer returned to work is forever seared into my mind. Palmer was the American dentist who infamously and illegally lured Cecil the lion out of a protected area and killed him to take his head as a trophy in 2015.

Worse, Palmer — who had a history of getting in trouble for breaking the law while hunting — killed Cecil with a bow and arrow in order to claim some meaningless hunting record for himself and bungled the point-blank kill shot his guides had lined up for him. Cecil, who was an iconic lion with a distinct mane, suffered for hours before he died.

People were understandably angry, and protesters showed up outside Palmer’s office the day he returned to work. Most of them behaved themselves. But as Palmer made his way toward the front door of his dental practice, one of the protesters let loose a blood-curdling scream and shouted “WAAAAALTER PAAAAALMER!“, vowing vengeance for Cecil.

Palmer returning to work while media and protesters crowd him.

That moment of unhinged, unregulated rage overshadowed the good intentions of every person who registered their displeasure calmly and politely — and provided ample ammunition to those who enjoy painting all animal lovers as lunatics.

Buckley and Doechii expressed opinions we don’t like, and that’s their right. The best thing we can do is explain why they’ve misinterpreted feline behavior, and show them that cats really are loving, friendly animals — it just takes a little patience and trust. I say that as the faithful servant of a cat who can be particularly prickly and a complete lovebug, depending on the circumstance.

In the meantime, celebrities who hate cats should probably take a pass on broadcasting their intense dislike and save themselves the resulting headache. Sadly, we no longer have any sense of proportionality when it comes to disagreements, and no one gets a fair shake when things are litigated via social media.

Man Wilts Under Cat’s Disapproving Gaze In Humorous New Apple Ad

Every cat lover’s camera roll is dominated by photos of our fluffy little overlords. It’s the natural order of things.

I’ve always said Bud’s silent treatment can be worse than his vocal protests when it comes to gauging the intensity of his disapproval.

Howling at me to fetch him a snack? That’s normal. Sitting down two feet away and fixing me with his wide-eyed, accusatory stare as I eat a snack without getting one for him? Now that’s serious.

Andreas Nilsson, the director of a new ad highlighting a recently-introduced Apple feature, clearly understands the hierarchy of feline displeasure:

In the spot, a man uses Apple Intelligence to remove his cat, Garrett, from a photo he just snapped of his wife relaxing and reading a book.

“Look, I deleted Garrett,” he says, holding up the photo and clearly expecting something along the lines of “Wow, that’s a pretty cool feature!”

Instead, she gives him a dry “I always knew you hated Garrett” and goes back to her book.

But Garrett himself doesn’t have to utter a single meow. His reproachful gaze is all the prompting the man needs to undo his mistake with the tap of his screen.

The commercial ends with a slow close-in on Garrett’s face, which has “You’re on thin ice, human!” written all over it.

I like this spot. The creative team took a risk in showing off a new feature in a way that made the characters react negatively, but cat people will love it, and viewers aren’t likely to forget what they saw.

Android users have had something very much like it for quite a while now. Sometimes it really does work the way it does in the commercials, with seamless results, but other images are a bit more difficult to clean up and require some manual tinkering. If Apple’s figured out a way to measurably improve this sort of thing, that’s a pretty big positive for the future of smartphone photography and editing.

In any case, cheers to Nilsson for knowing who holds real power in human-feline households. Now if you’ll excuse me, the king is demanding my attention, no doubt to have me scratch his chin, open a door for him, or serve him second breakfast…

“She’s Like,’Where Are The Snacks?'”: Smithsonian Big Cat Keeper On Working With Tigers And Lions

“Oh my God, this is my job every day!” Charlie Shaw says of his position as a big cat keeper at one of America’s most well-known and well-funded zoos.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work with big cats, WTOP has a new interview with Charlie Shaw, a big cat keeper at the Smithsonian National Zoo.

Hint: it involves a lot of meat, physical enrichment, olfactory enrichment, and checking on the felids to make sure they’re healthy.

Shaw starts his day by feeding the hungry apex predators, including Damai, a 16-year-old tiger who wants all the snacks, and Vostok, a fast-growing young Amur tiger who doesn’t know a genetically-compatible mate is arriving in short order, and he’ll get to be a dad if things go well.

The genetic matches are carefully made to avoid inbreeding and give the species the best chance to recover.

“Tigers are critically endangered,” Shaw told WTOP. “What we want to do is make sure the gene pool itself is still very diverse.”

Vostok loves to swim. Credit: Charlie Shaw/Smithsonian National Zoo

Shaw says he’s working his dream job.

“You walk in and the tigers all chuff at you, or the lions roar. And you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, this is my job every day!’”

THAT story

I’m aware of it, and I think every person concerned about the welfare of cats should at least know it’s happening.

But it’s also extremely distressing. I actually had nightmares the night after I read it. So I’m offering a strong warning here: think about it before you click the story. The report is by CNN, so there are no gory images and the reporters aren’t trying to make anyone uncomfortable, but the reality of it is bad enough.

For everyone who doesn’t want to know the more upsetting details, the essence of it is that there’s a network of people making “content” of themselves torturing and killing cats, and a rapidly growing audience of people who pay thousands of dollars to “sponsor” the horrific content.

They have “menus” set up where people can select the cat they want to see tortured and specify the ways in which the cat should be hurt and killed. CNN, citing a group of vigilantes trying to dismantle the networks, says people pay up to $1,300 for the “service.” Collectively, the torturers and their audience refer to themselves as “cat lovers.”

The Chinese government, to no one’s surprise, does not care. There are no criminal penalties for what the content producers are doing, and the government hasn’t responded to complaints from concerned people or media networks.

I might address it in the future, but for now I don’t even know what to say. I was away when I read it, and it made me really want to hug Bud and make sure he’s never out of my care. Ever.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

If you’re not feeling the love, you can always head to your local shelter and donate to have a cat neutered in the name of your ex!

Happy Valentine’s Day from the Buddies! Buddy Cupid, or Bupid, is currently flying around with his little bow and heart arrows, wondering why they can’t be used to shoot turkey.

He’ll figure it out soon enough, although knowing him, he’ll use his arrows to make people fall in love with him so he has an entire army of infatuated humans who would love nothing more than to feed him and cuddle him.

We hope you’re all having a great day and that you’re able to spend time with the people and pets you love most in this world.

And hey, if you’re not feeling the love, you can take the opportunity to participate in one of the many “Neuter Your Ex” promotions happening at cat shelters in Portland, Baltimore, New Jersey, Michigan and even Saskatchewan. For between $25 and $50, depending on the shelter, you’ll be given the opportunity to name a feline after the person you’d like to see, uh, fixed, and help reduce the stray cat population as a result. It’s win-win, except maybe for the person you’re imagining getting the snip.