Caption a photo of the world’s most Buddinese feline!
Is he yawning? Screaming in terror before dashing behind my legs? Reacting to someone spilling the tea about a friend? Awestruck at a giant turkey?
Well, that’s up to you!
A historian casts doubt on tales of widespread cat purging, tracing the origin of the claims to a novel published in the 1990s.
The Washington Post has a new guide for taking better photos of cats and dogs with some solid advice for people using smartphones as well as more traditional cameras.
The article is in front of the paywall so you don’t need a subscription to view it, and it emphasizes a few major points I’ve often written about when people ask me how I’ve been able to get certain shots of Bud:
It’s often claimed that Europeans murdered felines en masse during the waves of Black Plague that devastated Europe during the Dark Ages, visiting countless cruelties on cats while inadvertently amplifying the spread by nearly wiping out disease-carrying rodents’ most effective predators.
In a new post that closely examines documents and evidence from burial sites of the era, Snopes concludes there was much less cat-killing than claimed, and the claims of widespread purging at the hands of pandemic-weary zealots have their roots in a 90s novel, which was then circulated on the web as fact.
Sites where as many as 79 sets of cat bones from the era were found show clear signs that the animals were slaughtered for their fur, and a singular slaughter in 1730s Paris often cited as proof is not only a few centuries off but was also motivated by class hatred, not fears of the plague.
While the papal bull Vox In Rama was real, and a famously zealous inquisitor really did make the preposterous claim that Satanists had a ritual that involved literally kissing the asses of black cats, the pope never called on anyone to kill felines and there’s no evidence that people took it upon themselves to do so. There was plenty of other unbelievable superstitious idiocy that led to the deaths of animals at the time, including the practice of putting animals on trial for alleged crimes, but Europeans weren’t rampaging through towns and killing cats.
Snopes quotes Welsh historian Mike Dash, who says the modern claims of widespread cat-killing are “almost certainly a modern internet-based fabrication.”
A rock on Mars resembles a crouching cat ready to pounce.
Cats are sneaky, quiet as a ghost when they want to be and have a habit of seemingly teleporting between spots, but could they somehow use their feline superpowers to beat us to Mars?
As the Perseverance rover continues to chug along and take photos as well as samples of rock and soil, people following the rover’s progress can vote for “image of the week,” and this time around they picked an image that, when seen from a distance, appears to show a crouched cat with its behind raised, in mid butt-wiggle as it prepares to pounce on some unfortunate Martian.
This isn’t the first time Mars enthusiasts have spotted a “cat” in an image from the red planet. In 2015, some people said a group of rocks resembled a “giant cat statue” poking out from the Martian soil in a photo taken by the Curiosity rover.
I don’t really see it. YMMV:
Perseverance is exploring the site of a former crater lake and an adjoining former river delta. The Bad Astronomy blog says it was “very clearly a lake of standing water at some point in the past.”
The blog provides a breakdown of the geography of the crater and what it can tell us about the Mars of the past. Knowing there was water on Mars makes the idea of life elsewhere in the solar system seem possible. Astronomers believe Jupiter’s moon Europa, for example, potentially hosts life. The satellite exists so far from the sun it’s in a permanent deep freeze and would normally be inhospitable to life, but the evidence strongly suggests there are oceans beneath Europa’s icy surface, and those oceans are heated by massive vents on the ocean floor.
Water, warmth, energy. The conditions for life are there. If Mars was covered with lakes at one point, what’s swimming in the oceans of Europa?
So Mars had water and the entire planet was pristine litter box. If it had some prey to hunt and an atmosphere, the red planet could have been the perfect homeworld for felis sapiens, who would rival humanity in technology if not for the tragic fact that their species is only awake eight hours a day.
Now that’s a scary thought!
This kitten looks very familiar…
I was digging through some old files when I found these photos of a young Buddy the Cat:
These were taken in my brother’s apartment on the Upper East Side. It was early summer, so Buddy was probably about four months old, give or take.
He spent almost the entire day in the yard where he made friends with Cosmo the Dog and had lots of fun chasing insects, running around and rolling in the grass. He made friends with every human there, of course. Then when he was tired out from all that playing, he had a super special treat: Steak from the BBQ.
I’d love to bring the little guy to more social events and barbecues, but alas, almost all of them involve dogs who are not Cosmo, and I’m not sure how Bud would do with three or four dogs running around, let alone 20+ people. Smaller gatherings sans pups are a better bet.
Buddy throws shade on himself with a Christmas present
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about people dressing their cats up in elaborate outfits for Instagram, and how it’s exploitive of the kitties. At other random times I’ve opined that most cats want nothing to do with clothes or accessories, and it’s cruel to treat them like dolls and play dress up with them.
My opinion on the subject hasn’t changed, but now I’m a hypocrite.
While my family was exchanging Christmas gifts, I was handed a small present while my brother and his wife explained that the gift was from my 8-year-old niece, who had found it and picked it out herself.
I opened it, revealing a pair of tiny “cat sunglasses,” with the packaging in Russian and a photo of a cat rocking the shades. (My brother works for the State Department and has been living in a former Soviet bloc country for the past year and a half. It’s a downgrade from Tokyo, but hey, you can’t get amazing assignments every time.)
“They’re for Buddy,” my niece said, beaming.
At the time I was thinking there’s no way in hell Bud would wear them, and I wasn’t going to try…but I knew my niece would expect to see a photo of him rocking the shades.
And so, after a bit of negotiation and the promise of tasty treats as a reward, Buddy agreed to wear the glasses just long enough for me to snap a few photos. I didn’t press my luck.
Here’s the glorious result:
Credit to the little guy for posing and being a good sport. I wouldn’t have forced him to wear the glasses if he freaked out, and he didn’t seem to mind. He was curious and interested in biting the glasses more than anything.
Bud was rewarded handsomely in moist chicken cat treats and gobbled them down happily. A short while later he climbed up onto me, laid his head on my chest and started purring, so I’m as sure as I can be that he wasn’t traumatized by his brief fashion show.
So there you have it. I’m a hypocrite.
As for my niece, she loved the photo. Her and her younger sister are very fond of Buddy, and he’s started to warm to them as well, even if he remains cautious and well aware that they are young humans who haven’t totally developed fine motor control.
Besides, they have incentive to be extra nice to Bud. LOL Dolls are all the rage among young kids now, and I’ve told my nieces that Buddy’s got a huge collection of them, as well as a vast assortment of Pokemon. If they’re good to Buddy, he just might let them play with his toys…
Pain In The Bud 