cat photos – Page 4 – Pain In The Bud

My Favorite Photos Of My Best Little Buddy

Buddy is a cute little guy!

Here’s my newest favorite photo of the Budster, which you guys have seen in the humor post about Buddy’s gallery exhibit at the Louvre:

This photo is so Buddy. He’s sitting in the coffee table and staring at me with that classic Buddy expression on his face, which usually means he’s waiting for me to play hunting games with him, or just to give him a few scratches on his head and tell him he’s a good boy.

This next one is a random shot, taken with my old iphone when Bud was just laying down and looking cute:

I loved the photo from the moment I snapped it, but I loved it even more when a reader saw it and remarked that it looked like the little guy was “radiating love” at me behind the camera. Either that or he’s thinking “Don’t dally, human, run and fetch my snacks!”

This one was taken outdoors on the balcony. Bud loves to soak up the sun and warmth during the spring and summer. In the natural light you can really see his coat pattern, his unbroken tabby stripes and the deep green of his eyes. In indoor artificial light, his eyes appear a different shade of green and sometimes yellow. His coat pattern also appears much more subtle under LED and incandescent lighting.

Here’s the little dude as a baby. Unfortunately I took most of his kitten photos with an old iPhone and they’re not very good.

Still, I do miss his kitten days when I look at these shots. Bud was quite a fuzzy kitten. He was a talker from the very beginning, and even if I couldn’t see him at a particular moment, I always knew where he was because I could hear him chatting away and all his exclamations as he played with plastic bottle caps or gleefully knocked things off shelves.

Buddy on a rainy day, staring out from inside the sliding glass door leading to the balcony. He looks bummed that the sun isn’t out.

More baby photos! I remember showing some of these shots to my brother when we went hiking one weekend a few weeks after I’d adopted the Budster. My brother, who should be one to talk as he dotes on his beloved dog, said: “I think you’re in love!”

You don’t wanna mess with these guns! Buddy flexing his considerable muscles.

Kitten loaf!

I do have a few decent kitten photos taken with the Canon T3. This was before I took a photography course and learned how to properly use the damn thing. I like to think I’ve come a decent way since then. As in the previous kitten photo, Bud’s eyes were the familiar kitten gray before they began to turn the now-familiar deep green in adulthood.

I really like this one. There’s nothing too special about it, but the little guy is intently focused on something and looks happy.

Another one with the classic “Buddy look.” He’s a very vocal cat and was probably trilling with interest at something when I took this shot.

A fairly recent shot from the past month or two. I like this one. Buddy is very expressive, and this photo captures his whimsical look pretty well.

And finally we have Chubby Buddy pulling off a classic loaf pose and undoubtedly thinking about delicious turkey.

“This Is The Creepiest Cat I’ve Ever Seen!”

A Cornish Rex named Pixel is turning heads with his unusual features and bizarre-looking expressions.

Meet Pixel the cat, whose dread visage is so terrifying it prompted Buddy to run screaming and hide behind the TV:

Buddy isn’t the only one to recoil in horror after seeing photos of the two-year-old Cornish Rex.

“All the time people say ‘this is the creepiest cat I’ve ever seen’, ‘my sleep paralysis demon has come to life’ and if they saw him in the middle of the night they’d have a heart attack and it would scare them to death,” said Alyson Kalhagen, Pixel’s human. “People say all the time that he’s a ‘demon cat’ who ‘must be possessed’ and that the devil’s taken control of him. It’s kind of a recurring theme.

“I think it’s pretty funny because I usually just say ‘imagine coming face to face when you’re trying to scoop the litter box.'”

Kalhagen even heard from a self-described exorcist after she began posting photos of her wide-eyed feline, who favors making weird faces that accentuate his freakiness.

The “exorcist” suggested caging Pixel and praying over him, cautioning that the cat was possessed by an entity.

It probably goes without saying, but for the benefit of our readers who aren’t familiar with Catholic belief and customs, exorcists are longtime priests who must complete a great deal of instruction — on top of the usual nine years of education including a post-graduate theology degree — before they can become exorcists. It’s not a job you can seek out or volunteer for, and exorcists are rarely publicly identified.

So it’s a safe bet to say the person who contacted Kalhagen is a self-proclaimed exorcist at best. Still, the person’s conviction that the cat is possessed is amusing:

Pixel, who has a thousand adoring fans on Instagram, is having the last laugh:

Buddy the Brave — “Is he…is he gone? You sure?”

14 Overdoses Traced To Los Gatos Catnip

Dubbed “Da Zooms,” the ultra-potent new nip is a hybrid of the popular Purrple Haze and Meowie Wowie variants sprinkled with catnip-flavored Temptations that have been crushed into powder.

LOS ANGELES — At least 14 feline overdoses have been linked to a powerful new strain of catnip sold by Los Gatos cartel, the Feline Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Thursday.

The new strain is a hybrid of the popular Purrple Haze and Meowie Wowie variants sprinkled with catnip-flavored Temptations that have been crushed into powder, the agency said.

Dubbed “Da Zooms,” the ultra-potent new nip is often cut with oregano to reduce its effects, but inexperienced cats may not realize what they’re dealing with. Overdoses render felines catatonic for several hours, during which they roll around with a blank stare before sliding into a deep sleep from which they cannot be roused until the effects wear off.

“This is powerful stuff,” said Squiggy the Siamese, president of Cats Against Narcotic Additives Baked Into Snacks, or CANABIS, a powerful anti-Temptations lobbying group. “If it can knock a 20-pound Maine Coon unconscious, imagine what it can do to an innocent three-pound kitten.”

catnip3 — The potent new blend of catnip is proving irresistable to cats.

Cat parents and caretakers are advised to look for the following signs that could indicate their furry loved ones are addicted to Da Zooms:

Suddenly getting the zooms and bolting around the house at 30 mph
Loss of interest in favorite foods and snacks that aren’t Temptations
Refusing regular catnip, or complaining that it’s “weak stuff”
Raiding pantries for cans of wet food, which are used as currency to buy highly potent illegal nip
Frequent trips to “The Corner”
Shaking paws and night sweats after being cut off from the product

In the meantime, the National Ad Council has unveiled a new PSA meant to inform cats of the dangers they face by consuming illegal catnip.

“This is your brain,” the ad’s narrator intones as the camera settles on a brand new, unblemished couch. “This is your brain on ‘nip,” the narrator continues with the camera scrolling over to an old, beat-up couch with claw marks all over it. “Any questions?”

Diego Gatinez, a spokesman for Los Gatos, called the new ads “racist” and blamed “uninformed gringos” for alleging that his organization is a cartel.

“We are a charitable 501(c)(3) organization, and we don’t appreciate the insinuation that we’re involved in illegal or violent activities,” Gatinez said. “Anyone who continues to intimate that we are a violent criminal organization should sleep with one eye open, because Los Gatos could appear right when you least expect us.”

Top image and the two following images by Andrew Marttila from his book, aptly titled “Cats On Catnip.”

Screenshot_2020-12-19 sei_17772107 jpg (WEBP Image, 768 × 513 pixels)

Screenshot_2020-12-19 sei_17772055 jpg (WEBP Image, 768 × 512 pixels)

Cats Are The Monks At This Japanese Temple

Nyan Nyan Ji translates to “meow meow shrine.”

One of the highlights of my trip to Japan last summer was Gotokuji Temple, the famous “cat shrine” in Tokyo’s Setagaya suburb.

Gotokuji is home to thousands of statues of maneki-neko, or “beckoning cat,” an important and ubiquitous image in Japan: Statues of maneki-neko adorn shops and virtually every public place in Tokyo, but Gotokuji is where the legend of the beckoning cat was born. Visitors write prayers on the statues and ask for good luck for a variety of venture, from opening new businesses to getting married.

There is, however, only one current feline resident at Gotokuji, while Kyoto’s Nyan Nyan Ji — literally “meow meow shrine” — is populated exclusively by feline “monks,” who wear monkly garb and take their duties — especially napping, er, meditating — very seriously.

The most recognizable of them is Koyuki, the chief cat priestess at Nyan Nyan Ji.

Here are some photos, all courtesy of the temple’s Instagram, showing what life is like for Koyuki and her fellow priests:

Screenshot_2020-08-12 ねこ地蔵とおる ( nekojizo) is on Instagram(2) — “This is how it’s supposed to be, humans: You kneeling before us. Those ancient Egyptians had it right.”

Screenshot_2020-08-12 ねこ地蔵とおる ( nekojizo) is on Instagram(5) — “I can call upon powerful minions to smite you whenever I please.”

Screenshot_2020-08-12 ねこ地蔵とおる ( nekojizo) is on Instagram(9) — “Tiny humans are permitted to touch my holy personage.”

Screenshot_2020-08-12 ねこ地蔵とおる ( nekojizo) is on Instagram(4) — “And here is the nursery, where it’s currently reading time for our kittens…”

Screenshot_2020-08-12 ねこ地蔵とおる ( nekojizo) is on Instagram(3) — “Walk with me on the path to deliciousness…”

Screenshot_2020-08-12 ねこ地蔵とおる ( nekojizo) is on Instagram(8) — “Read the sign! We’re not open until I says so. Now if you please, I have napping to do.”

Time Capsule Reveals 120-Year-Old Photos Of A Little Girl’s Beloved Cats

Captured by antique cameras using a process almost 200 years old, the photographs prove people have always loved taking photos of cats.

The young French girl placed her most precious items in an elaborately decorated antique box — among them a personal letter, old coins, a sea shell, a compass and two glass negatives.

French photographer Matheiu Stern, who discovered the accidental time capsule earlier this year, used a vintage technique to develop the plates and reveal the images they contained: A photo of a small tabby cat posing on a door step, and another of the same tabby with a kitten and a gentle-looking dog.

The process Matheiu used is called cyanotype, and as its name implies, it renders everything in a blueish scale rather than grayscale or color. The process was popular for most of the 19th century before it gave way to newer and more accurate photography methods, but it was used long after that as a cheap method of reproducing architectural schematics, thus the name “blueprints.”

The photographs have the unmistakable hue of the process used to develop them, and show the people of the 19th century bonded with their cats just as we do.

They also prove that people have always loved taking photos of cats, and the ubiquity of cat images on the Internet was inevitable. Resistance always was futile: