Tag: catnip

Buddy’s Cat Café Celebrates 2 Years Of Offering Customers The Chance To Lavish Affection And Treats On Buddy

Buddy’s Cat Café and Catnip Lounge has become a neighborhood fixture where feline lovers can enjoy their favorite caffeinated beverages while lavishing snacks and catnip on Buddy himself.

NEW YORK — When Buddy’s Cat Café and Catnip Lounge first opened its doors in late 2023, skeptics were quick to predict its demise.

“A cat cafe featuring only one cat sounds more like the selfish plot of the proprietor feline and less like a legitimate cat cafe experience,” the New York Times sniffed, while the New York Post derided the venture as “one chubby cat’s ludicrous scheme to gorge on endless snacks and catnip while customers line up to shower him with affection.”

Two years later, with a 4.8 out of 5 rating on Google and hundreds of regulars, Buddy’s Cat Café has not only been a success, it’s inspired other felines to open their own single-cat locations.

Mrs. Nakamura watches her students interact with Buddy, affectionately known to them as Badi-chan.

Mrs. Tomoko Nakamura, a teacher at the Japanese Academy of Manhattan, has been taking her class to Buddy’s since the cafe opened.

“Badi-chan very handsome and charming,” Mrs. Nakamura said, smiling as her students giggled and offered an array of crunchy treats to the lounging feline. “All my students love him!”

Sisters Dierdre and Stephanie Sullivan are regulars who say they take their kids to Buddy’s almost weekly.

“Madisyn, Skyelarr and Jaxon just love little Buddy,” Stephanie Sullivan said, calling other cat cafes “a tragedeigh in comparison.”

Buddy and friends during a Tabletop Tuesdays gathering at Buddy’s Cat Café and Catnip Lounge.

Since its opening, Buddy’s has featured an array of themed nights that cater to regulars with shared interests.

On Saturdays a lively crowd of people wearing perms, neon clothes and big shoulder pads flock to the cafe for Retro 80s Night. Sunday crowds gather to watch football with Buddy on the big screen TV, and Tabletop Tuesdays cater to miniature wargamers, with Buddy and his regulars continuing long-running campaigns in Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer 40K.

One of the most popular themed nights is Freestyle Fridays, when local rappers and hip hop heads gather to spit bars, smoke blunts and collaborate on beats.

DJ Rashid, center, jubilantly hoists Buddy while the others cheer on a recent Freestyle Friday at Buddy’s Cat Cafe.
Buddy after indulging in too much catnip on Freestyle Friday.

Da Ill Collektah, a local underground emcee, rolls catnip blunts for the tabby proprietor so he can fully participate in the levity.

“Oh, that’s good ish!” Buddy said on a recent Friday as he exhaled a nimbus cloud of ‘nip smoke to cheers from the assembled hip hop heads.

“Watch out!” beatsmith Biggity Biggity Bryce exclaimed. “Buddy gonna bless us with a fiyah freestyle!”

Lysander The Lyrical Destroyer, a Brooklyn emcee and longtime “associate” of Buddy, said no other cat cafe could hope to compete.

“Buddy’s cafe got the freshest jams, the livest atmosphere, and the bang bang boogie don’t stop the boogie,” he noted. “But most of all, it’s got Buddy.”

Buddy Eliminated In First Round Of ‘Dancing With The Stars’

The gray tabby cat’s inaugural dance was sabotaged by former sitcom star Steve Urkel and the cousin of the Shamwow guy.

LOS ANGELES — After vowing to “dance circles around” his human competition and become the first feline winner of Dancing With The Stars, Buddy the Cat was unceremoniously sent home from the competition show following an argument with a judge.

Expectations were high when the celebricat was announced as one of a dozen famous booty-shakers on season 78 of the long-running series, especially after he was paired with Alina Gromova, a well-liked professional ballroom dancer who has three Mirrorball Trophy wins under her belt.

Hype reached a fever pitch with a regular trickle of short clips showing the partners practicing in the weeks leading up to the premiere, and the pair seemed to be in sync.

But their performance on the season’s inaugural broadcast left viewers and judges alike scratching their heads.

Things seemed to be going smoothly as Buddy and Gromova grooved to Jamiroquai’s Canned Heat, but quickly fell apart when fellow contestant David Ofer, second cousin of Vince “The Shamwow Guy” Ofer, dug into his pockets and tossed a handful of Temptations onto the dance floor.

Buddy’s head immediately snapped toward the direction of the crunchy, delectable, incredibly irresistible treats, and he shuffled his way over, vacuuming them up in a series of smooth motions with a flourish before joining hands with Gromova again.

White, the former sitcom star, conspired with Ofer to sabotage Buddy’s performance.

She recovered quickly, spinning and kicking in sync with her feline partner, but Jaleel White — who played Steve Urkel on the long-running sitcom Family Matters in the late 1980s and early 90s — was spotted surreptitiously crinkling a paper bag and misting one corner of the dance floor with catnip spray.

Buddy spun around and executed a series of Travolta-esque hip-twist-and-point maneuvers in the direction of the ‘nip scent. Gromova tried to keep him focused, but the frustrated feline rushed White and bit down hard on his foot as ripples of shock spread through the audience.

“Obviously, a bunch of the D-list contestants felt they couldn’t compete with Buddy’s charm and his mastery of movement, so they decided to sabotage him, the cowards,” one fan huffed in a reaction video on TikTok. “Buddy should be on his way to the second round while his saboteurs should be sent home.”

Other contestants — including the Guy From Limp Bizkit, Hawk Tuah Girl and Kanye West — were forced to wait while the judges tore into Buddy and the feline responded in kind.

“Dreadful, absolutely dreadful. What a terrible day to have eyes!” said longtime judge Len Goodman, shaking his head in dismay. “You call that a cha-cha?”

Steam jetted from Buddy’s swiveling radar ears.

“It was a cha-cha!” he spat back.

“Not in any universe I’ve lived in, dear fellow,” Goodman said.

“It was the definition of a cha-cha!” Buddy argued. “It had cha, and then even more cha! Cha in abundance! Look up ‘cha-cha’ in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of me dancing in a bow tie. Now give me a 10 this instant!”

The camera caught Gromova pressing both hands to her temples while William Forrest, who played a Wookie in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, nervously waited for his chance to dance.

Eventually two burly security guards lumbered up to the stage and grabbed the gray tabby, who screamed in protest.

“I have friends at court! Powerful friends!” he shouted. “The Queen herself made me a lord!”

Lord Janos Slynt, seen here, was quoted by Buddy as the feline was escorted off the show. Credit: HBO

“What is he on about?” Goodman asked.

“I think that’s from Game of Thrones,” fellow judge Carrie Ann Inaba said. “When Lord Tyrion banished Lord Janos Slynt to the Wall, remember?”

“That was a good episode,” host Alfonso Ribeiro said.

While White and Ofer both advanced to the second round, former 1990s infomercial personality Billy Blanks, best known for his Tae Bo series of exercise VHS tapes, remained the odds-on favorite to become the celebrity winner this season.

Happy International Cat Day!

Today’s a good day to do something special for your little pal(s), and to help spread awareness that felines are sentient, intelligent animals with feelings.

Happy International Cat Day!

Today marks the 23rd annual observance of the special day, which was established by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a nonprofit originally founded in the late 1960s to stop the commercial hunting of seals off Canada’s coasts.

Buddy sits on his vanquished foe, an alien xenomorph. “I don’t understand how these things gave humans so much trouble,” he said.

In more than half a century since, the group has expanded to an international operation with projects aimed at improving conditions for wild and domestic animals. They do wildlife rescue, rehabilitation, preserve management and more.

International Cat Day was intended to help raise awareness about cats, their behaviors and the best ways to interact with them and give them good homes.

For those of us who are already wrapped around the paws of our feline overlords, it’s an occasion to do something extra for our buddies. Here at Casa de Buddy, that means spending more time with little man, giving him catnip, and his favorite human food treat: cheese.

The thing that matters most to him is Buddy Time, when we hang out, play games with his wand toys, and eventually he snuggles up in my lap.

We hope all of you are enjoying International Cat Day and have the opportunity to spend some extra time with your furry pal(s) today. For all they do to improve our lives, a little expression of gratitude is the least we can do.

The Buddies Have Uncomfortable Moment After Cat Documentary Asserts Felines Mirror Their Humans’ Personalities

Is the human a bad influence on the cat, is the cat a bad influence on the human, or are they both just crazy?

NEW YORK — Big Buddy and Little Buddy experienced an awkward moment while watching a cat documentary which claimed feline personalities eventually come to resemble the dispositions of their humans.

The human and tabby were sitting on their couch, eating popcorn and laughing at their own farts when Holly Sikes, a cat behaviorist interviewed in the documentary, broke down the way people and their furry pals mirror each other.

“So, for example, if the cat is a lazy, egotistical jerk who’s always coming up with hare-brained schemes, he obviously learned that from someone,” the behaviorist said. “And that someone is the primary caretaker, the one with whom the cat spends most of his or her time.”

The Buddies looked at each other, shrugging.

“I once had a client whose cat, Quintus Lentilus Batiatus, was an absolute lunatic,” Sikes continued in the documentary. “And it turned out the owner was a LARPer who belonged to a group of wannabe Roman legionaries, which explained why little Quintus had declared war on the German family next door, labeling them ‘barbarians and savages who must be civilized under the banner of the Sacred Eagle.’ I’ve heard of cats styling themselves as Mongol conquerors, Spartan warriors and even kings of Joseon.”

Little Buddy stopped chewing, and with a mouth full of popcorn, turned to his Big Buddy.

“I’m, uh, not feeling this documentary, dude,” he said. “Let’s find something else to watch.”

“Agreed,” Big Buddy said.

The behaviorist continued to elaborate as Big Buddy searched for the remote.

“…and delusions of grandeur, particularly when it comes to fantasies about conquering the world, being famous, or even establishing ties with big cats like jaguars and tigers…”

Little Buddy’s voice was urgent.

“Where’s the remote, dude? Come on! Find it!”

“I’m trying! Where the heck is it?”

“…and we find that in cases where human and feline are closely bonded, they serve as enablers, with each convincing the other that their schemes are brilliant even when they’re gobsmackingly inane…”

Big Buddy grunted triumphantly.

“Found it!” he said.

Human and cat breathed a sigh of relief as the stream stopped.

“So what do you wanna watch next, Bud?” Big Buddy asked.

Little Buddy sat up and stretched.

“Actually, I was thinking of taking another nap and then working on my brilliant plan to intercept catnip shipments bound for pet stores.”

Big Buddy whistled.

“That is a brilliant plan, little guy,” he said.

“It is, isn’t it?” Little Buddy said proudly.

“Good call on the nap too. I’ll set my alarm for 90 minutes. Gotta get that beauty sleep…”

As of press time, the Buddies had settled on a scheme to intercept catnip and turkey bound for pet stores, which they both agreed was brilliantly conceived and guaranteed to work.

Los Gatos Seek More Discreet Couriers After Cat Caught Carrying Crack Into Costa Rican Prison

Los Gatos’ position in the illegal catnip market has become precarious in the wake of a federal raid and the arrest of a courier. Meanwhile, an old rival threatens to fill the power vacuum…

LOS GATOS, Calif. — Los Gatos, the premier purveyor of fine catnip and narcotics to the feline world, is looking for discreet, professional couriers following a recent setback in Costa Rica.

A Gatos courier was caught sneaking into Pococi Penitentiary on the night of May 22. The feline, a novice smuggler, was having difficulty navigating around a section of fence topped by razor wire when guards at the prison spotted and intercepted the kitty.

Correction officers captured the courier and found 2.4 ounces of crack-cocaine and eight ounces of marijuana wrapped tightly in plastic and taped to her body.

Under questioning, the narco feline admitted she was conducting a delivery for Los Gatos, creating legal troubles for the US-based nipcotics collective. It’s the biggest setback for Los Gatos since its 2022 war with another catnip cartel led to 14 cats getting sprayed in a drive-by urinating, an infamous incident known as the Tragedy of Tijuana.

Earlier this week, federal agents raided a Gatos compound, seizing an estimated $2.1 million in high-grade catnip and other nipcotics, the Drug Enforcement Agency said.

News footage showed several cats in handcuffs bundled into black SUVs while drug-sniffing dogs smirked.

“You’d better wipe that smirk off your face, holmes!” one Gatos lieutenant shouted at the canines, hissing out the words.

The raid and courier arrest have left Los Gatos with significantly less product — and fewer methods of delivery.

“The courier will be dealt with, as will those mangy mutts,” Los Gatos spokescat Pawblo Escobar said ominously. “In the meantime, we have customers who rely on us for timely deliveries of high-quality catnip and drugs, and Los Gatos has a reputation to uphold.”

Industry insiders say Buddy the Cat has been quick to fill the void. The longtime Gatos archrival reactivated long-dormant channels and has expanded his territory from his power base in New York.

“Buddy the Cat has the muscle, quite literally, to go paw to paw with Los Gatos and the other cartels,” said Felix Finch, a criminologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “But obviously this isn’t a one-cat operation, which is why it’s fortuitous that Buddy has been establishing ties with the jaguars and forming a coalition with other big cats. Can Los Gatos withstand the combined might of Buddy and big cats? That’s the question on every feline’s mind right now.”