catnip – Page 8 – Pain In The Bud

The Battle of the Buddies!

It’s man vs cat in the ultimate battle of Buddies!

Back in August there was a story about a bored animal behaviorist and fellow New Yorker who built a talking board for her cat, a la Koko the Gorilla.

Kristiina Wilson told People magazine she was inspired to start the project during the initial Coronavirus lockdown, fashioning a makeshift talking board for her beloved foster fail.

Wilson used large buttons, coded by color and symbol, with each button triggering a recording of a different word when pressed: “Lady” for her, “Snuggle,” “Outside,” “Kittynip” and, of course, “Eat.”

She taught the little guy to use the board using “associative concept learning,” which in this case means pressing a particular button when she has the cat’s attention, and then performing the related action and pressing the button again.

Screenshot_2020-12-16 The Daily Steve B on Instagram “Outside 4eva #cat #cats #igcats #instacats #catsofinstagram #tuxedoca[...] — Wilson’s DIY cat talking board.

“Whenever you’re responding to them, you also repeat the modeling,” Wilson said. “So if he asks for catnip and then I give him catnip, I hit ‘catnip’ again while I’m giving it to him to reinforce what that button is for.”

Her cat is a quick learner, Wilson told People. “He’s like a person dressed in a cat’s body. He’s been screaming at me since he was born and being very clear about his needs and wants.”

Hmmm. Sounds like someone else I know, someone who never hesitates to loudly inform me when he considers the service subpar or the meals tardy.

I decided to give it a try with Buddy, modifying the system to his most frequent demands. When pressed, the buttons say “Big Buddy,” “Food,” “Snack,” “Mattress,” “Nip” and “Mighty Hunter!” (Mattress, as regular readers of this blog have probably already figured out, means Bud wants to take a nap on top of me. Mighty Hunter is his favorite wand toy game. It should be called Inept Hunter, but we must keep up appearances so as not to offend delicate egos.)

I began training Buddy on his new talking board. On the first day he had great fun with it, slapping the buttons randomly and jumping on them to see how many he could activate at once.

On the second day, he understood that pushing the “Big Buddy” button would draw a response from me.

On the third day, I woke up to find three of the buttons relabeled and reset with new digital voice recordings: “Servant,” “TURKEY NOW,” and “SNACK NOW.”

cutebuddy — THE PERPETRATOR: Although he may appear cute, behind that angelic face is a devious, scheming mind that will stop at nothing to obtain more turkey.

Perhaps most frighteningly, Bud was learning to combine the commands: “Servant…TURKEY NOW! TURKEY NOW! … Servant,” the speakers intoned as he hammered on the buttons with his paws.

But by the fourth day things had become truly horrifying. I walked into the living room and saw the humble talking board replaced by a complex ad hoc apparatus, with more than 150 symbols and a developing syntax.

“Good morning… servant… breakfast… immediately… then… massage… mattress…nap!” a synthesized Stephen Hawking said.

Buddy had tapped the message out with the speed and skill of a court stenographer, then sat there silently, looking up at me with his big green eyes.

“Little shit…is too clever…for…his own…good,” I said, mimicking the sound board.

“Big Buddy…better…watch…when asleep,” Buddy responded, pawing each button. “Sometimes…dark … I … can’t tell… where … is …litter box.”

He made a “mrrrrphh!” sound as if for emphasis, then tapped a single key three times: “Breakfast. Breakfast. Breakfast.”

I have now realized my most grievous error: Within two days Bud had wired his apparatus into the fiber optic router, and a few days after that he’d completed work on a prosthetic opposable thumb.

The arms race was escalating, and my lead was evaporating.

I considered bringing in a dog, but Buddy would just outsmart it: The little terrorist probably has an automated missile launcher at this point, and if not, dogs can be easily bribed with food.

No, I needed something nuclear. Something that would inspire cold terror in my cat and prompt him to think about further escalating the cold war between us.

I needed a vacuum.

The next morning I awoke again to find Buddy tapping out a message for me, ordering breakfast and providing me with a list of tasks and errands.

His smug smile melted like plastic in a fire when I pulled the hand vacuum from behind my back and brandished it.

“No…you…wouldn’t,” Buddy tapped, keeping one nervous eye on the orange plastic terror.

I held up the power plug.

“Watch me.”

“No…No…No…Big Buddy…servant…No…” he typed furiously. “No…no…nooooooo!!!”

Humans Are Coming 4 Our Catnip & Temptations!!!

A new study suggests cat drugs may help humans overcome COVID-19.

Return-Path: <buddy@littlebuddythecat.com>
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Message-ID: <buddy@littlebuddythecat.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2020 11:40:36 -0400
From: Buddy <buddy@littlebuddythecat.com>



HERE IS THE LINK FOR PROOFS: https://www.foxnews.com/health/cat-drugs-fight-coronavirus-humans-study

Don't let the humans take our nip and our temps!

Niplords Unite At Meow-a-Largo As Heisenpurrg Threat Looms

The nip trade is threatened by a new product, Blue Sky Temptations.

MIAMI — Forming a tenuous alliance to combat an existential threat to their hold on the feline illegal narcotics market, the western hemisphere’s most prolific niplords gathered for a summit at Meow-a-Largo on Friday.

The fact that Los Gatos, the Cattazio crime family and the Buddy Organization gathered under one roof without the threat of spray salvos, hissing or violent clawing served to underscore how seriously the niplords are taking the emergence of a new narcotic on the street, and the shadowy players pushing it on young kittens and adult cats alike.

The new product, Blue Sky Temptations, has taken the country by storm, laying waste to entire communities of cats with its unprecedented purity and addictive potential.

“Rumor has it a fella named Heisenpurrg is behind the Blue Sky,” said Anthony “Fat Tony” Purrtelini, the recently jail-broken capo of the Cattazio family. “We got our guys shakin’ down the neighborhoods for more information on this Heisenpurrg.”

Pawblo Escobar, the mercurial leader of the Gatos’ Medellín Hierba Gatera, shook his head.

“Is just a name, this Heisenpurrg,” he said quietly. “We don’t know the first thing about this pendejo, yeah?”

“Das right, patrón,” said Escobar’s most trusted lieutenant, Furrnando Prado. “He’s a ghost.”

Purrposition Joe, the Baltimore-based nip OG who brokered the tenuous peace between the attending parties, raised both paws, signaling the others to let him meow. Springer Bell and Brother Pawzone, two other cats from the Baltimore contingent, slapped their paws on the table to get everycat’s attention.

Heisenpurrg’s minions, Purrposition Joe reminded the other niplords, were all over the streets pushing “free samples” of the Blue Sky to get cats addicted. Tracking down Heisenpurrg, he said, should be as easy as interrogating cats up the ladder until they lead to the big bosses.

“The question isn’t ‘Are we going to find this guy?'” Purrposition Joe said, pausing to flick kibble crumbs off his belly. “The question, gentlemen, is what are we going to do about him when we do find him?”

All eyes turned toward the back of the room where a lone cat sat in darkness, a silent silhouette for the duration of the meeting.

“That’s a question for the most brutal of us, hermano,” Escobar said, looking at the shadowy figure at the end of the table.

The mysterious cat leaned forward, his face moving into the light, revealing long whiskers, grey-white fur and subtle grey tabby stripes.

“Leave that to me, gentlemen,” the grey tabby said quietly. “When I’m done with him, Heisenpurrg will be nothing more than yesterday’s kibble upchucked on the carpet. Muahahaha!”

Notorious Mob Cat Capo Escapes Animal Control

Fat Tony Purrtellini, a capo in the Cattazio crime family, made the jailbreak with the help of Harry Mewdini.

NEW YORK — One of the east coast’s most ruthless mafioso cats was sprung from the big house on Saturday, officials from animal control confirmed.

Fat Tony Purrtellini, a capo in the Cattazio crime family, escaped in the chaos following a prison brawl between felines and a group of Chihuahuas, witnesses said.

“It was absolute bedlam,” said Fuzzy, a British shorthair who witnessed the scene. “A rowdy group of Los Gatos were talking all sorts of rubbish and told the Chihuahuas they would be knifed if they didn’t stop yapping, but that only made the Chihuahuas yap even louder. Then Fat Tony tossed fuel on the fire by telling the Gatos that the Chihuahuas barked at their mums.”

The chaotic scene was compounded by the Chihuahuas’ loose relationship with reality, a source at animal control said.

”Chihuahuas think they’re the size of Great Danes,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Someone really needs to give those dogs a mirror.”

As the Gatos rained blows on the pint-size dogs and the dogs retaliated by biting the cats’ tails, Fat Tony Purrtellini was spirited away by a mysterious hooded figure.

“It were Harry Mewdini, I’m sure of it,” one inmate said with hushed reverence. “I’ll never forget that face.”

Mewdini is singlehandedly responsible for at least two dozen jailbreaks, federal authorities say. The mysterious cat was originally a magician who worked birthday parties on the Chuck-E-Cheese circuit, wowing kittens by escaping Schroedinger’s box and making balloon mice until he caught the eye of the Cattazio crime family, which had several members serving time and saw promise in Mewdini’s skills.

Gangsta Cat — “You lookin’ at me?” Fat Tony Purrtellini, capo of the Cattazio Crime Family, is known for ruthless drive-by urinatings.

The impact of Fat Tony’s escape was already felt on the street, where Gatos crews were posting extra look-outs and beefing up security because of the portly feline’s reputation for ruthless drive-by sprayings.

Others were stocking up on Purrtellini’s favorite snacks — including soppressata, mortadella, capicola and prosciutto — to bribe the infamous meowbster.

“You let your guard down for one minute,” said a nip dealer who refused to give his name for fear of reprisals, “and that’s when Fat Tony rolls up with his crew. We’re all terrified of getting soaked.”

Feds Unearth Catnip Smuggling Tunnel Between Gatos Cartel Stash House, Animal Control

Authorities say the cartel smuggled many thousands of cans worth of catnip through the tunnel.

EL PASO — The notorious Los Gatos catnip cartel used a 12km-long tunnel to smuggle their product directly into the big house, the FBI said on Friday after discovering the clandestine passage.

With an underground route leading to the basement of Animal Control, Los Gatos moved an estimated 125 pounds of catnip and 80 pounds of silvervine — with a street value of 32 cans of wet food per ounce — to inmates every week, according to the Feline Bureau of Investigation.

The slippery cartel couldn’t have constructed and operated the tunnel without the help of at least one animal control officer, authorities said.

“Our investigation indicates they had a man on the inside in addition to the cats who received the shipments,” Special Agent Purrlock Holmes said. “The raw product was brought into a sub-basement where it was cut with oregano and Moroccan mint, then bagged for distribution to the inmates.”

5B4941A9-B545-4CF5-BE93-276009C23BD9 — Los Gatos is notorious for using young kittens as lookouts for their smuggling operations.

The animal control facility, which houses an estimated 230 cats in addition to more than 100 dogs, was placed on lockdown after Feline Bureau of Investigation agents raided the tunnels and facilities.

The sudden cut-off of catnip has precipitated withdrawal among the feline inmate population, overwhelming the facility’s medical staff.

“At least half our cats are suffering from acute withdrawal from catnip and silver vine,” said one doctor who declined to provide her name. “We’ve got cats throwing up in their cells, alternating between sweating and chills, and blowing up their own litter boxes with unprecedented eliminations. It’s not pretty.”

Los Gatos denied knowledge of or involvement in the tunnel in a statement provided by a spokescat.

“Like all organizations with a stake in our community, Los Gatos has been focused on keeping cats safe during this terrible pandemic,” the group wrote in the statement. “We are a charitable organization and we grow weary of these libelous and slanderous claims that we’re somehow involved in illicit activities. Thankfully we have a pretty good idea of who is spreading these vicious rumors, and that feline will be dealt with. In the kindest way, of course.”