cats – Page 15 – Pain In The Bud

Terrified By Reports Of Bird Flu, Buddy Appoints His Human As Food Taster

“If you keel over and die, I’ll know not to eat the food,” Buddy told his human.

NEW YORK — Driven to paranoia by reports of spreading bird flu, Buddy the Cat has appointed his human as his food taster, sources confirmed.

The decision was made on Friday after the self-described “brave and fearless” tabby cat heard a news report about new cases of bird flu, including a cluster of the deadly virus in several cats in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, only 60 miles from Casa de Buddy.

Little Buddy made the act official, naming his human as “praegustator,” a title borne by imperial food tasters of ancient Rome.

“Your lunch, Your Meowjesty,” Buddy’s human, Big Buddy, said as he placed a bowl of chicken pate and fresh water before the feline.

Buddy looked at his human.

“What?” Big Buddy asked. “You want me to eat it for you, too?”

Big Buddy chuckled, but Little Buddy remained stone-faced.

“As a meowter of fact, I do,” the feline said. “Dig in.”

Big Buddy made a disgusted face.

“I’m not eating that, that’s your food, little dude,” he said. “What’s gotten into you?”

Buddy chuffed derisively.

“Bird flu, that’s what!” he said. “If you keel over and die, I’ll know there’s bird flu in the food!”

The human rolled his eyes.

“If I die, who feeds you? Who gets your claws unstuck from the door screen, rubs your head and tells you what a brave little guy you are? Who serves as your human pillow? Who gives you scritches while you purr and tells you about your website, and how many people all over the world love you?”

Buddy’s satellite dish ears twitched.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “But I’m still not eating that until I know it’s safe!”

Big Buddy picked up the bowl.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m sure Smudge next door will be thrilled with another meal.”

Buddy’s eyes went wide.

“Do not give my food to that…that scoundrel!” he meowed indignantly.

Big Buddy sighed. “Then we’re back to square one.”

“Yes,” Little Buddy said. “Now eat the food, human!”

Top image: Food tasters at the Feast of Bartolomeo Colleoni in honor of Christian I of Denmark, 1467/ Wikimedia Commons

‘Why Are Cats Such A Medical Black Box?’ New York Times Columnist Asks

Veterinary science and research still focuses primarily on dogs, but scientists are trying to change that and help us better understand how to care for our little feline buddies.

“It’s just a cat.”

I’ve heard that so many times, and if you’re a cat lover, you probably have too.

It’s an insinuation that cats are throwaway animals, fungible pets who can be replaced by others of their species because, some people claim, they don’t express themselves as individuals, never really warm to humans in the first place, and besides, it’s not like they have emotions.

Countering those persistent myths is one of the reasons I write this blog. I still didn’t have a full appreciation for how singular and smart cats can be until I brought Buddy home. I never fathomed the depth of his emotions, the strength of his convictions or his willingness to make his opinions known about everything.

In some ways, I’m still shocked at how much he communicates and how well we understand each other.

However, one of my biggest fears is not doing right by him, especially missing signs of declining health as he gets older.

That’s the subject of a column today in the New York Times, in which science write Emily Anthes recalls the subtle signs that her cat, Olive, was sick, and the veterinarian’s assessment that she wasn’t just ill, she was on death’s door.

Anthes points out that, to this day, veterinary training uses canines as the default, and treatments for cats are often just adapted from treatments for dogs, even if there’s no data suggesting those methods actually work for feline patients.

“My anatomy book was ‘Anatomy of the Dog,’” Maggie Placer, veterinary science programs manager at EveryCat Health Foundation, told the Times. “We had PowerPoints and supplements for the cats.”

The differences go beyond body plan, organs and behavior: drugs that work for dogs can be ineffective or dangerous for cats. Treatments otherwise regarded as effective in other animals could be harmful to felines too.

“It’s not reasonable to assume that everything that works in a dog will work in a cat,” Bruce Kornreich, director of the Cornell Feline Health Center, told Anthes. “There’s a lot that we still need to learn.”

The situation with feline veterinary science mirrors the gap in behavioral studies between cats and dogs.

Over the past decade, research teams in countries like the US and Japan have made efforts to close the gap by recognizing that studies must be crafted to feline points of view, and that laboratories are not suitable places for studying the behavior of such notoriously territorial animals. Cats behave differently outside of their environments, rendering data useless if it’s captured in settings where kitties are stressed, unsure of themselves or even just miffed that they’re not at home enjoying a nap.

There are unique challenges when it comes to studying effective veterinary treatments in cats as well. Primary among them is feline stoicism, an evolutionary adaptation.

Simply put, cats will do everything they can to mask injury and sickness because they don’t want to become prey. Unfortunately that means by the time a cat cannot conceal an ailment anymore, the disease or injury has progressed. Even if a cat has lived indoors her entire life, the directive to disguise her pain is hardcoded into her DNA.

Anthes’ cat, Olive, didn’t make it. But her litter mate is chugging along, and to help advance the cause of understanding cat health, Anthes submitted both cats’ fur clippings to geneticist Dr. Elinor Karlsson’s Darwin’s Cats, a “non-profit community science project” that uses DNA submitted by cat owners to better understand our furry friends and unlock the secrets of their health and behavior.

Let’s hope that such projects spark a renaissance in studying cat health, like they have with research into feline behavior, so we can do right by our little buddies.

Critics Heap Praise On PITB, The Web’s Greatest Cat Blog

Entering its sixth year as the most incredibly awesome cat blog in the universe, PITB continues to chronicle the amazing adventures of Buddy the Cat.

It looks like 2025 is shaping up to be quite a year!

Flow won an Oscar, the Yankees are primed for mediocrity, this is the year Nostradamus predicted we’d get those awesome hoverboards from Back To The Future, and PITB will turn six years old in the summer!

Can you believe it? Six years of thrilling millions of readers with stories of Buddy’s incredible adventures, covering the most important cat news and setting all the hot new trends in the cat world!

buddy_gentlemanlogo — LITTLEBUDDYTHECAT.COM: The elegant choice for discerning cat lovers.

Critics have lavished praise on PITB:

“You won’t find two more reprehensible characters. The ill-mannered cat who’s always hatching ludicrous schemes and the human who glorifies him. They don’t have two neurons to rub together between them.” – WIRED

“Incredible! Buddy the Cat is the most dashing, dapper and daring feline on the planet, and his fans are fortunate to read about his thrilling exploits!” – Buddy Monthly (starred review)

“Two of the worst representatives of their respective species. Fate smiled cruelly upon the world when these two joined forces. Thankfully their epic incompetence prevents them from taking over.” – The Guardian

“A titan of the feline world and his human sidekick, the Buddies join forces — and combine their considerable mental resources — for the betterment of feline- and mankind. Is there anything Buddy can’t do? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.” – The Buddy Review of Awesome Felines

“A chubby house cat who thinks he’s a tiger and a human whose writerly ambitions far exceed his talents. Both live in a fantasy world that puts them one harebrained scheme from fame and fortune. If PITB had a print edition we’d recommend it as a birdcage liner.” – The New York Times

“Buddy is an 80s action hero in furry form, a one-cat army whose skill in martial arts is matched only by his razor-sharp wit. We feel privileged to read about his many adventures.” – The Buddinese Shinbun

“The blog works mostly as a celebration of a delusional cat’s ego.” – Associated Press

“Astonishing! With clever and awe-inspiringly beautiful prose, Big Buddy is like a bard expanding the legend of our furry little hero with every post. It’s no wonder Taylor Swift’s cat loves Buddy the Cat so much and wants to share her vast fortune with him.” – El Magnifico Buddenisto

“Buddy the Cat is a legend in his own mind, where his chubby frame becomes ‘meowscle’ and his half-baked plots become ‘genius.’ In that depraved little mind exists a world where kittens plaster his posters on their walls, female cats fight for his affections, and humans argue over who should have the privilege of serving him. Somehow, both cat and human labor under the misconception that what they’re doing is ‘humor,’ but they’re both morons.” – Newsweek

“Like the contents of a particularly foul litter box upended and assembled into crude approximations of words.” – Pitchfork

“Compulsively readable and addicting, like Michael Crichton on crack. Come to think of it, why isn’t there an amusement park based on Buddy and his legend? That’s a billion-dollar idea!”- The Daily Buddy

“Shunned by tigers, nearly murdered by lions, chased out of the White House by thousands of angry Americats and laughed at by rodents. Buddy’s track record is one of infamy and failure, and he’s not cute enough to make up for it. Avoid this blog like the COVID ward of your local hospital.” – The Economist

“So handsome, so kawaii! Budditsu-chan is dreamy!” – CrunchyRoll

“Immature, asinine and frankly offensive, [PITB] chronicles the ‘adventures’ of its titular feline, a delusional lunatic who harbors a single-minded obsession with turkey. When they’re not eating paste or laughing at their own poop jokes, the Buddies are probably smoking catnip, for only drug-addled idiots will find their ‘humor’ amusing.” – GQ

Wordless Wednesday: The Magnificent, Majestic Puma Concolor

The puma, also known as the mountain lion, cougar, screamer, panther, catamount, suçuarana, pangui, American lion and dozens of other names, looks like a big cat but is genetically closer to our domestic Feline friends.

Credit: Merazonia Animal Refuge of Ecuador

Click images for full high resolution versions. Baby puma image credit Elizabeth Lucas. Prints available here.

Bud’s A Smart Little Dude, According To A Cat IQ Test

Is your cat a genius or not the sharpest claw on the paw? The University of Maine’s Cat Lab wants your help as researchers seek to measure feline intelligence.

Buddy apparently has brawn and brains, according to a “cat IQ test” by researchers at the University of Maine.

The test is a survey designed by the people who work at the university’s Cat Lab, and it aims to employ some of the same techniques used to measure the intelligence of young children and dogs.

The test asks questions about memory, how closely felines read nonverbal cues from their humans, how attuned they are to human emotions, whether they’ve learned tricks, and whether they’ve improvised solutions to obstacles they’ve encountered.

I gave each question serious thought and tried to eliminate my own bias to the best of my ability.

“This is your brain on catnip. Any questions?”

For example, there’s absolutely no question Buddy is extremely communicative, curious, bold and friendly. He’s also figured out things on his own, like how to open doors and how to best manipulate me for as much food as possible. I’ll never forget watching with fascination when, as a kitten, he figured out how to wedge his body against the frame of my bedroom door with his feet while using his front paws to turn the handle.

On the other hand, he’s a hilariously inept hunter, he’s done some spectacularly dumb things, and he went through a whole phase in which he “boxed” the cat in the mirror before figuring out it was a reflection of himself.

I can still hear the “THWAP THWAP THWAP!” of his little kitty paws against the glass and his accompanying trills as he did battle with himself. To be fair, that was also in kittenhood, and he eventually figured out there was no other cat.

As I’ve detailed in this blog previously, Bud also seems to possess the precision of an atomic clock when it comes to meal times, and if I so much as shift in my chair as meal time approaches, he springs up and trills at me like “Are we going to the kitchen? Come on, dude, it’s Food O’clock! I want turkey, beef or tuna!”

According to the survey, Buddy has an IQ of 64 on a max-70 scale, good enough for the “Felix Forecaster” tier and just below “The McGonagall Mastermind.”

It’s probably for the best that he’s not in that very top tier anyway. We’re talking about a cat intelligent enough to understand I hate the sound of the flap on his litter box squeaking on its hinges, and has subsequently weaponized it to get me out of bed. If he gets any smarter, I’ll probably wake up to a machine that slaps me every time I hit the snooze button.

You can take the survey on behalf of your own cat(s) here. Don’t forget to share your results!