Wordless Wednesday: Movie Stars

Little Buddy is the brains and the badass. Big Buddy is the sidekick. Script by Little Buddy.

Wait, I’m the sidekick? Why am I the sidekick?

Grieving Family Wants Answers After Amazon Driver’s Theft Of Their Cat Ends With His Death

A Kansas City family is in anguish after an Amazon delivery driver stole their senior cat, beginning a sequence of events that led to his death. Once again, Amazon treated the situation like a routine customer service issue.

At this point it feels like the certainties in life are death, taxes and Amazon delivery drivers stealing pets.

If there’s a fourth, it’s Amazon’s predictably awful response to customers whose cats and dogs are stolen by the company’s drivers. Whether asking distraught customers how much the pet was worth, offering credit, or offering to send stuffed animals as replacements, Amazon has generally been unhelpful. This is a pattern going back years now and Amazon still hasn’t come up with a protocol to handle these situations.

A recurring problem is that Amazon treats the incidents like regular customer service complaints. Their customer service representatives aren’t trained for the possibility, they are apparently reluctant to go off-script, and the result is that the reps treat the missing pets like fungible products, as if these situations can be rectified by sending a replacement or reimbursing a customer.

That’s the last thing anyone wants to hear. Pets are companions, considered family by most Americans who have cats and dogs in their homes. Hearing “And how much would you say Fluffy’s worth?” exacerbates the frustration and worry.

In the latest incident, surveillance footage shows an Amazon driver picking up a cat named Sidney from his family’s driveway in Kansas City on April 20. At 16 years old, dependent on medication with his health failing, Sidney was near the end of his life, Marsha Reeves told the local Fox affiliate.

Sidney

“I knew his time was near, and I just wanted him to be comfortable and at home when it came,” she said.

Because of the driver’s actions, Sidney’s last days were spent in distress and confusion, separated from the people who loved him. The driver surrendered him to a shelter the next day, and Sidney was bounced between shelters and animal control with his family frantically trying to track him when a veterinarian at a rescue group euthanized him.

“I cannot even imagine what he was thinking,” she said. “He did not deserve to die on a metal table with strangers poking him. He should have been at home in my arms when he took his last breath.”

Marsha Reeves, Sidney’s human

It’s a tragic and horrific end for a cat whose family wanted to fill his last days with love. They’re denied closure, and to add to the awfulness of the situation, Reeves said the mega-corporation was not helpful, at first not admitting one of its drivers took the cat, then slow-walking the response.

“I cannot even imagine what he was thinking,” Reeves said. “He did not deserve to die on a metal table with strangers poking him. He should have been at home in my arms when he took his last breath.”

We’ve written about this before, and previous cases make it clear: people who find themselves in this situation should not wait for Amazon (or any other company) to handle it, because it’s not a priority for them. In every case in which a family has successfully regained their cat, the common denominator was they took it upon themselves to lead the effort and were relentless in searching, posting flyers locally, rallying support online and making noise in local media. Sometimes even that’s not enough, but it increases the odds of a happy reunion by orders of magnitude compared to putting faith in a corporation and police.

In this case, there’s been no word from Amazon about consequences for the driver or changes to the way the company trains its delivery workforce and customer service representatives.

The driver “needs to come with a supervisor and face me and my family members who this has affected,” Reeves told the local Fox affiliate. “I think Amazon needs to be held accountable. I think this young woman needs to be held accountable. She needs to realize that there are consequences to her decision making.”

So far the company hasn’t admitted wrongdoing or offered an apology, which is consistent with cases in the past involving drivers who have stolen pets.

“Why won’t Amazon just come out and say ‘we screwed up?’”

Home Inspector Freaked Out By Large Maine Coon [VIDEO]

The surprised home inspector made a phone call from inside the owner’s living room, reporting “an intimidatingly large cat.”

Home camera footage shows a housing inspector who enters a family’s living room and stops dead in his tracks because he sees…a Maine Coon?!

The inspector was concerned enough that he phoned back to the office to report an “intimidatingly large cat.”

“I’m doing a home inspection now and, like, there’s this cat here, and it’s a very large size cat,” he tells the person on the other end of the line. “You know how you see a cat and they have a cute face? This cat is like… I might eat you later.”

What’d he think it was, a lynx?

Of course we get this sort of thing all the time here at Casa de Buddy. Oftentimes people will hear Little Buddy’s terrifying roar and cast an uncertain glance my way.

“Dude, you got Elmo locked in a room or something?”

Followed inevitably by Bud’s indignant reply.

“I do NOT sound like Elmo! I’m a tiger, I just haven’t hit my growth spurt yet.”

So there you have it. Weird things can happen when you have a huge cat in your home…or one who sounds like Elmo.

Happy 12th Birthday, Little Buddy!

Let the catnip flow and the good times roll.

This weekend marks 12 years since I took home an energetic, bold, curious, talkative gray tabby kitten.

In some ways it feels like it can’t possibly be 12 years since I adopted the Budster, but it also feels like the little dude has been around forever. He’s such an outsize presence with a huge personality, and he never lets you forget he’s around.

As we celebrate the loudmouthed, opinionated, turkey-loving little guy, here are some of his adventures as chronicled here on PITB:

  • The time he was named Sexiest Cat Alive by CatPeople magazine.
  • The time he broke into the tiger enclosure at the Bronx Zoo to hang with his “homies” and was claimed as a cub by a tigress who gave him big, sloppy tongue baths.
  • The time he traveled to the Amazon to hang out with jaguars and was oddly accepted by them after he shared turkey and showed them how to make more comfortable beds.
  • The time Sir David Attenborough made a documentary about “the silver-furred Buddy” in “his native habitat, the living room.”
  • The time he was tricked by a Nigerian scammer, then got revenge by sending a lion to recover his money.
  • The time he issued his little red book filled with his wisdom, like this nugget: “Observe the human, and its wretched species, always in thrall to an invented concept called time. The time is what you say it is. I say it’s time for a snack.”

Bud must have been born some time in February of 2014, but since I don’t know the day, his adoptiversary is his de facto birthday.

We’ve got a long weekend ahead of us, including a party, a dance contest, a cocktail hour with Bud’s jaguar friends, and of course the grand fireworks display on Sunday night. There will be catnip and turkey for all.

Happy birthday, Bud!

Buddy The Cat Bravely Scares Off Yuge Bear!

“Hold my beer,” Buddy said after watching a video of another feline sending a pair of bears running with an awesome display of fiery intimidation.

NEW YORK — The bear picked the wrong home and the wrong cat to mess with.

Buddy the Cat was taking his traditional 3 pm nap after third lunch when he was rudely disturbed by a ruckus outside.

“Stay here, I will check it out,” he told his human, then hopped down from the couch as his powerful stride took him toward the sliding glass doors leading out to the balcony.

A huge form was huddled just outside the glass, and when the lumbering beast turned, Buddy took a sharp breath. It was a bear, a particularly impressive specimen.

Lesser felines would have been terrified, but Buddy stood calmly before the bear and addressed it.

“Inferior animal,” the fearless feline announced. “Yes, you! You are trespassing on Buddesian territory. I order you to cease any and all ursine activity and return forthwith to your place of origin or the nearest convenient parallel dimension!”

“What are you doing?!” a terrified Big Buddy whispered.

Buddy turned toward his human. “It’s from Ghostbusters. Calm down, I know what I’m doing.”

The bear yawned and let out a deep, rumbling moan.

The bear flinches as Buddy unleashes a terrifying roar!

“I can see I’m not dealing with the sharpest claw on the paw,” Buddy said. “Okay, bear, do you understand this?”

Buddy eased back on his haunches and raised two powerful forelimbs, his considerable meowscles rippling meowscularly beneath the luxurious sheen of his silver fur.

The bear watched warily, then flinched instinctively as the intimidating feline launched a sequence of aggressive and powerful paw strikes. The ursine beast recoiled from the thunderous impacts of paws against glass, reconsidering its position in the face of such a formidable display of force.

The massive creature turned in retreat, casting one last fearful glance at the Herculean felid before beating a hasty retreat.

Once he was satisfied the bear was gone, Buddy turned and sauntered back toward the couch, lifting himself onto it in a single graceful leap.

“And that,” the handsome silver feline said, “is how you deal with a bear.”