There’s huge buzz around Flow, which follows the journey of a cat through a flooded world where humans are curiously absent, but their former presence is felt everywhere.
Happy Friday! We don’t have any sarcasm, Big Buddesian wit or photos of the sexy beast himself, Little Buddy, for you today.
But we do have a trailer for what looks like an amazing cat movie! The buzz around Flow started in earnest in late spring, but I held back on writing about it because there was no information about when or where people could see this film.
Now it looks like Flow, after getting universal praise from critics and a triumphant release in the creator’s home country of Latvia, is finally poised to reach the rest of the world. Behold:
There’s so much going on here, from the sheer beauty of the world the trailer shows us, to the strange absence of humans after an apparent cataclysm, to the snort of the confused Capybara as our heroic void wriggles his way aboard a small sailboat and catches a ride with a motley company of stray animals.
The cat animation is perfect, capturing every nuance of feline movement, and the faces of the animals are expressive, telling us everything we need to know about their thoughts and moods as they survive in this strange new world.
There’s no real explanation for what happened other than the apparent biblical flood, and we’re hearing there isn’t a single word of dialog in the entire 85 minute film. Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis is already well regarded for his 2019 debut, Away, and the reviews for Flow have been glowing.
While Variety reported Flow will begin its run in theaters on Nov. 22, and Rotten Tomatoes has the same date listed, Fandango says the debut is slated for Nov. 12. Whether that’s a typo or there’s some other reason for the discrepancy, we’re not sure, but we’ll update as more information becomes available.
A still from Flow, a 2024 animated movie about a black cat navigating a post-human world of danger and beauty.A still from Flow, a 2024 animated movie about a black cat navigating a post-human world of danger and beauty.
Crumbs was rescued from a bad situation where people fed him without regard for his health. Now he’s got a lot of work ahead of him as his new caretakers help him lose weight so he can walk on his own again.
Crumbs, the morbidly obese tabby who was rescued from the basement of a Russian hospital last week, is already putting in the work to melt pounds.
That means he’s enduring two things most cats hate — exercise and water. You’ll recall from our earlier post that Crumbs weighs 38 pounds and cannot walk under his own power, so his new caretakers at Matroskin animal rescue in Perm, Russia, have him on a special waterproof treadmill where he gets the benefit of buoyancy while he gets his steps in.
The big guy is not a happy camper in the video, but he’s doing his best.
I’ve heard horror stories about the hospitals in Russia and Ukraine, so if it sounds strange that the staff at a hospital would feed cookies, soup and other inappropriate food to a cat, well, let’s just say it’s not the kind of environment most of us picture when we think “hospital.” (Which is another reason to be grateful for living in the west, where we have it much better than most of us generally realize.)
Non-native English speaking staff at the Hindustan Times may have confused Whiskas the cat food brand with whiskey, the alcoholic beverage, or there may have been a translation error.
Interestingly, a Hindustan Times story about Crumbs claims the hospital employees served whiskey to the obese cat in addition to the junk food, a claim repeated in the headline and article.
That would add another wrinkle to an already ridiculous story, but thankfully it’s not true. Your intrepid friends here at PITB checked the original text and with the help of translation software, determined it used the Russian word for “Whiskas,” as in the cat food, not whiskey. (It probably goes without saying, but never give alcohol to your cat. As little as a teaspoon of whiskey could be fatal.)
So if there’s some small comfort here, it’s that the people who fed Crumbs for so long weren’t completely ignorant to his needs, and it appears he got at least some species-appropriate food.
Crumbs shortly after he was rescued. Credit: Matroskin animal shelter
Video shows teacher Emily Marie Benner telling her students to hold the screaming cat down as she stapled shut an incision on its abdomen. The students then cheered for Benner, who is not a veterinarian and not licensed to teach veterinary surgery.
Regardless of whether she’s convicted, Emily Marie Benner’s career as an educator needs to end.
Benner is an agriculture teacher at Westwood High School in Palestine, Texas, about 110 miles southeast of Dallas. The 25-year-old was arrested and charged with animal cruelty over the weekend after giving students in her animal science class an unimaginably cruel “lesson” in crude unlicensed veterinary “surgery” on a living cat, local media reported.
On Aug. 23, Benner had her students hold the cat down while she stapled an incision on its abdomen shut. The procedure was performed without anesthesia and footage shows the cat was terrified and screaming. Benner is not a veterinarian, nor is she qualified to teach anything related to veterinary medicine.
After Benner administered the staple, her students began cheering, the video shows.
Local media showed a still image but said the video was too disturbing to air. Credit: CBS KYTX
It’s not clear where Benner obtained the cat or whether she made the incision to begin with. KYTX, a CBS affiliate in Texas, said it had “obtained a copy” of a video showing the incident, but declined to air it.
“The video is graphic in nature and we are choosing not to share it online or broadcast it on television,” KYTX’s Zak Wellerman wrote.
The cat is now under the care of a licensed veterinarian and is recovering, according to local media reports.
Benner. Credit: Anderson County Jail
Benner did not appear to be remorseful. In a mugshot taken after her arrest, she beams as she wears a t-shirt that reads “Teach Ag.”
In a letter to parents, Westwood Superintendent Wade Stanford said Benner’s actions amounted to animal cruelty, and said he wanted “to make it absolutely clear that our district takes such matters extremely seriously.”
“This behavior is not in line with the values and standards we uphold within our district,” Stanford wrote, “and we are committed to taking immediate and decisive action to address this issue.”
It’s not clear if Benner has retained an attorney, and a preliminary hearing for her case has not yet been scheduled. She faces a maximum sentence of two years in state prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted.
The video is thoroughly amusing, but it also illustrates profound truths about feline intelligence, showing cats understand a lot more than people often give them credit for.
I’m loving this video of a sneaky orange tabby pretending to snooze while helping himself to his human’s food.
Little dude lays down and closes his eyes, then slowly reaches a paw out to the cap of an ice cream container, which has a glob of the good stuff on it. He checks to make sure the coast is clear by opening his eyes just a tiny bit, then slowly moves the cap over incrementally, pausing at intervals to make sure he’s still unobserved. (It looks like his human set her phone to record, then left the room so her little buddy thought no eyes were on him).
Aside from being hilarious and cute, this short clip actually illustrates something profound: Cats are much more intelligent than people usually give them credit for.
Consider the fact that to pull this off, the cat needs to be self-aware, and he needs to possess theory of mind. In other words, this cat understands he and his human have different perspectives, know different things, and that if he can move stealthily and appear to innocently nap, he can get away with eating some ice cream.
That may not seem like a big deal at first, but it means the cat understands humans can be deceived, and he understands how to do it. He cannot possibly know we have technology that can record him while we’re not looking, so that’s not a strike against him. There are plenty of things we don’t understand about animals, and we’re supposed to be the more intelligent species.
To truly appreciate how profound this is, consider that human children do not fully possess theory of mind until they’re four or five years old! That’s when they begin to appreciate the fact that other people have internal thought processes and emotions — even if they can’t articulate that — and, crucially, that what a person thinks she knows may not align with reality.
Footage like this goes well beyond refuting the old, debunked claim that animals like cats are biological automatons without thoughts or feelings. It shows they are in full possession of the cognitive tools that form the basis for higher modes of thinking. Again, while some people might hear that and say “What’s the big deal?”, it destroys all arguments that animals don’t have emotions or don’t understand what’s happening to them when humans mistreat them.
It also shows that cats are at least as intelligent as young children in all the ways that matter. They cannot verbalize their thoughts and feelings, but that has no bearing on their existence. After all, no one would argue that a child doesn’t have feelings simply because he’s unable to speak.
Lastly, there’s one more important lesson here: hide your ice cream from your fluffy pals!
“People aren’t ready for us to turn carnivore cats vegan but I’m going to do it,” the CEO of a vegan cat food brand has vowed.
In September of last year, a research paper about feline health was published to the open-access journal PLOS-One, going mostly unnoticed.
The paper’s authors claim their research proves cats fed a “nutritionally complete” vegan diet are not only just as healthy as their meat-eating counterparts, they’re actually less likely to need veterinary visits, less dependent on medication, and more likely to be given a clean bill of health by their veterinarians.
When a company called Wild Earth announced the launch of a new line of vegan cat food this month, the company pointed directly to that paper as proof that “cats fed nutritionally sound vegan diets are healthier overall than those fed meat-based diets,” as the paper’s lead author put it.
Wild Earth CEO Ryan Bethencourt, who does not have a professional background in veterinary medicine or feline nutrition, summed up his goal in a tweet: “People aren’t ready for us to turn carnivore cats vegan but I’m going to do it.”
Bethencourt calls the effort to put pets on vegan diets “vegan biohacking.” Credit: Wild Earth
He painted the new offering as a bold counter to skeptics who say vegan cat food is unhealthy.
“We expect aggressive resistance from the meat industry on the launch of this industry-pioneering vegan cat food, but we know there are A LOT of cat parents looking for healthier plant-based and more sustainable options and we want to be the leader in providing them with that choice,” Bethencourt wrote in a statement.
What he didn’t mention was the fact that the loudest voices opposing “vegan cat food” are animal welfare organizations like the SPCA and Humane Society, as well as veterinarians and nutritionists, the same people who see the consequences of cats who are deprived of meat. Over the years they have reiterated that felines are obligate carnivores who have evolved to get their nutrients from meat, with digestive systems that cannot process most plants, meaning they can’t break them down and derive nutrients from them. That’s why we don’t see servals or leopards foraging for fruit in the wild.
In addition, the announcement did not mention that the 2023 research was funded by ProVeg International, a non-profit dedicated to reducing global meat consumption, weaning people and animals off of meat and onto plant-based food.
That didn’t stop other credulous reports, like one from GreenQueen claiming Wild Earth’s vegan cat food is “built on research proving that felines can be healthy on a vegan diet.”
And that’s exactly the point — the “study” was conceived and published so that advocates of vegan cat food can point to it and say “science says” cats can survive on plants.
Bad data makes for bad science
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but the 2023 study did not examine veterinary records or log the results of vet visits over years. Instead, the data was self-reported by participants.
A total of 1,418 people responded to the survey, and only 127 of them said they feed their cats exclusively vegan diets. The claims that their cats get sick less often and do better in veterinary check-ups are based on their subjective assessments and recollections. The paper’s authors don’t know which vegan brands the 127 respondents were giving to their cats, nor do they have information on whether the food was wet or dry, how often the cats were fed, and how much they ate.
A cat eating Wild Earth’s Unicorn Pate, which is made entirely from plant products. Credit: Wild Earth
One of the metrics cited by the authors is “guardian opinion of more severe illness,” which means arbitrary feedback from people who aren’t experts in veterinary medicine or nutrition.
If including respondent opinions as “data” doesn’t bother you, consider how many people buy products like Airborne, concluding that it works because they didn’t get sick once on a cross-country flight. Airborne, you may recall, was “invented” by a teacher who claimed she figured out how to cure the common cold, something no physician has done in centuries of trying.
Like vegan cat food proponents, Airborne had its own “study” that claimed its efficacy. The company eventually paid out more than $23 million in a class action settlement for its false claims. That’s not to say vegan cat food makers are precisely like Airborne, but pointing to poorly conducted research is a tactic that works because most people won’t go to the effort of finding the study and reading it.
Current global meat consumption is unsustainable, but…
I’m a vegetarian and I’ve seen enough evidence to convince me that the current rate of meat consumption, especially in the first world, is untenable as the global population rises toward its expected 11 billion-plus peak. Those forecasts and the horrors of factory farming are motivation enough to hope human civilization consumes less meat in the future.
But I’m also a guy who loves his cat, and I think if you’re going tell me that my little pal, designed by nature to be an obligate carnivore with a digestive system and body plan that hasn’t significantly changed for ages, can stop eating meat entirely with no deleterious effects — despite the experts saying otherwise — then you really need to show me something better than a self-reported survey paid for by a vegan advocacy group.
This cat is not happy. Credit: r/cats(reddit)
Especially when veterinarians who have no financial interest in the pet food industry relate horror stories of their four-legged patients slowly going blind and cats with no other ailments suffering catastrophic consequences, with their organs shutting down because they’re not getting the vital nutrients and proteins they need to survive.
It’s a horrific way to die, and it happens because misguided people think human morals should apply to cats. Notice in the press releases and marketing materials from vegan cat food manufacturers, there’s no mention of what’s in the best interest of cats — it’s all about people making “bold” choices, “disrupting” industries and leading the Earth to a shiny future without meat or suffering.
The truth is, felines cannot synthesize the proteins that are absolutely necessary for their survival, and their digestive systems aren’t evolved for breaking down nutrients from plants. Those are well-established facts, and ignoring them will not change reality. So anyone who claims “vegan cat food” is healthy faces a much bigger task than asking people to take a self-reported survey. A survey paid for by a nonprofit that lobbies for veganism isn’t proof, it’s wishful thinking masquerading as science.
Even if the authors of the paper had the complete veterinary records of the same cats, it would only be one tentative first step toward challenging everything we know about cat nutrition. Questions aren’t settled after one study, especially with such a small data set. Studies must be repeatable, and the difference between correlation and causation isn’t settled with a single well-designed, unimpeachable study, much less a self-reported survey.
When the stakes are the lives, happiness and health of innocent animals, we should be absolutely sure we’re doing right by them.
Pain In The Bud 