Minerva, a long haired black feline, won on the mysteriously laconic slogan, “CRIME.”
Happy Meowscular Monday! As Little Buddy the Cat says, Monday’s a good day to get ripped with intense exercises like slapping treats out of puzzle feeders and moving from one nap spot to another.
The election started as a joke but the idea caught on, the media noticed, and soon people around the world were reading about the race between about 50 pets.
Most candidates were cats, but a few neighbors entered dogs, a parrot and a guinea pig.
It’s not clear if the new feline mayor was promising to end it, address it or solicit more of it, but the slogan resonated with voters and Minerva surged ahead of the pack, defeating incumbent mayor Berry the cat and original challenger Orange Cat.
People who live in the area said the election helped make the neighborhood friendlier, fostering connections between humans and pets. We can’t wait to see what Minerva does with crime.
A Queens woman is urging voters to support her cat as a write-in candidate for city council District 30 in an attempt to spoil a term-limited councilman’s “cronies” from sailing into office without opposition.
It’s an interesting time for politics in New York, and not just because of a mayoral race in which voters have apparently rejected Republicans and mainstream Democrats.
Over the last several weeks, stickers urging voters to cast their ballots for a house cat for a city council seat have been appearing in a Queens district.
In a story about the write-in campaign, the New York Post devotes most of the ink to political disagreements between Leo the cat’s human and the district’s councilman, Robert Holden. (He’s a moderate Democrat, she doesn’t think he’s progressive enough, but the things they’re arguing over are above the paygrade and influence of a city councilman.)
But the more interesting issue, for us at least, is what happens if Leo rides a wave of populist support and actually wins as a write-in candidate.
When asked what would happen if the nine-year-old feline earns an improbable victory at the polls, a humorless Board of Elections official asked a Post reporter if he was drunk, then told him “we can certainly say that only a human being — specifically a US citizen — can hold elected office in NYC.”
Oh well. It would be amusing if some clever attorney found a loophole to pave the way for a feline councilman, and there isn’t much chance Leo would be less productive than the rest of the council. He might even provide some fresh perspective on how to deal with the city’s eternal rat problem.
Can Captain Buddy of the USS Fowl Play outsmart the Klingons once again to save his crew and salvage his nap?
USS FOWL PLAY, NCC-2014A — Captain Buddy emerged from the turbolift, batting at the wrinkles in his uniform with his paws in a fruitless attempt to look more presentable.
“Not that it matters with these nap-interrupting brutes,” he sighed. “On screen!”
The helm officer tapped a sequence into his console and an image of a scowling Klingon materialized on the ship’s view screen, replacing the view of space and the sleek Klingon Warbird that had decloaked in front of the USS Fowl Play.
“Gruthnok vupar! This is the warship Dra’akkthar of the mighty Klingon empire!” the face on the view screen snarled. “Power down your pitiful excuse for a ship and prepare to be boarded!”
Captain Buddy smiled.
“Good to see you too, Captain Hrakhuul,” he said. “How are the wife and the kids?”
Hrakhuul snorted derisively.
“Only a fool jests during the hour of his doom!” the Klingon spat. “Have you no honor?”
Captain Buddy scratched his chin fur, pretending to consider the question.
“None,” he said, “but I do have a bone to pick with you. You woke me up during nap time. Again. Not cool, Hrakhuul. Not cool.”
Captain Buddy, commanding officer of the Federation starship USS Fowl Play, Galaxy class registration NCC-2014A
Hrakhuul growled.
“Your species is insolent, lazy and takes ten naps a day!”
“Why, thank you, Captain Hrakhuul! And may I say, you’re looking particularly savage today.”
“This is your last warning, Federation cat! Power down your shields and weapons or be destroyed!”
Captain Buddy yawned.
“I think I’ll have my crew serve me turkey sandwiches instead. Yeah. Turkey over obliteration, no brainer.”
This enraged the Klingon. “Prepare to taste your own blood at the tip of my ancestral bat’leth, feline fool!”
Buddy collapsed into his captain’s chair and kicked his feet up.
“Can we just skip this and get to the part where I outsmart you and go back to my nap?”
Hrakhuul cackled maniacally.
“So your fate is sealed, then. You shall fall before the might of the Klingon Emp…”
Captain Buddy cut him off.
“I wouldn’t be so confident if I were you. This is a..an, uh…” He turned to Lieutenant Pawson, the tactical officer, whispering: “What kind of ship is this again?”
“A Galaxy class, sir. Same as the flagship.”
“A Galactic class starship!” Buddy said confidently, projecting the calm of a seasoned captain. “And we have, like, uh…”
“Sixteen phaser banks and two photon torpedo launchers, sir,” Pawson whispered helpfully.
“Lasers! Like 27 of them! And torp…er, missiles and stuff! Very powerful missiles. They make yuge explosions!”
Behind him, operations Lt. Commander Cleo hid her face in her paws.
Schemeowtics for the USS Fowl Play, Captain Buddy’s awesome starship.
“Enough of your meaningless babble,” Captain Hrakhuul barked. “Prepare to die!”
Captain Buddy’s eyes went wide with shock.
“Oh no! We have a warp core breach! Abandon all decks and get to your escape pods!”
Captain Hrakhuul snarled, fear in his eyes.
“What?!?” If you think I will fall for this again, you tribble with a tail…”
“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you, Hrakkie,” he said. “You’re in the blast radius.”
Captain Buddy made a cut-off motion to the helmsman and the screen returned to its default view of a placid star field.
The bridge crew erupted into applause.
“The Klingon ship is backing up, full reverse thrusters, sir!”
Buddy cleared his throat.
“Fire a few of those proton missile things to create an explosion, then hit the gas, warp nine!”
The Captain yawned into the back of his paw as he walked toward the turbolift.
“I am returning to my nap,” he told his crew before the lift doors closed, “and anyone who interrupts me will be thrown out of an airlock!”
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!
Buddy the Cat’s quest for world domination has moved into the realm of music. Listen to the new single here!
NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat made history as the first feline to top the charts in multiple genres this week with the release of “Move Your Ass” by The Buddies.
Listen to it here, but before you do, make room to get funky. (“And use proper headphones or speakers please!” Buddy says. “Don’t do us dirty by playing it through a phone or a laptop. You’ll miss all the bassy goodness that makes it funky!”)
The incredibly funktacular nu-disco track pays homage to the talented feline, who played guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion, while his human assisted him with certain particulars that required an opposable thumb.
“Obviously I could have done this on my own,” Buddy says, “but I like my human to feel like he’s involved in things, you know? Camaraderie and all that. But for future documentaries, ‘Behind the Music’ episodes and other retrospectives, it should be clear I’m the musical genius and the talent. The brains and the brawn, so to speak. Also the beauty. Obviously.”
“Move Your Ass” hit the top of Japan’s pop charts after an early release on Jan. 20 in that country, while it’s dominated the dance music charts in Luxembourg, the Principality of Sealand, Monaco and France. After its Jan. 30 release in the US and UK, it was steadily climbing the charts on Spotify and terrestrial radio.
Asked about his musical influences, Buddy waxed poetic about the funk, disco, French house and nu-disco he grew up listening to.
“From my earliest days of kittenhood, I remember Big Buddy playing Earth, Wind and Fire, Kool and the Gang, McFadden and Whitehead, The Brothers Johnson, Daft Punk, the Galactik Knights and Televisor. I love Televisor! I would dance around and joyfully smack my human on the head, then go hide in his shoes.”
Buddy’s already hard at work on his next single, which he promises “will be just as delicious as this one.”
Pain In The Bud 