Feline Overlords – Pain In The Bud

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.”

Buddy’s Sunday Afternoon Nap

Looking to recuperate after a long morning of eating and lounging in the suddenly warm weather, the little guy settled down for some shut-eye.

What’s better than a Sunday afternoon nap?

It’s been a glorious day here in Buddyland! The forecast had us breaking the 50-degree mark for the first time in at least four months, so imagine our surprise when the temperature topped out in the low 60s!

Bud decided to celebrate the balmy weather by stretching out and drifting off for a nice nap, and I couldn’t resist taking a few photos of my pal looking relaxed after a hard day of eating and lounging.

To be fair, I was out earlier and when I came home, Bud was right by the door to greet me as always, so he probably had a very demanding nap in the proximity of the front door while I was gone, then opted for a more relaxed nap after expending all that energy on his earlier nap. I had also topped off his dry food before his lunch, in case he got hungry while he was eating.

It’s not easy being a cat!

‘I Tread Where I Please’ Said Cat Who Left Paw Prints On Manuscript 500 Years Ago

It turns out cats have been adding their special sauce to our communications for as long as written language has been a thing.

Illuminated manuscripts date back long before the printing press, and their manufacture was arduous.

Literacy itself was rare in the Dark Ages and usually only the province of educated nobility and the professionally religious. Most people had no hope of learning to read, so the monks charged with copying religious texts were already practitioners of a rare skill for their time.

They weren’t just writing either. They carefully illustrated each page with drawings, cartouches and other decorative touches, and the text itself was a form of art in its calligraphic symmetry, designed to be beautiful as well as legible.

It took thousands of hours to complete a manuscript. There was no whiteout and no do-overs: a mistake meant the page had to be scrapped even if it represented a week’s worth of work.

So when a Flemish scribe finished a page of his manuscript and set it aside, he thought he was in the clear — until a cat came along and left its own signature in the form of paw prints.

Three of them, in fact, representing one and a half kitty strides. Two of the feline’s little feet found white space, but another landed right on top of the meticulously rendered text.

The feline-marked parchment in all its glory.

It kind of puts keyboard cats in context, doesn’t it? Our four legged friends may occasionally ruin our drafts or emails — or in my case wreck a music recording session with a discordant keyboard solo by walking across a synthesizer at an inopportune time — but at least they don’t cost us dozens of hours of work.

The 500-year-old, kitty-marked manuscript is now the centerpiece of “Paws On Parchment,” a new exhibit at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum.

Click here for more details from the museum, which is open Tuesday through Saturday, with late hours on Thursday evenings. Admission is free.

And if you ever take up calligraphy as a hobby, keep your work hidden from your feline overlords!