While ferocity comes naturally to cats, hunting skill must be honed. Only those who are the most dedicated to their craft can claim the title of Apex Predator!
Watch an apex predator hone his supreme hunting skills and show his toys who’s boss!
The Easter Buddy isn’t eating eggs this year because they’re $10 a dozen, but he’s chowing down on turkey.
The Easter Buddy wishes you all a happy Easter and a good time if you’re celebrating with family and/or friends.
Just like everything else in the world, Easter is better with cats, so don’t forget to bring something home for your little pal, or if you’re celebrating at home, shower your feline overlord with love and treats!
Eleven?! That can’t be possible! He doesn’t look a day over three…
Happy birthday to my best little pal!
Since I don’t know exactly when he was born, we celebrate his birthday as his adoptaversary, the weekend following my own birthday, which was the Saturday I brought him home in 2014.
As regular PITB readers know, Buddy — then nameless — came striding out of his carrier and starting conquering everything in sight, claiming the entire apartment as his own and declaring that my bed was now his bed, although he would permit me to continue using it. He was a bold kitten, and I did my best to nurture that boldness and friendliness.
Apologies for the lack of posts this past week, as I headed down to Washington to hang out with my brother, his wife and my nieces, and to attend the Sakura Festival. My bro and I also attended an event at the Kennedy Center featuring the physicist Brian Greene, who gave a presentation called Starry Night: A Voyage Across Space and Time. I’m looking forward to posting about it soon.
In the meantime, we’re going to have a Buddy weekend here. The little guy will get all his favorite treats, catnip in abundance, lots of play time and a new toy.
Oh, and some rascal changed my favorite Buddy photos into photos of Buddy as a tiger…hmmm. Who would do something like that?
Sheba and a geneticist who specializes in cats are looking for felines descended from ancient Egypt’s royal buddies.
“You may call me Budtum Ra Budhotep Bhufu Amun Buddeses, human. Now serve me!”
Bud’s already enormous ego just got a little bigger after I used Sheba’s Pharaoh Cat Finder to analyze his pharaohness.
The online tool says he’s up to 75 percent pharaoh:
I didn’t do it entirely out of altruism to give the little guy an ego boost. The winner of the Pharaoh Cat contest gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Bud’s been eating Sheba for 10 years. We’ve never endorsed any particular cat food here on PITB, partly because every cat is different, some have special nutritional needs and what works for one furry overlord may not work for another.
But as food motivated as he is, Buddy cannot scarf down more than half a can of wet food at a time, and he’s an enormous pain in the Bud when it comes to leftovers, so Sheba’s Perfect Portions saves me from wasting food.
While the online Pharaoh Cat Finder tool looks like it may be RNG combined with clever marketing, there’s a genetic basis for the search. The company is working with Dr. Leslie A. Lyons, a geneticist who specializes in the DNA of our furry little friends at the University of Missouri’s Feline Genetics and Comparative Medicine Lab.
Lyons was part of a research team that extracted DNA from mummified cats buried in ancient Egyptian tombs and sequenced their genetic code.
While the project verified that the Egyptians domesticated cats long before they began mummifying them and affording them revered status, Lyons says a DNA sequence from the ancient felines “has only been found in cats in Egypt and the U.S., unlocking even more questions to be explored.”
“We are looking at mitochondrial DNA only found in these pharaoh cats and a few cats in the U.S. So it’s really hard to find these cats, hence this hunt with Sheba pet food,” she said. “We’re on that quest to find the cats that went from Egypt into the U.S. and are the divine cats of the pharaohs. They should be worshiped like they were.”
I don’t think there’s any doubt that the aptly named Dr. Lyons is on team cat.
So here’s to hoping Bud gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Dr. Lyons is successful in her quest to find the elusive pharaoh cat lineage. In the meantime, we should probably start work on an impressive new pyramid here in the US, lest we disappoint our new feline pharaoh.
“Love is a strong word, human. I prefer ‘tolerate.’ On days when you anticipate my snack cravings before I verbalize them, you could maybe say I’m fond of you.”
Newsweek has an interesting interview with a cat behaviorist on the subject of whether cats love their humans.
Chantal Howard, a certified cat trainer with Feline Focus Training in Ottawa, told the magazine there are nine primary behaviors that indicate — or confirm — a house tiger loves his or her person. Most of these won’t be new to PITB readers, who are of course among the most cat-savvy people out there and have magnificent taste in cat blogs, but it’s still a handy way to ascertain how your feline overlord feels about you.
So how does Buddy do according to this checklist? Let’s see:
Headbutting: ✅ His Lordship is quite fond of headbutting me and favors me with dozens of headbutts throughout the day, ensuring his pheromones remain on me. You know, in case some other cat somehow comes wandering in and there’s a dispute about which furball owns me.
Kneading: ✅ Considering the fact that I’ve had to toss quite a few t-shirts because of claw rips, I’d say that’s a yes. At least he doesn’t knead my face anymore, as he liked to do when he was a kitten and would take his perch on my shoulder, nuzzle up to my neck and make biscuits against my beard.
Purring: ✅ Nine times out of 10, Buddy’s purr is inaudible, but it’s there. It’s a bit odd that such a talkative, loud cat barely makes a buzz. He likes to lay on my chest and purr up a storm while I rub his head and tell him he’s got admirers all over the world.
Chirping: ✅ Yes! In fact, chirps and trills make up a significant part of the Buddinese language. While meows can be positive, negative or demanding (“I can see the bottom of my bowl! This is an outrage, human!”), trills and chirps are always happy sounds.
Nipping: ✅ Unfortunately, yes.
Licking: ✅ He grooms my hair and my beard, and when I shave he licks my face, which is pretty gross.
Bringing Gifts: ❌ Negative. Then again, what kind of gifts can he bring me when he’s an indoor cat and doesn’t fully understand the concept of hunting?
Exposing Belly: ❌ Does he expose his belly? Yes. Does he feel comfortable enough to snooze in my lap with his belly exposed? Of course. Does he want me to give him belly rubs? No, he emphatically does not. The primordial pouch is not to be touched!
Tail Position: ✅ One of the most awesome things is the fact that Bud’s tail goes immediately into happy mode when I say “Hi, Bud!”, when I hold my hand out for a headbutt, and when I talk to him in general. His tail quivers with excitement when we play with the laser pointer or his favorite toy, and when he catches the first whiff of catnip.
So that’s 7 of 9, or 7 of 8 if we count gifts as N/A due to Bud’s hilarious ineptitude when it comes to even grasping the concept of hunting.
Bud has been known to throw up from excitement when I return from vacation, he often naps by the door when I go out, he talks to me constantly, and he’s rarely more than three or four feet away from me at any given time. All those things, plus our strong bond, have proven to me that he does love me, but it’s also nice to confirm it with a behaviorist’s criteria.
How does your cat perform on the checklist? Don’t forget to share your results in the comments.
Pain In The Bud 