Halloween – Pain In The Bud

‘Aww, Your Kitty Is So Cute!’

A very Buddy Halloween!

As much as Bud can be a ~~wimp~~ fearless protector of the apartmental realm, he’s also very friendly when he feels confident, and he loves Halloween.

Every Halloween since kittenhood, little man has answered the door with me, standing right by my side as I hand out candy. He’s just as curious about the kids as they are about him.

“Your kitty is so cute!” one girl of about 10 said tonight as Bud looked up at her.

“Thanks!” I said. “He loves answering the door.”

The little girl, dressed as a witch, was the third trick-or-treater to compliment Bud tonight. That may not seem like much, but we had surprisingly few kids this year. I expected a lot more since the last two Halloweens were muted by the threat of COVID, but for whatever reason the little ghouls and goblins have not returned to pre-COVID levels.

For what it’s worth, when I was a kid we used to love going to apartment buildings, which offered the best time-to-candy ratio. You could knock out an entire floor of 20 apartments in 10 or 15 minutes, then walk up the stairs and do it again. By the end of the night, you were guaranteed to have overflowing bags of candy.

Things have really changed in two decades. My brother, my friends and I would just go out by ourselves in our Batman, ninja and robot costumes. Mom would tell us to be careful, but we weren’t chaperoned. Nowadays every trick-or-treater has a parent in tow. I’m not sure if that’s a smart precaution or a sad reflection on our society.

Alas, Bud didn’t wear a costume this year. Usually I’m able to get him to tolerate a simple bandana or his little tuxedo, at least for the time it takes to answer the door. I couldn’t find either of them this year, so I tried to bribe him into wearing a little penguin hat from an old costume.

Despite the payoff in snacks, Bud tugged the hat off three times. It was a bit too small, and he’s too smart. The hat didn’t have a chance.

Happy Halloween! I hope all PITB readers and their feline masters are having a great night. Have fun polishing off the leftover candy!

Guy Kicks Girlfriend Out After She Admits To Tossing Cat Outside

A man ended his relationship with his girlfriend after she tried to get rid of his cat.

Reddit’s “Am I The Asshole?” is described as a “catharsis for the frustrated moral philosopher in all of us, and a place to finally find out if you were wrong in an argument that’s been bothering you.” It’s also a goldmine for people who wish they could read an advice columnist’s slush pile.

On Tuesday, a user asked the community if he’s “the asshole” for kicking his girlfriend out of his home after she tried to get rid of the kitty by “pick[ing] him up and put[ting] him outside to wander off.” Here’s the full post:

AITA for kicking out my girlfriend from AmItheAsshole

According to the OP, his cat didn’t do anything to prompt his girlfriend from booting the little guy.

“She knows he can’t survive outside… She didn’t seem to have any regrets about her actions and no, she never lived with cats before,” the poster added in response to follow-up questions from the community. “She said she couldn’t stand cats and that she couldn’t live with one.”

A few users pointed out that kicking a house cat with no survival skills out of a home is not only dangerous, but kicking a black cat out on or near Halloween could have tragic consequences. As for the original poster, he says he’s placed Raven in the temporary care of a friend until his girlfriend moves out, as he’s worried she might try to hurt the cat — or throw him out again — out of spite.

Others said he was doing the right thing even if Raven wasn’t in danger.

“If she thinks it’s acceptable to do that with something as important as a pet, then she thinks she can do that with any aspect of your life she doesn’t like,” one user wrote. “The cat is important, but almost irrelevant in the scope of red flags she’s throwing out.”

For whatever reason, even though women are more likely to be cat caretakers than men — and men are statistically more likely to take their relationship frustration out on pets, especially cats — the last few viral stories about relationship conflicts over cats have implicated women. Obviously if the situation had been reversed, the boyfriend should have been thrown out, or the girlfriend should have left with her cat. Gender isn’t the issue here: The issue is jerks who take their frustrations out on innocent animals.

Why Scaring Cats Isn’t Funny

Scaring your cat with cucumbers or animatronic Halloween toys will damage your cat’s trust in you.

Whether they’re surreptitiously placing cucumbers behind their cats’ backs while the kitties are eating or filming their felines’ terrified reactions to Halloween props, some people apparently love scaring their furry friends.

Since many of the resulting videos go viral, people hungry for online fame have even more incentive to “prank” their cats as they chase clicks. The result is potentially thousands of house cats terrorized by people with ambitions of being the next TikTok or YouTube star.

On the surface, the way cats respond to being startled might seem comical. The term “scaredy cat” didn’t manifest out of nothingness, and cats who are truly frightened have a cartoonish way of leaping back and pumping their little legs while they’re still in the air like Looney Tunes characters.

But when you think about it from your cat’s perspective, in the context of feline evolution and psychology, the cruelty of scaring a cat for “lulz” becomes obvious.

First, cats are ambush predators. It’s why they love boxes, why they do the adorable crouch-and-butt-wiggle routine before pouncing on their toys, and why they like vantage points where they can see but not be seen.

They particularly dislike surprises, which is why they bolt. Cats are supposed to get the jump on other animals, not the other way around. The impulse to flee as quickly as possible — and return unseen — is hardwired into the feline brain, as natural to them as burying their poop or kneading when they feel content. Because domestic cats are small and can be predator and prey, that impulse is even stronger, but it also exists in 500-pound tigers or 200-pound jaguars.

So when you intentionally frighten your cat with an object that will be perceived, however briefly, as a predator, you’re triggering a fight-or-flight response, a rush of adrenaline and fear.

However, scaring a cat in its own territory (your home) or in a place he or she feels especially secure (feeding areas) adds another layer. A cat walking around outside will be naturally wary, but if you’re giving your cat a good home, as well as the love and space she deserves, she’ll feel comfortable. She’s on her home turf, in a closed environment where threats don’t pop up unexpectedly.

When a cat turns around after enjoying some yums and sees a cucumber, her hardwiring takes over, she registers the intrusive vegetable as a snake and goes into flight mode, scrambling to get away as fast as possible. It’s not just that kitty’s shocked or can get hurt scurrying away from a perceived threat, it’s also the inherent cruelty in teaching your cat that the place she thought was absolutely safe from intruders may not be.

We’re not immune to this kind of conditioning ourselves. If you settle down for a nap one day and your spouse, a sibling or a friend thinks it’s funny to wake you by dropping an ice cold bucket of water on your face, will you feel comfortable dozing off on the couch next time?

Trust is implicit in our relationships with our cats. If we abuse that trust, especially for something as meaningless as social media likes, we’re endangering our human-feline friendships and making our cats feel unsafe in their own homes.

I Was A Good Boy On Halloween, Now Give Me Snacks!

Buddy agrees to dress up for Halloween in exchange for catnip and treats.

Bud won’t tolerate a costume and I wouldn’t make him wear one, but he’s cool with wearing a festive scarf courtesy of my mom, who insists she doesn’t like him but somehow ends up buying stuff for him.

The cool thing about having an unusually curious and friendly cat is that he dashes to the door like a dog whenever someone knocks. Halloween is no exception, and Bud has been helping me hand out candy since he was a kitten.

When trick or treaters come by, the little guy can’t wait to see who’s in the other side of the door. He sits on the threshold and just takes it all in — the new people, the funny costumes, the strange human ritual that involves helping children get an epic sugar high and upset stomach.

For Bud it’s a night of excitement without any anxiety since no one’s actually stepping into his territory. They all keep a respectful distance, like supplicants with an audience before a powerful but benevolent king, and in turn the king allows his servant to reward their fealty with gifts of candy.

Bud on Halloween — “Let’s just get this over with, human. Remember, you said I could have catnip AND extra yums if I wear this infernal scarf!”

Sadly Halloween was a dud this year even more than last year, which was our first pandemic All Hallow’s Eve. Living in an apartment building, especially on the first floor, usually means a steady stream of kids, but this year I had maybe six or seven knocks on the door, and the kids were trick or treating in ones and twos. (All kids are chaperoned by parents these days too. It makes me wonder how my brother and I — and our friends — survived as kids, going out into the big bad world ourselves to trick or treat!)

unrecognizable men in glowing halloween masks driving car at night — You’d think Halloween was Purge Night by how parents hover over their kids. Credit: Erik Mclean/Pexels.com

Dear Buddy: Can Cats Sense Ghosts?

Buddy denies that he’s scared of stuff, and explains why some humans might fool themselves into believing kitties sense spirits.

Dear Buddy,

Can cats sense ghosts? My Mr. Cuddles sometimes stares at blank walls or gets up and starts zooming around the house for no apparent reason at 3 a.m.

I’m pretty sure he can see and sense ghosts. After all, what other explanation can there be for that kind of behavior? But since you’re the smartest cat in the world and an expert on everything, I thought I’d ask you first.

Thanks!

Ghost Believer in Great Britain

Dear Ghost Believer,

First I’d like to take the opportunity to set the record straight: I did NOT run screaming when I watched The Ring with my human, and I did NOT run to my litter box and cry when we watched Alien. Those are vicious lies invented by Los Gatos, the criminal catnip cartel, who will stop at nothing to discredit me. Now for the answer to your question:

According to Occam’s razor, “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Or to put it another way, “It is pointless to do with more what can be done with fewer.”

Consider, my friend, that the burden of proof rests with the person who claims ghosts exist. Not once in the history of humans — or cats — has anyone been able to provide legitimate evidence of the supernatural. In fact, the word supernatural itself precludes existence on the physical plane: If we can see it, hear it, smell it and feel it, it exists in the physical world, and therefore cannot be supernatural.

This is why, invariably, supernatural phenomena turn out to be things we just don’t understand yet, and by understanding them we remove all the mystery.

The sun isn’t a god riding a chariot across the sky, it’s a star and our world is caught in its orbit. Lightning isn’t an angry Zeus hurling bolts from Olympus, it’s an electrostatic discharge that produces a flash of extreme heat in the atmosphere, leading to a visible flash and a shockwave we call thunder. The Pythia at Delphi wasn’t an oracle who communed with the gods, she was just really, really high off gases that seeped up from a fault line beneath the temple.

“I am Cat Zeus! Fear me, for my lightning bolts are powerful and my epic beard is comprised of cats!”

So, too, do our odd feline behaviors have mundane explanations:

We can hear things you can’t hear. If you see us staring at blank walls, we’re probably engaged in deep thought (I like to ponder the Fermi paradox and quantum entanglement), or maybe we’re looking in the direction of a sound we can hear, but falls outside of your hearing range. (We felines can hear sounds up to 64,000 Hz, while your inferior human ears can’t catch anything above 20,000 Hz.) That means you may be oblivious to the mice chirping behind the wall, but we know all about them.
We can see things you can’t see. You think it’s pitch black? That’s cute. While you stumble around with your eyes useless in the dark, we can see just fine. In fact, even the tiniest sliver of light — an amount imperceptible to you — is enough for us to successfully navigate obstacles in a room or catch movement in our field of vision. You may think we’re pawing at invisible entities at bedtime, but really we’re just swatting flies in the dark.
We can feel micro-changes in air density. Our whiskers aren’t just about making us look good. They help us navigate tight spaces and they’re super-sensitive. How sensitive? They’re so packed with nerves and blood vessels at the base that they’re at least as sensitive as your fingertips! You can silently pass wind in the hallway and we’ll be aware of it in the bedroom as our whiskers register the tiniest shifts in air current. Your farts stink, by the way.
We can smell things you can’t smell. Speaking of stinky, did you know we have 200 million olfactory receptors? You humans only have five million. Who’s the superior species now, huh? You think we’re furry little wizards who can sense you coming home, or possess powers of precognition, but the truth is we just pick up your nasty Axe body spray from half a mile away. Ghosts don’t wear Axe body spray, or Curve, or Cool Water for that matter.

By now you should have noticed a common theme. You might have bigger brains than us because your heads are huge, but we know all about all sorts of good stuff happening around us while you humans remain oblivious to it. Heck, sometimes you don’t even see or hear things happening right in front of you because you’ve always got your faces buried in those stupid screens!

Buddy's Whiskers — Bud’s Whiskers: Stylish *and* functional!

If we did sense ghosts, you can be sure we’d meow at them for treats and demand they let us in the bathroom, but we don’t. Also, I personally wouldn’t be scared, but lesser cats might get freaked out if they see ghosts, and you’d know because they’d go all white and try to hide under the blankets.

Hope that clears things up!

Your friend,

Buddy