handsome – Pain In The Bud

10 Ways To Celebrate International Cat Day, According To Buddy The Cat

It’s International Cat Day, which means you should totally do awesome stuff for your cat.

Hello there, PITB readers! I have taken over the blog from my inept human on this most auspicious of days, International Cat Day, to offer some great suggestions on how to honor your feline overlord!

Let’s get right into it, shall we?

10) Human snacks: Let’s be serious here for a moment. I’m sick of getting the same old crunchy treats, meaty sticks, soft Buddy Biscuits, Churus and party mix. I want cheese! I want filet mignon! I want roast turkey! I want a cheeseburger! Day after day we have to sit here, our mouths watering as you humans stuff your faces with all sorts of food we would love to eat. Well, today’s the day. Start cookin’, servants!

closeup of delicious double patty cheeseburger — Yes! More cheese, hold the lettuce and tomatoes. Credit: Juan Santos/Pexels

9) Roombas. That’s right. It’s 2024 and I still don’t have a Roomba. I’m very angry about that. When do I get my mighty steed? Let it be today!

8) Catnip and silvervine. Sure, we get these on other days, but this day absolutely must not go by without you giving us at least a few doses of the good stuff. Hurry up! I need to get my fix!

7) Sweet cat drip that shows you’re owned by a cat. My Big Buddy just got two t-shirts. One shows a roaring jaguar with the word “Savage,” because I am savage, and the other is a kitty samurai with a cool sword. Aside from the fact that this is premium drip, everyone will know that you answer to a fluffy, benevolent overlord back home. That’s what’s important.

6) A throne. I’ve wanted a throne since I was a kitten. It doesn’t need to be an Iron Throne with the melted swords of everyone I’ve conquered, a la Game of Thrones. It can be something humble, made of gilded metal, velvet cushions and maybe a lion crest or cool tiger heads on the paw rests. I’m not picky as long as it looks awesome. What’s important is the symbolism and comfort.

5) Hire a mariachi band to parade through the streets hoisting an image of your cat, performing songs in your feline overlord’s honor. This is another humble offering that says “I serve a cat, and I’m proud of it!” When people ask what the hell is going on, hand them Cuban cigars and say “We are celebrating el jefe!” They’ll know who you mean.

4) Hire a portraitist to paint your kitty. Again, it doesn’t have to be extravagant. As a humble cat, I don’t mind being portrayed as a naval commodore, a king, a great warrior of world renown, or a massive tiger. The important thing is that it looks cool and you hang the picture above the couch in the living room. Get on it, human.

3) Massages. Schedule them throughout the day, sprinkling them around naps and meal times. Do you know how satisfying it is to enjoy a nice massage after Food O’Clock? I like to have my chin rubbed and the top of my head scratched while being told what a good, handsome, awesome, amazing, handsome, meowscular feline I am.

2) Toys. Not just for Christmas, you know. In fact, go ahead and consider this Kitty Christmas In Summer. Wand toys, track toys, new boxes, those little plastic ring things from milk gallon containers, stuffed animals that we can hunt and murder like the apex predators we are. You don’t have to wrap them, just bend the knee and present them as tribute. You’ll have our thanks, and our favor.

1)Hang out with us! It really is that simple. The most important thing you can do on International Cat Day is spend time with your cat! Many of the above suggestions fall under this category, including playing with us, giving us massages and reading epic poems you’ve composed about us. Personally I like settling down to nap on top of my Big Buddy after a massage. There’s something about having my chin scratched that makes me start yawning, and there’s no better place to nap than on my human, where it’s safe and there’s body heat and he can’t get up to use the bathroom because it would disturb me. That’s love.

I hope these suggestions are helpful! I’ve tried to list really easy, basic, humble stuff, but if you feel like constructing a 426-room cardboard box castle, well, I won’t stop you. In fact, that would be pretty cool. But like I said, the most important thing is that we get to hang out with you. And eat filet mignon.

Buddy And I Will Be Right Back!

Big Buddy is convalescing with the help of our hero, Little Buddy.

Hello admirers of the most handsome and meowscular cat in the world!

I’ve gotten some messages from people asking if Bud and I are okay and just wanted to let you know we are, and we’ll be back soon.

I planned a brief hiatus, no more than a few days to recharge the creative batteries. That hiatus was extended when I flew to Washington to hang out with my brother, his wife and the kiddos.

Then I returned home, assisted with a family emergency, got sick shortly afterward and tested positive for COVID.

It feels kind of strange to have lived through the original COVID wave that brutalized New York in 2020, as well as the subsequent delta and omicron waves, managing to avoid infection only to get COVID now in the summer of 2023. But if getting it was inevitable, I’m grateful it happened after I’ve been vaccinated and boosted, and not in those chaotic, horrific early waves when doctors weren’t sure what they were dealing with.

COVID hit me hard, like an extremely intense flu with a grab bag of other symptoms thrown in for good measure, but I’m very grateful I haven’t suffered major upper respiratory distress. Likewise, I’m grateful that my congenital heart problem — an extremely rare valve deformation — was not a factor, because that was my biggest worry.

I am aware that cats can catch COVID, and in the back of my mind I always imagined quarantining myself from Buddy if I came down with it, but cats have their own plans for things and Bud, who is already famously intolerant of any distance or closed doors between us, has a longstanding policy of never leaving my side when I’m sick. Quarantining from Bud was not an option. There’s no way to communicate the why of it to him, and on the practical side I have not had the energy to cordon him off, assuming that’s even possible. Knowing him, he’d quickly find a way to circumvent any barriers and, failing that, he’d meow incessantly and refuse to allow me a minute’s peace until this farce (“Closed doors between us, can you believe it?!?”) was ended.

Just one more reason to love the little guy and be grateful for him, but of course I’ll be watching him closely.

For now I’ll be happy to see the other side of this. Getting really sick is always a good reminder to be grateful for health, and in particular this experience helped me understand that despite vaccines, masks, air filters, hand sanitizers and careful behavior, so much is left to chance.

So that’s what’s happening here. I apologize for our extended absence, and I look forward to returning to our regularly scheduled cat content — same Buddy time, same Buddy channel — in the near future.

Nursed Back To Health, Rescue Kitten Becomes Garfeldian Superstar

Natalia Zhdanova heard the cries of a kitten in her backyard and found a sick, malnourished baby cat who was barely a week old. She nursed him back to health, and now he’s flourishing.

Meet Fedya, Instragram’s newest feline star.

The playful cat with a permanently surprised look on his face was just a week old when he was separated from his mom last year. Natalia Zhdanova heard his cries and found him alone, hungry and sick in her backyard in Rostov, Russia.

With help from her neighbor’s cat, Handsome, Zhdanova nursed Fedya back to health, and now the little guy is up to a healthy weight and thriving at 18 months old.

“He was very weak and was dying,” Zhdanova told the UK’s SWNS wire. “Handsome cleaned and licked Fedya and became like a father figure to him.”

The two cats are now “the best of friends,” and Zhdanova said Fedya “purrs very loudly” for her and Handsome.

“He is a very sweet, gentle, playful, and intelligent cat,” she said.

You can see more photos and videos of Kedya on Instagram @fedja_kot, where he’s accumulated more than 36,000 followers.

Screenshot 2021-09-30 at 10-19-53 SEI_83013373 jpg (WEBP Image, 540 × 710 pixels)

Time Mag’s Top 10 Cats List Deemed Illegitimate, Doesn’t Include Buddy

The magazine proved itself out of touch with its latest embarrassing oversight.

Time magazine has published what it calls the “Ultimate Chaotic Cattitude Power Ranking,” and Buddy is not on the list.

“The failing Time magazine didn’t even put me on their top 10 cats list. If they did, maybe they would sell more copies! Sad!” Buddy tweeted after the story was published.

Others expressed their outrage at Time’s snub.

”Time magazine has proven itself irrelevant by failing to include the handsomest tabby in America, and quite possibly the world,” gossip meower Pawrez Hilton wrote. “Do they realize thousands of kittens have posters of Buddy on their walls? He’s absolutely dreamy.”

“No Buddy? Absurd!” Meower user @SexyCalico24 commented. “I mean, have you seen his muscles? RAWR!”

Time’s editors were forced to backtrack after a deluge of angry phone calls and emails, along with a hundreds-strong protest outside the magazine’s Manhattan headquarters.

“It was a grave oversight on our part to exclude Buddy from our list, and we apologize,” the magazine’s editors wrote in a statement. “We know it will take time to win back the trust of our readers, but we hope to make it up to them with a 24-page photo spread of Buddy in our April issue.”

Claws Woodward, a purrfessor of feline journalism at the Harvard School for Cat Studies, said the embarrassing oversight is a sign that Time magazine is out of touch with kittens and young cats.

“Buddy is an action hero, like Snacky Chan or Ahnold Schwarzenmeower,” Woodward said. “With his movie star good looks and his rippling muscles, he clearly should have been on that list. I mean, ‘Jealous Cat’? Real Housewives meme cat? Come on! You don’t put Z-listers ahead of one of the most treasured cats of our generation.”

Still, not everyone was convinced Buddy should have made the list. Pop singer Taylor Swift was among those who clapped back at Buddy for his vanity.

“Buddy who?” Swift tweeted, throwing shade at the Budster. “If any cats should be on that list, my kitties should occupy all ten spots. I’m going to write a song about how they were cheated. Let me finish!”