Honolulu – Pain In The Bud

Someone over at Hearst Television was digging through the company’s video archives and unearthed this gem from 30 years ago.

It’s a short news segment about Toby the cat, who liked to hang out with his human so much that he happily took to playing in the ocean.

“I’d jog on the beach at night, and he’d run into the water with me,” Toby’s human, Teddy Townsend, told Hearst.

A news crew caught up with the human-feline pair at Ormond-By-The-Sea, an oceanside community on Florida’s east coast, about an hour’s drive south of St. Augustine.

“I just started taking him out in the water,” Townsend said as Toby perched happily on his shoulder.

The surf board came later as Townsend looked for a way to make time in the water more fun for his pal.

“He surfs, I don’t surf,” Townsend explained, smiling.

Townsend didn’t have Toby on any harness or other restraint, and it was pretty clear the little guy wasn’t going anywhere without his human. Footage of the tubular tabby showed him skillfully balancing on the board while cresting and riding a series of small waves.

Check out the 1995 segment here:

Surfing cats are pretty rare, but not unheard of. A 2016 story detailed the adventures of Kuli, a one-eyed rescue cat from Honolulu who loves to surf with his humans. (Kuli is pictured in the header image, above, and in the image below.)

Kuli lost an eye at just four months old due to an infection, and endured lots of baths during his formative months to prevent another infection from taking hold. Alexandra, one of his humans, said she believes that’s why Kuli is so calm in the water.

“For a while I took Kuli out on my long boards, but it wasn’t until I was playing around with a boogie board one day that I realised he really loved to get his claws into the foamy material,” she said. “So we bought a board that Kuli would be able to get out on the surf with.”

Kuli on his board. Credit: Caters News Agency

Here at Casa de Buddy, I asked His Grace if he’d like to dip into the ocean and have fun by learning to surf.

His answer? “You must have a death wish, human.”

Ah, well. It’s not for every cat.

Dear Buddy,

What is the sick human fascination with doors? Who invented these vile things?

Better yet, how do I get them to open?

I hate doors!

– Hater in Honolulu

Dear H in H,

Welcome to the club, hermano!

No one really knows for sure where doors came from. Our best scientists have a working theory that humans invented doors thousands of years ago as a way to torture us cats.

It worked.

Not much foils us, mind, but doors are a uniquely anti-feline feature of human homes, and we all loathe them. But take heart! They can be defeated.

The Handle Twist — Doors with handles are the easiest to open!

If the doors in your home have handles instead of knobs, and they’re low enough that you can reach them without jumping, then what are you writing to me for? Go open them!

However, if your humans were evil enough to buy doors with knobs, or if reaching the handles requires you to jump, you’re going to need a little more finesse, my friend.

I call it the jump-and-twist. You’re going to need to leap up toward the knob while at the same time twisting your body in mid-air — a trivial move if you’re muscular like I am — so that your back feet catch the door frame. Then use the leverage from your back paws to push while keeping your front paws on the knob. Make sure you turn it!

cat-door — A kitty successfully completes the jump-and-twist and even manages to avoid the water trap his evil humans have laid for him. Kitty 2, Humans 0.

Finally, if you’re not athletic or the door is too difficult to open (or if you’re just lazy), you can employ what I like to call The Buddy Special.

The Buddy Special is very easy: Simply stand next to the door and cry, making your meows more pitiful-sounding by the second. Be sure to hit the sweet spot frequency that mimics a human baby’s cries: Humans are compelled to get up and investigate when they hear that sound!

Good luck and stay Buddy, my friends!

– Buddy the Wise