Saying he couldn’t find a way to squeeze it into his schedule over the next year, Buddy the Cat declined a challenge to step into the cage with one of feline MMA’s brightest young stars.
The challenge came courtesy of Sphynxie the Smasher, a four-year-old hairless cat from San Jose, California. The skilled cat uploaded a video in which he pumped iron and ridiculed Buddy for his “completely delusional claim that he’s a badass” and his “hilarious talk about having huge muscles.”
Sphynxie the Cat taking protein supplements after an intense workout.
“This is what huge meowscles look like,” Sphynxie said, curling a meaty forearm and flexing his bicep. “Not the flab of some chubby tabby hoping we won’t notice how many snacks he devours.”
Sphynxie challenged Buddy to a cage match “any time, any place” and said he’d even tie one paw behind his back “to make it even with the chonkster.”
Buddy issued a response on Twitter.
“First of all I’m not chubby, so that’s fake news!” Buddy wrote. “I’m 100% pure lean, mean badass.”
“Secondly, I’d be honored to step into the cage with Sphynxie and teach him a lesson that he’ll remember long after the real Sphinx is weathered to dust,” he continued. “Unfortunately my meownager says I can’t squeeze it into my schedule. I’m shooting my new movie, Fowl Play, through mid March, and then I’m going on tour to promote my next album. In between that stuff I really need to nap when I can, get some laser pointer work in, and catch up on eating turkey. Sphynxie should count himself lucky, because he dodged a bullet!”
The viral hashtags #BuddyDucksFights, #BuddyIsADuck and #ScaredBuddy were trending late Sunday night, prompting a long list of others to challenge the gray tabby to elicit increasingly ridiculous excuses from him.
One of them, a challenge from a five-month-old Russian named Oreonov the Putinizer, accumulated more than 20,000 likes in just a few hours.
“I am kitten. He is full grown cat, yet he won’t step into cage with me,” Oreonov wrote. “He knows I crush him for the glory of motherland.”
Every once in a while a cat’s story will tug at the heartstrings, and while Bud and I are mostly impervious to that sort of thing (being so manly that we dominate our emotions, obviously), we couldn’t help but become invested in the story of Frankie Sad Eyes.
The handsome 11-year-old was surrendered by his human at an age when he should have been kicking back and telling kittens what it was like Back In His Day, and his hooded blue peepers seemed to reflect his sadness at losing everything he’d known.
In my head, I imagined Frankie and Buddy teaming up, kind of a bad cop/bad cop duo who would keep the neighborhood cats on their toes and extort treats from them.
“We don’t like it when cats don’t pay their protection yums, do we, Buddy?”
“No we don’t, Frankie.”
“It would be a shame if anything were to happen to this spiffy cat condo, wouldn’t it, Buddy?”
“That’s right, Frankie. A real shame indeed.”
Alas, Frankie doesn’t get along with other cats and Bud is a bit of a jerk when he wants to be, so it could never happen. There can be only one king here.
Instead we were content to follow Frankie’s progress from afar, with the staff at Tabby’s Place in Ringoes, NJ, providing regular updates on his health and his interactions with other cats. The latter usually involved Frankie having to “educate” his peers with a stiff paw, but also some positive exchanges as well.
Still, it was clear that Frankie needed to be the only cat in his own kingdom, and staff at Tabby’s Place were able to match the mercurial moggie with a human who will dutifully attend to his needs, make sure his new realm isn’t sullied by the presence of other cats, and provide a chill environment suited to a senior cat. At heart there’s no doubt Frankie’s a good boy. He just needs his space.
Tabby’s Place said farewell to Frankie with this video of his pre-departure “victory lap,” and it was clear from the send-off he received that he’d touched a lot of hearts during his stay, even if he did smack a lot of cats too.
Good luck, dear Frankie, and take it easy on your new human, will ya? We have no doubt she’ll dote on you like the king you are.
When volunteers in Elkhart, Indiana, went to trap a mom and her kittens near an industrial site, one of the babies panicked and ran straight into a hole, taking a tumble into a drainage pipe beneath.
The rescuers from a non-profit TNR group called Catsnip didn’t give up on the four-week-old baby even after finding her proved to be much more difficult than they imagined. They called off the search in Elkhart — about 160 miles north of Indianapolis — the first night when it was too dark to keep working. They dropped food for the scared fluffball, whom they could hear but still could not locate in the dark, tight subterranean space.
The next morning they were back at it, trying to literally flush the kitten out before a volunteer named Ashley descended via a manhole 75 feet from the spot where the kitten had fallen in.
The entire saga took about 48 hours and hinged on Ashley who, because of her small size, was able to squeeze into a pipe and crawl 30 feet to the terrified baby cat — then had to crawl out backwards the way she came while cradling the little one.
Piper was reunited with her mom and littermates after the rescue. Credit: Catsnip
It was worth it for the volunteers, who named the kitten Piper in honor of her adventure, gave her fluids and formula from a dropper, then reunited her with her mom. Read about the whole encounter at The Dodo. (And serious props to Ashley! Just thinking about what she had to do makes me shudder. Cats may love tight spaces, but most humans do not.)
Hey! That’s Buddy’s MO!
As gamers who generally prefer more depth, the Buddies never got on the Fortnite bandwagon, so we weren’t aware that Fortnite has a character named Meowscles until encountering this article from Cracked.
Meowscles has a Buddesian physique. Credit: Epic Games
As you can see, Meowscles was clearly inspired by Bud, who is known for his incredibly ripped physique and totally isn’t a bit chubby. (“That’s all muscle, not fat!” Buddy insists.)
Fortnite is a battle royale-style game in which up to 100 players compete against each other in live matches. The game is free-to-play, with developer Epic Games making its money by selling cosmetic items as microtransactions. Meowscles is one of about 1,400 different “outfits” players can purchase to customize their characters.
The game has been a monumental success for Epic, earning billions and leading the company to launch the Epic Games Store, the first serious competitor to Steam, which has been the dominant platform for PC gamers for years. Epic has been so flush with cash that’s it’s been giving away free games every week to lure customers away from Steam, even upping the freebies to a new game every day during the holidays.
Cat and Owner Costume Contest?!?
In Massachusetts, the Cat Fancier’s Association held its ninth annual cat and owner costume contest on Sunday. Unfortunately, the only story we can find about the event comes from the local public radio affiliate, so there’s not much in terms of photos.
If you were going to enter such a contest with your cat, what costumes would you and your fluffy overlord wear?
I’m thinking maybe I’d be a Targaryen with Bud as a baby dragon perched on my shoulder in honor of Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon. But that might offend little dude, who tends to think of himself as a hulking tiger. Perhaps the easier and more realistic “costume” would be Bud dressed as a king, snug in his own little carrier designed to look like a royal palanquin, with me carrying the palanquin as his dutiful servant. Thus, art imitates life.
There was quite a bit of interest in our earlier story about Choupette, pet and muse to late fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.
While Choupette was left a large slice of Lagerfeld’s reported $200 million fortune — usually pegged at about $13 million inheritance — as well as the services of a private jet, a chef and minders to see to her needs, she’s not the wealthiest feline on the planet.
Nala Cat: Estimated net worth $100 million
Nala Cat has 4.4 million followers on Instagram, her own line of cat food, and a website that sells Nala-themed shirts, phone cases, coffee mugs, plush toys, pillow covers and even COVID masks. With her gigantic social media following, which has earned her an official Guinness World Record, Nala has enormous earnings potential, taking home five- and six-figure sums for sponsored posts hawking products like topical cream for pets and milk alternatives.
Nala isn’t too happy about getting a bath.
Chances are you’ve seen Nala even if you don’t know her name.
Olivia Benson: Estimated net worth $97 million
Unlike her celebrity ex-boyfriends, Taylor Swift’s cats don’t provide her with sad breakup material for new songs, but they do give her plenty of material for social media and additional opportunities to make money. (Because let’s face it, she needs it: The singer has amassed a paltry half-billion dollars so far.)
Swift named her most famous cat Olivia Benson, which we’re told is the name of a character on Law & Order. (Apologies but once you watch The Wire, there is no going back to network TV cop dramas where the detectives are always righteous and neatly wrap up their cases in 42 minutes.) Since she was purchased by swift in 2014, Olivia Benson has gone on to star in commercials for Coke and Keds, make guest appearances on Ellen, and cameo in Swift’s music videos.
Buddy the Cat: Estimated net worth $3.67 (dollars, not millions)
While Choupette rides the skies in a private jet, Nala cat has more fans than most celebrities and Olivia Benson is feted by talk show hosts, Buddy the Cat is no slouch either: The silver tabby is chauffeured around in style in a Honda Civic, boasts an extensive food and treat cabinet that can keep him in turkey for like three weeks, and is the proud owner of a really cool cardboard box. (Not as awesome as Olivia Benson’s boxes, obviously, but still pretty cool.)
However, Buddy also has something none of the other cats on this list have: His own site with near-daily updates chronicling his adventures, attesting to his ever-growing meowscles and expanding on his legend with every post.
Most importantly, he has the love of his Big Buddy. (Awwww.) Asked what he’d do with a fortune if he suddenly became a hugely popular catfluencer, Bud said he’d buy a Roomba to ride.
“Monetize the site, human! We could be multi-thousandaires! I could have a Roomba!”
Blackie the Cat: Estimated net worth $12.5 million
Blackie belonged to Ben Rea, a millionaire antiques dealer from the UK. According to press reports, Rea was estranged from his family when he died at age 82 in 1988, so he left millions to Blackie.
Rea had some self-awareness at least — reports say he left millions, representing the bulk of his fortune, to three animal charities of his choosing. He also left a house to a close friend and willed money to his housekeeper, gardener and plumber. (Dude really didn’t like his relatives, apparently.)
Unlike the others on this list, Blackie was certified as the wealthiest cat by the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s not clear when Blackie died or what became of the remainder of his fortune. Unless he had an outrageous catnip habit and blew millions on attractive Calico escorts, it’s safe to say he didn’t burn through all $12.5 million in his remaining time on Earth.
“I’m cold! Throw another thousand on the fire and bring me a heavier blanket, servant!”
Tomasso the Cat: $13 million
In a true rags to riches story, Tomasso was a stray living on the streets of Rome when he was adopted by a lonely widow in her 90s. The woman, Maria Assunto, had no children of her own and treated Tomasso like a son.
When she died in 2011 at the age of 94, Assunto left Tomasso and all her money to a nurse named Stefania.
Stefania had befriended Assunto and Tomasso a few years earlier after meeting them in a public park. The nurse would bring her own cat over to Assunto’s home to play with Tomasso, and cared for Assunto as her health declined. As Assunto began to fade, she asked Stefania to care for Tomasso once she was gone.
Stefania had no idea Assunto was worth millions and was shocked when the late widow’s lawyers approached her.
“I promised her that I would look after the cat when she was no longer around. She wanted to be sure that Tommaso would be loved and cuddled. But I never imagined that she had this sort of wealth,” she said at the time. “She was very discreet and quiet. I knew very little of her private life. She only told me that she had suffered from loneliness a lot.”
Perhaps it was because Stefania had cared for Assunta and Tomasso out of the kindness of her heart that the latter chose her as her sole beneficiary.
“She had become very fond towards the nurse who assisted her,” Anna Orecchioni, Assunta’s attorney, told Italian newspaper Il Messaggero. “We’re convinced that Stefania is the right person to carry out the old lady’s wishes. She loves animals just like the woman she devoted herself to right up until the end.”
NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat didn’t even lift a paw when a mouse invaded his domicile on Tuesday.
The gray tabby cat, who often brags of his “huge meowscles” and martial prowess, did not stir from his nap and remained asleep for the duration of the encounter, witnesses said.
“He was completely, utterly useless,” his human, Big Buddy, said. “Aren’t cats supposed to be the bane of rodents? Don’t they have super sensitive hearing that can home in on the high frequency squeaks of mice?”
Buddy, who only stirred after the mouse was removed from the premises, stood up and yawned, then asked what all the commotion was about.
“Oh,” he said. “Well that mouse was really lucky I was napping, otherwise I’d do something totally badass.”
As of press time, human concern was centered on acquiring mouse traps at the store, but Buddy insisted that wouldn’t be necessary.
“I will roar and the mouses won’t come near here again,” he said, bellowing in his Elmo-like voice. “There. Problem solved.”
Update: In honor of Buddy’s glorious and momentous victory, we’ve created the following artwork:
Feline humor, news and stories about the ongoing adventures of Buddy the Cat.
Pain In The Bud 