Fans of thrash metal, doom-napping and predatorial purring will love this year’s festival lineup.
Feline thrash metal legends Meowgadeath will hit the road this winter to support their new album, Obligate Carnivores, and cats are desperately trying to get their paws on tickets.
The quartet will headline Felifest, the annual heavy metal festival that features the gnarliest bands, the most radical shredding and the most extreme subgenres including zoomcore, doom-napping and predatorial purring.
Cat Sabbath and Deft Leopards are the sub-headliners and lead an all-star lineup that includes symphonic thrash rockers Claws of Death, pop-metal posers Puns and Poses, progressive Vikingcore standouts Ragnar and the Berserkers, and grunge-metal pioneers Purrvana. The latest rumors suggest littercore legends The Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza will join the festival lineup as well, fueling significant interest.
The official tour poster with early 2024 dates shows Meowgadeath will kick off their shows in the northeast before heading south and west.
Meowgadeath has already enjoyed significant airplay from the new record, with the singles “Lounge to War” and “Overlords of the Apes” both reaching the Scratchboard top 10 in the US, Europe and Asia.
“Felifest 2024 promises to be the most righteous, most tubular, most hardcore gathering of up-to-eleven discordant noise since cat sex was invented,” wrote Modal Meow critic Mr. Snuggles Razorclaw. “Not since Fuzzy Fuzzbourne ate a live mouse on stage has the metal community been so excited.”
Meanwhile, Buddy likes his music on the more funktacular side of things and says he’s most excited to see Le Handsome Club play to a booty-shakin’ crowd in New York in support of their newest record, Cosmic Megafunk For Extraterrestrial Discos. Le Handsome Club will be preceded by a familiar opening act, the funktastic stylings of Purrliament Funkadelic. Prepare for the funk!
Domestication’s real goal: to make cats cuddly as well as great mousers.
Cats have been doing things their way since the very beginning.
Unlike literally every other domesticated animal, cats were not domesticated by humans. They did it to themselves.
As if that didn’t make them unique enough, they lay claim to another major distinction: they’re the only species of obligate carnivores to undergo domestication in the entire history of human existence.
That explains why cats, more than any other animal that depends on humans, so closely resemble the wild animals they were before signing up for the good life of naps, warmth, endless rodents to hunt and free food from their new human friends.
In a new essay for The Conversation, evolutionary biologist Jonathan Losos, author of The Age of Cats: From the Savanna to Your Sofa, notes new DNA analysis settles the question of where cats came from once and for all.
Domestic cats are descended from North African wildcats, specifically the species felis sylvestris lybica. Unlike dogs, who underwent telltale physical transformations when they evolved from wolves, house cats “appear basically indistinguishable from wildcats.”
While the change in genetics that happen with domestication left cats pretty much as they were physically, the process made dramatic changes in the feline brain, reducing regions governing fear and expanding those related to social behavior. The result? The major difference between house cats and their wildcat ancestors is disposition.
In other words, domestication made cats cuddly.
Housecat evolved.
Notably, felis sylvestris lybica had to be pretty friendly in the first place, as well as bold and driven by the now-legendary feline curiosity to risk padding into human settlements with their bright lights, strange smells, open flames and the two-legged giants striding around them.
They didn’t have a way of negotiating or signaling their intent. They couldn’t say: “Hey guys, we’re here to kill and eat the tasty rodents who have been giving you problems by chowing down on your yums, but we don’t want your yums for ourselves. Plants are disgusting!”
So they had to demonstrate their usefulness, prove their worth, and enjoy the fruits of it by curling up in front of warm fires or on human laps.
That explains why it was the African wildcat that became a human companion species and not European wildcats, whom Losos notes are often “hellaciously mean” in interactions with people, even if they’re raised around humans when they’re young. It was also a matter of being in the right place at the right time, as nascent human civilization took root in the Fertile Crescent.
But ultimately, just like cats decided to domesticate themselves and didn’t really bother to consult us about it, so too do they bend us to their will with an entire repertoire of manipulative behavior, from solicitation purrs to incessant meowing and having a talent for looking their cutest when they want something.
While we may think we set the rules and parameters of our relationship with the furry little ones, as Losos notes, “cats usually train us more than we train them.”
The English language does not provide the means to properly state how much this cat loves corn. To quote Dave Chappelle: “Look at him, he loves it!”
This isn’t just a video of a cute cat eating corn.
It’s a video of a cute cat who gives a cry of joy when he sees his human plop corn a cob of corn onto his plate, then tears into it with such gusto that he half-purrs, half-growls as he devours his yums. Seriously, make sure you turn the volume on, it has to be heard to be believed:
The Corn Kid, famous for declaring “When I tried it with butter, everything changed…I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing!” might be given a run for his money by this cat.
And if you haven’t heard about the Corn Kid, well, make your day brighter by checking out this songified version by the same guys who created a ridiculously catchy pop song out of the Bed Invader news segment back in 2010:
In case you’re wondering, corn won’t kill your cat. In fact, as veterinarians point out, your cat probably eats corn regularly because pet food companies use the stuff as filler in cat food despite the fact that, as obligate carnivores, cats don’t really get any nutritional value by eating it. However, it’s not meat, so if your cat likes corn, you should give it to kitty only in moderation as too much can cause an upset stomach and digestive problems.
Pain In The Bud 