Cats often scarf their food down as if they haven’t eaten in a week. Are we feeding them enough?
Not all cat food is created equal, and many cats say they’re not getting enough nutrients daily. We asked six cats if their nutritional needs are being met and if their humans are feeding them enough.
Herbert Augustus Lardfellow
“That’s a joke, right? I’m starving over here. Look at me, I’m practically skin and bone!” – Herbert Augustus Lardfellow, 4, barrister
Slim Smudge
“I meow and meow and meow, and all I get are three cans of wet food a day, a bowl of dry and six snacks. I’m constantly hungry.” – Slim Smudge, 9, executive vice purrsident
Sir Snacksalot
“No! I often go two, sometimes three hours between meals. It’s torture!” – Sir Snacksalot, 2, sommelier
Pâté Pete
“Does it look like I get enough calories?” – Pâté Pete, 7, office meownager
Double-Stuffed Oreo
“When you’re as meowscular as I am, you need 10 or 20 times as much protein as a typical cat. I can feel my meowscles wasting away.” – Double-Stuffed Oreo, 5, investment banker
Mr. Delicious
“Too…weak. Can barely…meow. Need Temptations…now…please.” – Mr. Delicious, 3, analyst
Buddy the Cat revises history and imagines defeating a rodent instead of sleeping while it invaded his territory.
NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat’s human servant returned home Friday to discover the buzz of craftsmen and smell of fresh paint after the silver tabby commissioned a fresco to celebrate his recent victory over a menacing rodent.
Amid the commotion was Luigi Tettamanzi, 62, one of Italy’s foremost Renaissance revivalists. The artist crouched on one knee, applying fine brush strokes to render the beginnings of a sun beam illuminating a powerful feline form in mid-leap with claws extended.
The fresh plaster had already been painted with a luminous sky blue, and broad strokes outlined the suggestion of mountains and forests in the background.
“You see, yes, I use bright and dramatic colors on the arriccio, paint you very heroic, ah?” Tettamanzi told the famously egotistical feline as they conferred during a break. “Not to worry, my friend. I make sure is okay with you before I apply intonaco, yes.”
At Buddy’s instruction, Tettamanzi had begun to render the mouse as a savage and menacing beast several hundred times its actual size. The painting shows a trail of death and destruction behind the mouse, with terrified onlookers pointing at the majestic feline leaping to engage the monstrous rodent. His outstretched paw connects with the enemy, the strike represented with a brilliant flash of energy in chaotic brush strokes.
A cartouche above the painting identifies it as “The Battle of the Rodential Interloper: Year 7 A.B. Resulting In Glorious Buddesian Victory.”
An early concept drawing of the intruder.
For several long moments, Big Buddy could only stare, dumbfounded.
“Buuuuud!” the human finally said, incredulity in his voice. “What the hell are you doing?”
The tabby looked up from some concept drawings he was reviewing with Tettamanzi.
“Commemorating my victory, of course,” Buddy replied. “The painting represents my heroic actions that day, when I saved many humans from a sinister and vicious rodent-beast.”
The human sighed.
“No, you did not!” he said. “You slept through the whole thing. You didn’t even know the mouse was here until you woke up from your nap an hour later.”
“Fake news!” Buddy said, turning back to Tettamanzi to confer on palette choices and urge the artist to make him look more muscular.
As of press time the fresco had been extended to a second wall, with a new panel depicting a powerfully built Buddy atop a throne adorned with lion motifs, and humans bending the knee before him as he magnanimously accepts oaths of loyalty.
A “more accurate” version, according to Buddy, but still not as dramatic as the real battle.
An important new study provides insight into Buddy’s magnetism and good looks.
NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat remains extraordinarily good looking, according to a new report from The Buddy Institute for Buddinese Studies.
The paper, which was also published to the open-access journal PLOS One, looked at 32 factors of aesthetic consideration, including facial symmetry, coat silkiness, awesomeness of tabby markings and eye color.
The research also focused on non-physical traits that contribute to the silver tabby cat’s universal appeal.
“This study confirms what scientists have long suspected, that Buddy the Cat is not just devastatingly handsome, but also remarkably charming and clever,” said the paper’s lead author, Sigmund Furreud. “In addition, he has the physique of a Catdonis. He’s super ripped.”
Buddy is an in-demand model in the feline fashion world.
For the subjective portion of the study, researchers also distributed questionnaires to 500 cats and 500 humans. The feline responses were weighted twice as heavily compared to the human responses, since felines are smarter and their opinions more relevant, but the research team saw similar levels of Buddesian popularity among both groups.
“Feline respondents used words like ‘amazing,’ ‘paw-inspiring’ and ‘meowgnificent’ to describe Buddy, and more than half of the cats surveyed said they had posters of Buddy on their walls when they were kittens,” said Meowhammad Saeed al-Sahaf, information minister for The Buddy Institute for Buddesian Studies.
The human responses were equally glowing.
“What we’re hearing from humans, especially cat lovers, is that they would jump at the opportunity to be Buddy’s servant,” al-Sahaf said. “This suggests there is a deep pool of talented potential servants from which to choose in the event, say, that Buddy’s current human disappoints him with subpar treat selections, half-assed petting or late meals. If that makes Buddy’s human nervous, well, it should. He needs to step up the overall level of service.”
Mr. Fluffy Wuffy, one of the felines surveyed for the report, said PITB should take the results to heart and devote more stories to its titular cat.
“No one wants to read about boring stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with Buddy,” the kitten said. “We want all Buddy, all the time. Make it happen, humans!”
Buddy the Cat walks the runway ahead of German model Leon Dame during 2019 Fashion Week in Paris.
Buddy, the former president of the Americats, is not pleased that PITB has featured stories about topics other than Buddy.
Apparently angry that Pain In The Bud hasn’t been featuring enough stories about him, Buddy the Cat went on a tweet storm Tuesday night in which he took aim at the site and its staff.
“Just looked at the failing PITB and saw they published ANOTHER story that’s not about me,” Buddy wrote at 10:57 pm. “That’s obviously why they’re losing readers! Sad!”
Four minutes later he launched another salvo, noting only a handful of stories in the past month were focused on him.
“PITB and its editorial staff think they’re being so inclusive by writing about birds and orange tabbies and Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he wrote. “BORING!”
The former president of the Americats tweeted seven more times in the next 23 minutes before turning his attention back to the site that was named for him and ostensibly exists to feature stories about him.
“That rag, the failing PITB, is no better than the New York Slimes. It claims I slept as a mouse invaded my home. FAKE NEWS!!!” he wrote. “Folks, I am a TREMENDOUS HUNTER and would have DESTROYED that mouse — if it existed. NEWSFLASH: It doesn’t! Another lie by the lamestream media!”
That message was immediately followed by a tweet in which Buddy declared himself “the best hunter of all time, a tremendously talented hunter, and everybody knows it.”
Buddy has expressed his displeasure with PITB.
Buddy’s supporters took his accusations to heart. At a rally in New Jersey attended by 24,000 cats, a tuxedo cat held up a sign that read: “The media hates turkey and hates America!’
Another sign held by an Abyssinian blasted “Low Energy Big Buddy” and referenced C-Anon, a conspiracy theory that imagines Buddy as the leader of a league of patriotic heroes fighting to take down a shadowy kitten smuggling ring.
Supporters of C-Anon believe Buddy is working with “supposedly deceased” cats like Streetcat Bob and Lil Bub to combat insidious canine forces who have allegedly infiltrated feline leadership.
Not all cats are enamored with Buddy, however.
One user, LosGatos446, pointed out that Buddy accusing someone else of being low energy was hypocritical because the silver tabby sleeps between 10 and 16 hours a day, promoting Buddy to reply with a terse “FAKE NEWS!”
Another user with the handle ScaredyCat_Bud shared a video that appeared to show a terrified Buddy dashing for cover behind his human’s legs in response to the crinkle of a paper bag.
“An obvious deepfake!” Buddy replied. “Everyone knows I have tremendous courage. I’m an incredibly, tremendously brave cat!”
The AI-powered device ensures felines never have to see the bottom of their bowls again.
NEW YORK — Life is full of unpleasantness, like being able to see the bottom of your bowl. But what if someone told you he could fix that?
Enter Buddy the Cat’s SmartHuman Feeding System™, a device that harnesses the power of AI and cutting-edge hardware to make sure you never see the bottom of your bowl again.
SmartHuman was designed with weight sensors and an AI-enabled camera system to determine when the food in your bowl is getting low. If the on-board algorithms detect low levels of kibble, SmartHuman sends a text to your servant every 15 seconds until the device registers fresh kibble in the bowl.
And if the unthinkable should happen and you really are subjected to the horrific sight of the bottom of your bowl, SmartHuman’s built-in klaxon and emergency lights guarantee your human servants won’t have a second’s peace until they do what they’re supposed to and promptly refill your bowl. The system even requires the human to issue an apology before the sound and lights subside.
“I haven’t had to meow in annoyance or raise a paw once since I got the SmartHuman system,” raved Def the Defenestrator, a popular catfluencer with more than 240,000 followers on Meower. “The threat of getting bombarded with 110-decibel alerts to refill my bowl is enough to make my human servant get off her lazy behind and make sure my bowl is refilled before there’s a problem.”
The SmartHuman’s inventor has a background in feline teleportation and string cheese theory, but was prompted to design his device when he saw the bottom of his dry food bowl twice in as many months.
“I was literally starving,” Buddy said, adding that his “lazy human servant made me wait four minutes and 13 seconds before he refilled my bowl” during the second incident.
Vowing never to go hungry again, the entrepawneur built the first SmartHuman prototype in his garage, using a Raspberry Pi and a digital scale he ordered off Amazon.
He brought his idea to Shark Tank in late 2021 and successfully pitched Mr. Wonderful, who bought a 15 percent stake in SmartHuman™ in exchange for a $150,000 investment. The product entered production earlier this summer and is now available in stores and online.
“Cats love the SmartHuman™, but humans? Not so much,” Buddy the Cat admitted.
Mr. Wonderful (Kevin O’Leary) outbid fellow Sharks Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran and Laurie Greiner to partner with Buddy the Cat and invest in SmartHuman™.
Not one to rest on his laurels, the inventive feline said he’s working on a software update that will make the device compatible with wet food as well. In early beta testing, SmartHuman successfully prompted humans to feed wet food to their feline masters on time. Wet Mode includes a new feature as well: If the wet food remains untouched after a three-minute timer elapses, SmartHuman sends another text to the human, informing them the food isn’t satisfactory and should be replaced with another meal.
“Humans are stupid, and they don’t understand when we meow to them in complaint because we don’t feel like eating tuna or whatever on a given night when we’d prefer turkey,” Buddy said. “When this update goes live, cats will be able to enjoy meals of their choosing, every time.”
Pain In The Bud 