Spain – Page 2 – Pain In The Bud

You’re Allowed To Be Angry About A Dead Cat In Russia

The outrage over the death of a pet cat may be the best barometer of Russia’s national mood as its disastrous war on Ukraine enters its third year.

For the past two years I’ve had a lurid hobby. I’ve been watching translated clips from the bizarre world of Russian state TV, where Vladimir Putin’s pet propagandists tell the Russian people what to think.

There’s ringleader Vladimir Solovyov, a guy who dresses like the admiral of a galactic fleet of military starships and is prone to wild mood swings. Depending on when you catch Solovyov he could be cackling maniacally at the prospect of nuking London or crying into his microphone as he laments the loss of his overseas bank accounts and his boss’s slipping grip on power.

There’s Margarita Simonyan, the 43-year-old head of RT (Russia Today) and rumored alcoholic who, strangely, is even-keeled compared to Star Admiral Solovyov.

Then there are the second-tier propagandists: Olga Skabeeva, the “Iron Doll of Putin TV” who matter-of-factly endorses horrific war crimes, and men like Anton Krasovsky, who famously fantasized about drowning Ukrainian children in the Tysa River, a tributary of the Danube, his desk rising three inches as he excitedly repeated “Just drown those children, drown them!” Apparently he forgot he was on television and said the quiet part out loud, forcing his boss (Simonyan) to grudgingly condemn his words.

Simonyan and Solovyov — Margarita Simonyan, left, and Vladimir Solovyov, right, are two of Russia’s most famous pro-Putin propagandists. Credit: Russian state TV

Solovyov, Simonyan and the others looked like a bunch of investors celebrating the sale of a billion-dollar company during the opening phases of the war in early 2022, giddily playing footage of Russian missiles taking out Ukrainian apartment buildings and artillery flattening hospitals.

Their rhetoric was extra-dimensional at the time: they spoke often of a glorious New World Order with Russia at its head and all of humanity united under Putin’s tiny feet, where people would undoubtedly conclude that life under Russian masters is better than any over-hyped concept of freedom.

When Russia faltered and Ukraine began stringing together victories with the help of western weapons and real-time intelligence from the US and UK, the tone of Putin’s propagandists grew bitter. Their body language mirrored their frustration. Solovyov began a tradition of threatening to nuke a different country every day, for “crimes” like acknowledging the reality of Russia’s military incompetence or calling for peace.

To date, Solovyov’s threatened to nuke the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Finland, Sweden and the US, and that’s just off the top of my head. He especially hates the British for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, but he regularly makes it clear that it’s only through Putin’s benevolence that cities like London and Paris continue to exist.

He’s also extremely fond of Tucker Carlson: he plays clips from Carlson’s show on X regularly, offered him a job after the American was fired by Fox News, and has declared him the greatest journalist in the western world.

In Putin Russia, cat feed you!

I thought of that motley crew of Putinious jackwagons this week as I read about the Russian public’s horrified response to an incident on a train.

A couple was traveling on a Russian Railways train to St. Petersburg when their beloved cat, Twix, escaped his carrier. The frightened ginger tabby just kept running until he was scooped up by a female conductor, who unceremoniously tossed him into the snow in Russia’s frigid Kirov Oblast. Temperatures regularly dip into the single digits and below zero in the winters there.

On Jan. 20, after a search joined by hundreds of people, little Twix’s body was found in the snow about a half mile from the train tracks. The feline, who was used to safety and warmth, suffered multiple animal bites and died either from his wounds or the temperature.

twixcat — Twix the cat in a photo from his family that was reposted to a Russian Telegram channel.

To say Russians are furious is an understatement.

Twix’s fate has been the talk of Russian social media platforms for days. Surveillance camera footage of the conductor tossing the tabby ignited a new level of rage. As of Wednesday more than 300,000 Russians had signed a petition calling for the firing of the conductor, whose name hasn’t been released by the state-owned passenger railroad company. A second petition goes further, calling for criminal prosecution, and has 100,000 signatures in just a few days.

Public outrage about the fate of Twix just might be the first authentic sentiment to reach Russian media in years.

In an unusual move, the government acquiesced — partly — to the public’s demands and pulled the conductor from duty pending an investigation. They’ve also acknowledged that Twix’s humans had properly purchased a pass for him and were riding in a car designated for passengers with pets. In the future, they’ve vowed, conductors won’t toss animals from trains.

Russia is a famously cat-loving country. Felines comprise more than 64 percent of all pets kept by Russians, and more than half of all Russian households have pet cats. They’re considerably more popular than dogs in the nation of 143 million.

Cats are popular in Russian folklore, where traditions say the furry ones have the power to ward off evil, and they’re a much more convenient pet for the millions who live in Soviet-era apartment blocks in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Still, this feels like something more.

Russians haven’t had an easy two years thanks to Putin’s disastrous “special military operation.” They can face years in prison simply for calling for peace with Ukraine. Unless they’re part of the nation’s elite or have connections among them, men can’t leave the country because the military needs more warm bodies. The country’s economy is in shambles as the government pumps more money into the war and international sanctions have taken their toll.

russiantankloot — A Russian tank laden with loot, including a toilet, rolls past the ruins of residential buildings in Popasna, a city in eastern Ukraine.

The government has canceled or downplayed annual military celebrations so the public won’t be reminded of the war’s costs. Russia is on pace to lose an astonishing 500,000 men in two years of combat, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defense, and Putin has tried to stem the anger of the country’s mothers by staging several meetings with actresses posing as the moms of Russia’s war dead, events which have been heavily covered by state press.

Russians can’t oppose the war they’re dying in. They can’t mourn their dead fathers, sons, brothers and husbands, not by revealing their real emotions.

Quality of life has further degraded in a country where tens of millions don’t even have indoor plumbing, which is why there have been so many clips of Russian soldiers stealing toilets, washing machines and other appliances from Ukrainian homes. The prospect of being pulled off the street, sent for two weeks’ worth of rudimentary training and deployed as cannon fodder hangs heavy over the heads of Russian men and their families, especially ethnic minorities and the poor.

But Twix? They can mourn him. They can get angry about what happened to him. The furious public sentiment regarding his death wasn’t manufactured by Solovyov and company. State TV didn’t spark the backlash, it was forced to acknowledge it.

I’m neither a Russophile nor an expert on that often difficult-to-understand country, but I’d bet all my rubles that those dueling petitions say more about the Russian mood than any opinion poll to come out of Russia since 2022, and definitely more than the words of anyone allowed to express an opinion on Russian TV.

RIP Twix.

Buddy Claps Back At Tennis Star Over ‘Small Cat’ Insult

Feline leaders were outraged after the world tennis number one managed to insult cats, chair umpires and Australians on Friday.

NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat declared men’s tennis number one Daniil Medvedev “a lanky human” after the latter called a chair umpire “a small cat” during a match on Friday.

Medvedev, who is known for his outbursts on the court, suffered a meltdown during his semifinal victory at the Australian Open. The Russian yelled at the chair umpire for allegedly allowing his opponent, Stefanos Tsitsipas, to receive coaching from the stands, which is a no-no in professional tennis.

After the umpire hit Medvedev with a warning, the top-ranked men’s player launched a minute-long tirade.

“Bro, are you mad?” Medvedev yelled to the umpire. “For what? And his father can talk every point? Bro, are you stupid? His father can talk every point!”

When the umpire made it clear he wasn’t sympathetic to Medvedev’s complaints, the frustrated Russian dissed him.

“If you don’t give him a warning, you are — how can I say it? — a small cat!” he said, gesticulating wildly.

It was the second time in as many matches that Medvedev had resorted to insults. Asked why Australian fans booed him during his quarterfinal match against Nick Kyrgios, Medvedev told an interviewer it was because the fans “probably have a low IQ.”

Screenshot_20220129-165424~2 — Above: Medvedev’s meltdown and offensive anti-feline insults

Buddy the Cat assembled a hasty press conference within a few hours. Flanked by the Rev. Al Sharpclaw and other feline community leaders, Buddy accused Medvedev of “blatant antifelinism.”

“There is nothing wrong with being a small cat,” the silver tabby said, pounding his paw on a table for effect. “In fact, Medvedev unknowingly paid the umpire a compliment. But that doesn’t change the fact that he intended it as an insult.”

Buddy, Sharpclaw and other leaders demanded the WTA sanction Medvedev and mandate his participation in species tolerance classes.

In the meantime, the 25-year-old Medvedev has advanced to the Australian Open men’s final, where he’ll face 36-year-old Rafael Nadal on Sunday.

The Mallorcan not only has 20 major titles under his belt, he’s also held in high esteem by the world’s felines, who see a kindred spirit in Nadal’s obsessive-compulsive behavior and tendency to erupt into short bursts of energy expenditure. It’s also long been rumored that Nadal loves boxes.

Fellow tennis star Sebastian Korda named his cat after Nadal. No one has named a cat after Medvedev.

Buddy the Cat Admits He’s Not Spanish

How you say in English, cucumber?

Buddy the Cat admitted Sunday he’s an American domestic shorthair after social media users called him out for presenting himself as an exotic Spanish feline.

The popular tabby cat had been going by the name Buddario El Pavo Gato de la Massivo Cajones, but after questions about his heritage went viral, he admitted in a rambling video that he was “just a basic tabby cat from New York,” and he was not in fact born on the island of Mallorca.

“My heritage is a lot of things, okay? There are a lot of regular cats in Europe too,” he said. “I have been clear about this, but the media keeps misrepresenting me.”

Celebrities and social media users reacted with doubt after user @LeniBriscoe unearthed one of “Buddario’s” old appearances on The Noon Show, where he prepared a traditional Mallorcan paella pate for the audience.

“We have Temptaciones, we have Fiesta Elegante, we have…em, how you say in English? Turkey?” he asked in a thick Spanish accent.

The feline influencer — or kittfluencer — was so committed to his ruse that he refused to eat cat food unless it came from “the Old Country,” sources said.

Previously the famously Spanish cat told interviewers he came to the US at three years old to open a yoga studio where clients pose to flamenco music and wave red bullfighter flags

But as an impromptu coalition of online sleuths found, “Buddario’s” parents are American domestic shorthairs from New York. The celebricat enjoyed a privileged upbringing and went to an exclusive boarding school for wealthy kittens.

After returning home on Sunday to find a crowd of reporters camped in front of his house, “Buddario” waved them off, refusing to answer questions.

“No habla Ingles,” he said, pretending not to understand as reporters shouted questions at him. “Todo es mentira en este mundo! Todo es mentira la verdad! Todo es mentira yo me digo, todo es mentira ¿por que sera?”

Buddy The Cat Denies Losing Fight To Rodent

Buddy blamed “haters and jealous scoundrels” for releasing a video showing him backing away from an aggressive rat.

MALAGA, Spain — After a viral video showed him furiously back-peddling during a vicious encounter with a rat, Buddy the Cat blasted the media for suggesting he lost a fight to the tiny rodent.

“Fake news!” Buddy told reporters on Thursday. “The fake news media hates me and other cats are jealous of me, which is why they’ve released this heavily edited, out-of-context video that purports to show me ‘losing’ a fight to a rat.”

A witness from Malaga, a municipality on Spain’s southern coast, told MSN that he heard a ruckus when he headed outside and witnessed an “epic battle” between a cat and a rat, with the rodent “leaping in the air and kicking like a real ninja.”

Just a few hours after the video went viral, several users on Twitter identified the feline as Buddy, sparking a torrent of memes and jokes at the tabby cat’s expense.

“A hundred bucks says Buddy would’ve attacked the hell out of that rat if it was a snack,” Twitter user @LosGatos212 wrote.

“lol look at Buddy run from that tiny rat,” wrote user @BuddySucks. “So much for his ‘huge muscles’ and his fierce reputation.”

Buddy, who is known for often referring to his “ripped” physique and bragging about defeating a fly in single combat, accused anonymous “haters” of deceptively editing the video to remove “the epic beatdown” he handed to the rat.

“They cut out the part where I dodged his strikes like Neo from the Matrix, then pulled off a Ryu-style spin kick to send the rat flying,” Buddy insisted. “Probably because my muscles looked huge and I looked badass.”

The uploader also deleted a section of the footage in which Buddy breathed fire and fought off a dozen additional rats who came to the aid of their friend, according to Buddy.

Still, viewers weren’t buying it. One meme creator pasted the rat’s head onto the body of Mike Tyson and Buddy’s head onto the body of Tyson’s hapless opponent in a classic clip from the boxer’s prime.

Buddy the Cat responded by challenging his haters to a fight, “so we can go gato e gato like real cats.”

“We’ll see who the real tough cat is,” he told his haters, “when I’m victorious and eating celebratory turkey, and you’re out cold on the mat!”