A writer reminds us that feline friendships don’t always come easy, but some of the hardest-won are the most rewarding.
When San Francisco’s KQED, the local public radio affiliate, asked its culture writers to reflect on “one beautiful thing” from 2025, Rae Alexander chose her cat, Kevin.
Kevin is “chaos in cat form,” a feline “sociopath” who doesn’t realize how much damage he does with his claws. The tabby, Alexander writes, is “never not screaming at us for food” and pads around as if he owns the place. (That sounds awfully familiar!)
After bringing Kevin’s heavily pregnant mother in from the cold earlier this year, Alexander adopted Kevin’s mother and his “well-behaved sister,” but was repeatedly rebuffed when she tried to get rid of Kevin himself.
Three potential adopters fell through while Kevin was growing out of his kitten stage, drastically reducing his chances of finding a home.
Then something crazy happened: cat and human came to a mutual understanding and the beginnings of trust led to friendship and love. As with any progress in gaining a cat’s trust, it was not a quick process, but Kevin eventually showed another side — a much softer, appreciative version of himself who enjoys cuddling and expresses love despite his quirks.
“As this fraught year draws to a close, I want Kevin to be a pertinent reminder to us all that the little things bumming us out today might just lead to the things that make us happiest tomorrow,” Alexander wrote. “Start putting all those everyday stresses on the stairs. You never know where that might lead in 2026.”
Apologies for going radio silent over the past week. This past Saturday I sat down to write and my computer was dead. As in completely dead — I couldn’t even trick it into loading BIOS or getting a boot screen.
So I said farewell to a machine that had served me well since 2018, that served as my primary platform for writing, producing music and gaming.
Now I’ve got an absolute beast of a machine centered on one of the new Ryzen chipsets, and it takes quite a bit of restraint not to go into nerdy details. I’m still setting things up, especially the music production workflow.
The important thing is, I’m able to properly sit at a desk and write again, and Buddy can properly supervise me from his desktop perch again, so we are now back!
Buddy is many things, but he’s NOT quiet. His incessant chattiness can kill my sleep and my peace and quiet, but in the world of A Quiet Place, it would kill me! Would your cat get you killed in the movie franchise’s monster-stalked reality?
As a cat lover, big time science fiction fan and appreciator of the first two A Quiet Place installments, the very first thing I thought when I saw the trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One was “I hope the cat doesn’t meow!”
My second thought? Bud and I would be so, so dead.
Dead immediately. Dead a thousand times over.
Apparently I’m not the only one, because fans have taken to social media to participate in the “Quiet Place Challenge,” which involves reenacting some of the scenes from the movie with their own cats to see if their furry overlords can stay silent.
As PITB readers know, Buddy never shuts up. He’s got something to say about everything, he often narrates his activities in real time, and he’s got an entire meowing ritual that starts at least a half hour before Food O’Clock, gaining in volume and annoyingness until a fresh bowl of turkey is placed before him. His personal patois, the Buddinese dialect, makes heavy use of trills, chirps, grunts, chuffs and sniffs to elaborate on his meows.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Quiet Place movies, they imagine a world that’s been invaded by so-called Death Angels, dread creatures of extrasolar provenance who are completely blind, but have extraordinarily sensitive hearing. The first movie, about a family surviving on their farm in upstate New York months after the initial invasion, was universally lauded for its taut script, effective tension and novel use of a quiet/loud dynamic that is a marked departure from the usual horror-thriller formula.
John Krasinksi directs and stars in the original A Quiet Place as Lee Abbott, a father who survives the invasion along with his wife (real life spouse Emily Blunt) and their two children. Credit: Paramount Pictures
In A Quiet Place (2018), its 2020 sequel and the recently-released prequel, Day One, entire minutes pass soundlessly. As a viewer you can’t help but wince and tense up when a character errs and makes noise, knowing the consequences can be immediately tragic.
There’s simply no way Bud and I would survive more than five minutes, and if I had to put money on it, I’d wager we’d probably be dead within 60 seconds of the terrifying monsters showing up.
Indeed, the movie doesn’t dither: the Death Angels make planetfall at around the 12 minute mark. Mild spoilers from the beginning of the film follow:
12:31 – On Chinatown’s ruined Pell Street, within a haze of dust so thick you can’t see more than a few feet in any direction, a man shouts loudly into his smartphone, telling the person on the other end that something meteor-like had landed just a few hundred feet away. He’s pulled suddenly and violently into the smog, his scream ending as abruptly as it began. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d probably meow in protest at the dust and get us both killed immediately.
12:53 – A female National Guard soldier sees Nyong’o’s Sam and shouts at her to take cover. The guardswoman’s radio crackles with the panicked screams of her comrades saying the enemy is everywhere, and then she’s dispatched as quickly as the guy on the phone. Verdict: Death by Buddy. He’d almost certainly huff derisively at the soldier’s order to take cover, and we’d both be crushed underneath the foot of one of the lumbering beasts.
13:34 – Sam huddles behind a vehicle with another woman when a panicked man screams, drawing the aliens like moths to a flame. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Little dude’s default reaction when he’s scared is to run screaming and hide behind my legs. He’d draw the monsters right to us and we’d die.
13:50 – Sam wakes up inside a theater several minutes after an explosion knocked her out. She’s about to speak when Djimon Hounsou’s Henri clamps a hand over her mouth and raises a finger to his lips. Unfortunately that doesn’t work with a cat. Verdict: Death by Buddy. Attempts to get him to shut up would be fruitless, and while I’d know my only chance for survival would be to throw him like a football so the aliens track his indignant screech, I wouldn’t have the heart to do it. We’d die together.
Frodo, the feline co-star of Day One and “service cat” to Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam, is precisely the opposite. He’s a Good Boy extraordinaire, consistently calm in his mother’s arms and reliably silent when he needs to be.
Frodo is a handsome and resourceful little guy, and much of Day One’s tension comes from putting him in danger. Credit: Paramount Pictures
Without meows to rely on, director Michael Sarnoski gets quite a performance out of Nico and Schnitzel, the two cats who play Frodo. They’re expressive felines who could teach Nicolas Cage a thing or two about how to emote with subtlety, as in one scene when Frodo sees a man emerge gasping from a flooded subway station. Frodo regards the stranger with curiosity, his little face registering surprise at the man’s sudden appearance with just the slightest twitch of his mouth and whiskers.
It’s effective and very cute, but we never forget about the incredible danger that faces Frodo and Sam as they return the One Ring to Mount Doom navigate the ruins of New York City amid blind predators with extraordinarily sensitive hearing.
“LOL I got you killed, dude! Hey! Wake up! I’m hungry! Turkey time! I’ll take my evening meal on the balcony and dine al fresco this evening, okay? Big Bud? Dude?”
If Day One’s world was reality — and I’m extremely thankful it’s not — I suppose it’s possible I’d get lucky if we were in a deep subterranean level of a building for some odd reason, and if Bud decided it’s not worth disturbing his nap to investigate the ruckus above.
But the moment his belly rumbles and he starts screeching for yums, or the second he gets it into his little head that he just has to tell me his latest theory regarding entangled subatomic particles, it would all be over, for me at least. I could totally see Bud making noise, then dashing to his customary hiding place behind my legs while a “Death Angel” impales me with one of its giant claws.
What about the rest of you? Is your cat a Frodo, a Bud or another sort entirely? Would you be dead as quickly as we would be, or do you think you could survive with your furry pal?
I love my cat, except when he’s standing on my head and screeching into my ear at 80 decibels to make sure sleep is not an option.
Regular readers of this blog know I dote on my cat.
I don’t call him “Your Grace” without reason. He always eats first. He regularly uses me as his pillow. He knows how to manipulate me, he always gets what he wants, and I’ve been told many times how he’s got me “wrapped around his paw.”
He rules the roost, and has done so since the night he arrived as a baby and came striding out of his carrier like a furry little Ghenghis Khan, conquering everything in sight.
No one can doubt that I love the little guy.
But if you were a fly on the wall when I wake up, well, you might think differently. Bud is, to put it bluntly, absolutely relentless when he wants something, which puts us at odds when it comes to that most crucial commodity, sleep.
Some of the most vile things that have ever come out of my mouth have been prompted by the little guy’s snooze-disturbing antics. I’ve called him ALF (Annoying Little F—-er), I’ve threatened to sell him to the local Chinese restaurant, I’ve thrown pillows at him, and when my sleep-deprived brain can’t come up with something more creative, I half-mumble “Shut up, you furry little turdball!”
Buddy the Cat: Never at a loss for meows.
Those are the more tame ones! The worst thing, the bit that makes me feel bad, is that Bud just wants me to wake up so we can hang out and be buddies.
He doesn’t want food. He’s got a bowl of dry food set out for him before bed every night precisely so he doesn’t have to wake me up. Nope. He wants to knead my shoulder, purr up a storm and have me scratch his chin while I tell him what a good boy he is. And instead of that, I’m turtling up beneath the blanket, pillow over my head, telling him he’ll be served as General Tsao’s Buddy if he doesn’t shut his trap.
All this time I’ve told myself that it’s okay because he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, and he knows I wouldn’t harm a hair on his head.
But what if he does understand some of it?
That’s the subject of a new column by Karin Spicer. Writing in the Dayton Daily News, Spicer describes her morning ritual with her cat, Pip, and how she’s encouraged her naturally vocal cat to vocalize even more by talking to him.
“No sleep for you, human! There are foreheads to rub, chins to scratch and ‘good boys’ to be said!”
Like Pip, Bud is a naturally talkative cat, and like Pip, his motor mouth tendencies have been cultivated by plenty of attention, affection and interaction.
“Cats want to bond with their owners,” says Catster’s Michelle Gunter, who is quoted in Spicer’s column about Pip. “If you take the time to communicate with them in soft, calming tones, that bond will strengthen faster. Your tone and the affection you offer during these periods can help show your cat that you love them and want to spend time with them.”
You mean to tell me all this time I’ve been undoing some of that bonding by hurling vile invective at my Buddy when he tries to annoy me out of sleep?
You mean to tell me he can infer by my tone of voice that I’m threatening to sell him to Somali pirates for $15 and a pack of gum?!?
Sheeeeit!
Disclaimer:No Buddies were harmed in the creation of this content, except perhaps for some bruised egos.
We asked cats what they think about MeowTalk, an app designed to translate their meows to human language.
MeowTalk, an iOS/Android app that aims to translate your meows using a machine learning algorithm, is getting a new publicity push after a recent update. The app has proven particularly popular in Japan, a nation of cat lovers.
What do you think about MeowTalk?
“You’re telling me there’s a good chance my human understood me calling her a dim-witted biped who’s stingy with snacks?” – Midnight, 7, office supervisor
“Finally, a device that can translate all my loving utterances at 5 a.m. when my bowl’s empty!” – Cleo, 5, cushion tester
“If an app is translating our meows, then why do our humans still stink at giving us massages?” – Andre, 2, faucet operator
“You know what this means, don’t you? If my humans overheard me discussing plans for the feline takeover of Earth, I’m going to have to smother them in their sleep.” – Dragorth the Destroyer, 4, generalissimo
“Sometimes I like to meow in gibberish just to mess with the humans. LOL! Wait, how can this app translate Japanese meows AND American meows?” – Zelda, 3, princess
“CHECK IT OUT, THERE’S A KITTEN WHO LOOKS JUST LIKE ME BEHIND THE GLASS! HEY, STOP IMITATING ME! STOP THAT! IT’S REALLY ANNOYING! HEY!” – Christian, 3 months, archaeologist kitten
Bud makes himself comfortable in my consciousness so he can annoy me on an entirely different plane of existence!
Buddy has a tendency to show up in my dreams, which I attribute to his relentless insistence on messing with me while I’m asleep, whether it’s yowling in my ear for breakfast, deciding my nose needs grooming or just burrowing into me with a soft “Mrrrrrp!”
Last night, however, was a doozy. I dreamt I was back in high school, but instead of being in class I was in the newsroom at my first-ever newspaper job, which somehow occupied the third floor of the school building. I excused myself to go have a smoke — which I don’t do anymore — and walked down to the first floor where Bud was waiting for me near the door leading outside.
To say I was alarmed to find him just hanging out unsupervised in my high school-slash-workplace would be an understatement.
“Bud!” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I came here with you, remember?” Buddy answered, speaking as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “We took the Celica.”
I sighed.
“I can’t have you running around here where someone could snatch you,” I said. “You’re going back in the car until I’m done for the day.”
“No I’m not!”
“Yes you are!”
“Oh yeah?” Buddy asked. “Where’s the car?”
A black Celica just like the one I owned until it died one day on the highway en route to Long Island.
And that’s when my dream morphed into a recurring nightmare, which is that I’m walking through a parking lot and can’t find my car. (In this case the car I got at 19 years old, a black Celica hatchback that was all sleek looks and underwhelming engine power. I still miss that car!) In these dreams I start to panic, redouble my efforts, and realize the parking lot is so huge, so endless that I’m gonna need a lift, someone to drive me around so I can look for my car
“I’m a little Buddy, short and sweet! Here are my clawses, here are my feet!”
Maybe I can ease my anxiety in future dreams by dispatching Buddy to look for the car, but in last night’s dream he was clearly responsible for moving it.
“Bud…” I said. “What’d you do with the car?”
Dreams have a way of making it seem perfectly reasonable that a 10-pound house cat can not only speak, but drive a car.
I was absolutely sure that little jerk had hidden my car! (And here’s the standard disclaimer for all new readers: “little jerk” is a term of endearment when it comes to Bud. I love the little guy, obviously.)
I know it was just a dream, but it’s probably not a bad idea to hide my keys from now on…
Pain In The Bud 