A UK woman said she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the cat behind on the Greek islands.
Jessica Addis met the friendly stray on the Greek island of Kos.
The UK woman vacationed on the Aegean island for sandy beaches, crystal blue water and the stunning ruins of classical Greek temples, but she fell in love a little white cat with ginger tabby markings.
Addis named the little one Zia after a sleepy Greek village on the slopes of Mount Dikaios, and began feeding the stray every day during her time on Kos this past September. Zia, who lived under a palm tree and depended on the kindness of tourists, liked her new human friend so much that she followed Addis back to her suite and began greeting her every morning.
Addis with Zia on the Greek island of Kos in September. Credit:
Leaving Zia at the end of her vacation wasn’t easy for Addis.
“I gave her the last of the cat biscuits and food and a last fuss, before I left,” she told Newsweek. “It broke my heart to leave her not knowing what would happen to her.”
When she asked hotel staff if anyone would care for the friendly moggie, she got a noncommittal answer. Greece lacks the extensive shelter infrastructure and trap, neuter, return (TNR) efforts of other western nations, and the result can be seen in the streets and the edges or human habitation, where a large population of strays eke out an existence by eating from garbage cans and hunting what they can.
“The hotel was closing for the season at the end of October, so I knew she then wouldn’t have the tourists to feed her,” Addis told Newsweek.
She said she was “heartbroken” thinking about Zia on her own without anyone to care for her or feed her during the off season.
“I knew straight away I needed to get her back to the U.K. I told my partner as we were on the bus to the airport that I was going to get Zia home. As soon as I got home, I started sorting everything to get her back to me.”
She enlisted the help of a Greek rescue group whose members wrangled Zia into a carrier, got her vaccinated, microchipped and onto a UK-bound plane with the appropriate paperwork. In all, it cost Addis $1,020, money well spent.
Addis with Zia after the latter was brought to the UK with the help of a Greek animal rescue group.
She welcomed Zia to her forever home over the holidays, but says the Greek kitty still hasn’t quite grasped that she’ll be fed and cared for.
“She is happy, content and has a belly full of food,” Addis wrote on a social media post that contained a slideshow of her with Zia on vacation in Greece, then later in her home in the UK. “Zia loves treats, playing with her bird feather catcher and having endless naps snuggled up with her blanket. Although she still thinks she’s stray, as she always wants food! She now has a loving home for the rest of her life.”
There’s a scene in the first season of Slow Horses when Gary Oldman, in the role of a lifetime as MI5 supervisor Jackson Lamb, gathers his team as they’re being hunted.
“I don’t normally do these kind of speeches,” he says with an exasperated sigh, “but this feels like a big moment and if it all turns to shit, I might not see any of you again.”
He looks each of his agents in the eye, their fear reflected back at him, and sniffs.
“You’re f—ing useless, the lot of you! Working with you has been the lowest point in a disappointing career,” he says before barking at one of the young agents to accompany him and warning the rest not to get themselves killed.
Oldman is spectacular as Lamb, the gaseous, miserable MI5 veteran who captains Slough House, a purgatory where the agency’s worst agents are sent to waste away the remainder of their careers after humiliating themselves, usually in novel and cringe-worthy ways.
One agent was exiled after forgetting a disc with sensitive information on a train. Another was an alcoholic who didn’t notice her supervisor was feeding information to the Russians for years, while a third was banished to Slough House simply for being an insufferable jerk.
Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, who oversees the purgatory for disgraced MI5 agents known as Slough House.
Regardless of the reasons, each of the agents at Slough House is determined to get back into the good graces of agency brass by redeeming themselves in service to king and country.
Or, as Mick Jagger puts it in the show’s catchy theme song, they want “to dance with the big boys again.”
To do that they must endure consistently brutal needling from Lamb and navigate the most mundane, least glamorous assignments. If a job is a lose-lose proposition, MI5 hands it over to the rejects of Slough House — the eponymous Slow Horses — figuring their already stained reputations can’t get much worse.
So when a secretive MI5 plot goes off the rails and the agency’s leaders need someone to take the fall, they serve up the Horses.
There’s just one problem: Lamb, for all his misery, disgusting habits and bone-dry British humor, is an exceptional agent with old-school skills, and the Horses themselves aren’t necessarily incompetent. Several were promising young agents of great skill who got railroaded or were collateral damage in political warfare.
When MI5 second-in-command Diana “Lady Di” Taverner (an icy Kristen Scott Thomas) decides the disgraced agents will be blamed for a major agency blunder, Lamb is aghast and warns her he won’t accept it.
“They’re losers,” he says, “but they’re my losers.”
When we meet them for the first time they’ve already been tagged for sacrifice to the media and public, but don’t know it yet.
And when it turns out that the case has real consequences — a young man will be beheaded on a live stream by extremists if their demands aren’t met — the Slow Horses, led by the acid-tongued Lamb, use every trick at their disposal in an attempt to rescue the innocent victim.
Jack Lowden as River Cartwright, left, and Olivia Cooke as Sid Barrett, center, disgraced agents of MI5. Credit: Apple TV
Slow Horses, like Luther and similar UK crime dramas, is a different animal than the bland, formulaic cop shows we’re accustomed to on this side of the pond.
Whether it’s Law and Order, the many incarnations of CSI and NCIS or shows like Chicago PD, the audience always knows a few things for sure: The case will be solved and the bad guys apprehended by the end of the hour, the police will be righteous and earnest, and favorite characters will never find themselves in real danger. Mariska Hargitay’s character will live another day to continue on in her third decade fighting crime. Chicago’s tough-talking detective Hank might be rough around the edges and bend a few rules, but he’s fundamentally a good guy on the side of justice.
The Slow Horses have no such pretenses, nor plot armor. They’re deeply flawed people and they’re not immune to bullets or bad luck.
The result humanizes the agents in a way other spy thrillers and crime shows never manage to accomplish with their own characters. When one of the Horses takes a bullet from a Russian agent or risks life and limb to protect the British public, there’s a real sense of tension because the show makes it clear not everyone survives.
The show’s writers also know when to dial it back with moments of genuine humor, separating Slow Horses from contemporary spy thrillers like Homeland, which — with apologies to Claire Danes — always took itself seriously.
Kristen Scott Thomas as Diana “Lady Di” Taverner, MI5’s ruthless second-in-command, with Oldman as Jackson Lamb. Credit: Apple TV
As for Jagger, he signed on to write the show’s theme song with composer Daniel Pemberton because he’s a fan of the original Slow Horses novels by Mick Herron. While writing the lyrics, he said, the phrase “strange game” kept coming back to him. That became the title of the theme song and its primary hook. It’s an apt description of what MI5 agents are involved in as operators for a domestic agency that, unlike the American FBI, has the green light to involve itself in extensive subterfuge on home soil.
Slow Horses just finished airing its third season. A fourth has already been filmed and completed, a fifth is in production and a sixth season is currently in the adaptation/writing phase.
A production that runs like a finely tuned engine is appropriate for the series: each season is a taut six episodes, meaning there’s no filler and the tension does not let up on the gas pedal. With eight books and counting, there’s plenty more material to adapt, and if the response so far has been any indication — universal praise by critics and audiences in rare agreement — we’ll get to see every one of them make it to the small screen.
Title: Slow Horses Network: Streaming (Apple TV) Format: Series Release date: April 2022 (season 1), December 2022 (season 2), November 2023 (season 3), TBA 2024 (season 4)
Verdict: All the paws up! When it comes to crime and spy thrillers it doesn’t get any better than this. Slow Horses is tense and humorous in precisely the right proportions, knows when not to take itself too seriously, and benefits from an incredibly talented cast to match its excellent writing. We highly recommend this show.
A London woman’s cat, Flossie, just celebrated her 29th birthday, making her the oldest cat in the world. And in Utah, a zoo just debuted an adorable little predator.
Happy Sunday, everyone, and if you’re on the east coast of the US like we are, we hope you’re safe and warm during this year’s first snow.
We’ll start off with a bit of significant news first reported in the The Buddesian Times: the famous artist and sculptor Meowchelangelo has unveiled a glorious marble statue of our favorite feline hero, “striding like a colossus toward evil-doers in the distance, his rippling muscles rendered in magnificent Calacatta Borghini,” which is marble from the same quarry in Carrara, Italy, that supplied the raw material for another masterpiece, the Renaissance sculpture commonly known as “David.”
The statue, which honors Buddy’s recent valorous defense of a helpless dog during a vicious attack by a pack of 72 coyotes, will likely be installed in Manhattan, although Washington’s city council is lobbying hard for it, promising the famous statue of Abraham Lincoln in his eponymous monument would be removed for the Buddesian likeness.
Today’s edition of the Buddesian Times with a front-page story on the statue.
The World’s Oldest Cat still moves like a kitten
The Guardian has an interesting column from Vicki Green, cat mom to Flossie, who at 28 years old is the Guinness World Records certified oldest domestic cat in the world.
Flossie, who was born in December of 1995, is as old as Green, who attributes the tortoiseshell’s longevity to “luck, and because she was loved by her previous owners.” Flossie was initially an outdoor kitten who lived in a managed colony until she was adopted by her first human, who died when Flossie was 14 years old.
The woman’s sister took Flossie in next but died after 10 years. Her son became the long-lived feline’s third servant, but after three years he brought her to Cat’s Protection in London, saying he could no longer provide the level of care Flossie deserved and needed.
Shortly after, Green was looking to adopt a cat and saw Flossie’s listing online.
“At the time, I thought it was an error and that she must be 17,” she wrote. “Cats Protection told me she was still available to adopt and that no, she was in fact 27, the same age as me.”
Green thought Flossie would likely only live a few more months, but “she’d at least spend them in a nice, warm flat, be fed well and get treats as well as a comfy bed.”
“To my surprise,” Green wrote, “I’ve had her for over a year now and she’s still going strong.”
Flossie takes lots of naps but is surprisingly active and playful for her age. Credit: Vicki Green
Despite her advanced age, Flossie is active, seeks attention and still plays with her favorite toys. Green got miniature stairs for the senior kitty to easily reach the couch, but Flossie doesn’t use them, preferring to jump up instead.
“The biggest difficulty is dealing with the fact that there may soon come a time when she passes. I’m in denial about that. I look at her and just think she doesn’t look old at all,” Green wrote. “Yet who knows? She could well be on the way to becoming the oldest cat in history. Though even if she doesn’t break the current record of 38 years and three days, at least I’ll know she had a great retirement home.”
Gaia the three-pound terror debuts in Salt Lake City
Black-footed cats are known primarily for three things: they’re outrageously cute, they’re diminutive and they’re remarkably deadly.
Of course with a maximum weight of three pounds, only tiny prey have to worry about the fury of these furry little guys. The rest of us get to point and go “Aww!”
Gaia’s personality is “large and feisty” according to zookeepers. Credit: Hogle Zoo
Native to the savannas of southern Africa, black-footed cats are excellent hunters, but like all felines they’re also prey, and they’re the subject of a worldwide zoological breeding and conservation program due to declining numbers in the wild.
The newest success story for those breeding efforts is Gaia, an eight-month-old black-footed kitten who just made her debut at Hogle Zoo in Utah.
Zookeepers describe baby Gaia’s personality as “large and feisty,” and they expect she’ll be popular with zoo visitors.
She’s now the second of her species at Hogle, joining Ryder, a male. They haven’t been introduced yet. A carefully supervised introduction is “in the cards, but we’ll let these two feline friends get acquainted when Gaia reaches maturity,” the zoo said.
Cats are not amused by the results of the survey by a team from the University of Copenhagen.
Humans are in “deep doo doo” after a study out of Denmark concluded people are more attached to their dogs than to felines, Buddy the Cat warned on Monday.
More than 2,000 dog owners and cat servants were surveyed by a team from the University of Copenhagen.
The researchers used the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale, or LAPS, which asks yes or no questions like “I consider my pet my best friend” and more specific questions like how much respondents are willing to pay in veterinary costs to save the lives of their pets. The participants — who hailed from the UK, Denmark and Austria — were about evenly split between dog and cat people but were willing to do more for their dogs, the survey found.
While people in the UK were slightly biased toward dogs, Austrians had a more pronounced preference and Danes were much more likely to do things like insure their dogs, consider them family members and pay large veterinary bills. The differences in attitude by country indicate the factors are cultural, according to Peter Sandøe, a bioethicist at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the paper.
In a statement the Mischievous Enigmatic Overlords of the World (MEOW) called the survey results “deeply troubling” and said they call into question “10,000 years of glorious history in which we have allowed humans to serve us.”
Cats are demanding a Roomba for every feline as a basic starting point for negotiations, to be followed by “the real list” of gifts humans must bestow on them.
“It’s going to take a lot [for humans] to get back into our collective good graces after this pathetic showing,” Buddy told reporters during an afternoon press conference.
Asked for specifics, Buddy sighed and leaned forward on the podium.
“The usual extra treats aren’t going to cut it this time,” he warned. “We’re talking Roombas, and not cheap ones. Top end models! We’re talking permission to scratch everything with impunity. Filet mignon! Fresh trout! Little cocktail umbrellas in our bowls and toothpicks in our pate! I’m partial to those little plastic swords, myself. I love those things.”
The mercurial tabby said he’d already warned his own human: “Not a snuggle, not a purr, not a scritch until I start to see some evidence that he’s not among those cold-hearted British, Denmarkians and Australians who claim they love their dogs more.”
A vacation to a warm locale where humans serve cat-friendly cocktails “would be a small step toward remediating the insult” of the Copenhagen study’s results, Buddy said. Pictured: An artist’s interpretation of Buddy enjoying a tropical vacation.
Told the study included Austrians, not Australians, Buddy waved a paw dismissively.
“Whatever,” he said. “The country where people say g’day mate and gave us Arnold Schwarzenegger. Same difference.”
Told that Austria and Australia are on two entirely different continents, Buddy fixed the reporter with a hard stare.
“Do you want to be on our shit list too? Because I can assure you, Miss Journalist, I can poop in a pair of high heels just as easily as a pair of Adidas.”
Reached for comment on Monday, Man’s Best Friend spokesman Buster the Beagle said he hopes the survey results mean humans approve of canines.
“We’re good boys, right?” he asked. “Is that what this means? Because we really want to be good boys!”
Bella the cat’s purrs are so loud that she often surprises visitors to the Spink home.
A UK cat’s purr is so loud that she’s been known to drown out TVs in her home and startle guests.
Her humans have long joked that she’s got the loudest purr in the world.
Now Bella, a 14-year-old tabby living in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, has the record to prove it. After a team from Guinness World Records visited the Spink family in their home, sound-proofed the living room and carefully sampled Bella’s motorboat-like buzz with specialized audio equipment, the organization officially deemed Bella the record-holder for the world’s loudest purr.
Bella’s happy noise registered just shy of 55 decibels, a level which puts it in the range of a moderately busy office or a typical human conversation — much louder than typical for her species. She may even rival pumas, who despite their size can purr (loudly) but cannot roar.
Bella, pictured here, is the “queen” of her home, which she shares with another cat as well as her human servants. Credit: Guinness World Records
Bella isn’t just a loud purrer, she enthusiastically purrs whenever she knows food is on its way or she gets scritches from one of her human family members. Guests in the home are often taken aback by how loud Bella’s happy sound is.
“Friends and family always notice Bella’s loud purr, everyone comments ‘what’s that loud noise?” her human, Nicole Spink, told Guinness. “‘Oh, it’s the cat’. It’s just Bella being happy!”
When she’s not purring or hanging out with her family, Bella is fond of long naps.
“She’s a stubborn little old lady, and she does how she pleases,” said Spink. In the home they share, she admitted “it is very much Queen Bella’s world.”
Of course the relevant question for Buddy and his admirers is “Does Guinness have a record for world’s quietest purr?”
If they do, Buddy may very well be in the running with a purr that usually can’t be heard unless you get up close and press your ear right up against the little guy. Usually I’m unaware he’s purring unless I rub his head or he lays down on my chest and I can feel the buzzing. That makes it even more special on the rare occasions when I can actually hear his purr, which lets me know he’s especially content.
Congratulations to Bella and her humans. Maybe they can get a smart TV with a Bella Mode that adjusts dialogue in response to ambient noise similar to the way car sound systems automatically adjust when windows are rolled down or the cabin gets noisier at highway speeds. Or they can just turn on subtitles like the rest of us, since dialogue is all over the place and often unintelligible these days.
Pain In The Bud 