Vikings – Pain In The Bud

Merry Christmas! Is Buddy Too Fat To Fit In His New Tiny Tent?

Bud wishes everyone a very delicious Christmas.

This year, Santa brought something really awesome for Little Buddy!

No, not a Roomba. A TinyTent! A beautiful, dark blue tiny tent with equally tiny mesh windows and and a tiny rain fly.

I put it together and called Bud over.

“Look, Bud!”

He meowed, tail up, clearly interested. But he didn’t go inside, so I got a few of his favorite treats and tossed them in there.

Bud padded over, stuck his head and front paws in the tent…and I realized he may be too fat for his TinyTent.

I need to get him in there. After all, the entire point was to put it on my desk and establish a clear Buddy Spot, a place where he can be right next to me and lounge comfortably without sitting in front of my monitor or on the keyboard.

He will fit. Cats are liquid, after all, and love a good snug spot. I just have to wait until the tent floor settles a bit and maybe add an old t-shirt.

Then Bud will have his Buddy Spot, so he can be cozy and remain within one foot of me while allowing me to write. (Yeah right.)

And if not…it’s diet time, fat boy! For both of us.

Special thanks to my nieces, who gifted Buddy his TinyTent. They remain the only two humans in the world Bud is terrified of, and I feel bad they can’t play with him much, but they love him.

In other Christmas gift news, my mom gave me this mug “from Bud,” and, well, it’s almost embarrassingly, uncannily accurate, and the image is not custom-made:

I mean, that’s a gray tabby, but it’s also his precise coloring, and the black t-shirt, red-brown hair and man bun are all me. (We’ll pause so you can laugh at me for the bun. It never would have happened if COVID didn’t shut down barbershops for an entire year and I didn’t watch Vikings during the pandemic, thinking “That Ragnar Lothbrok has cool hair! I wanna be a viking!”)

As for the rest of Christmas, I am spending it with family and I hope you are too, friends. I know some people feel they need to drink just to tolerate relatives, but I have always been grateful that my family is boringly normal. No fights, no arguments, and we’ve all agreed not to talk politics.

I hope your gatherings are similarly uneventful and you get to enjoy the holidays and your families.

And now we leave you with a lively and festive number from Buddy the Cat’s Christmas songbook, originally published in 2022. It’s meant to be sung to the Tony Bennett version of My Favorite Things, a true classic!

Buddy’s Favorite Things

Temps in my bowlses and snacks in the kitchen
Taunting the street cats and smacking some kittens
Leaving the neighbor’s dog tied up in strings
These are a few of my favorite things!

Bubble wrap, peanuts and UPS boxes
4 a.m. zooms when I scream like a rocket
Waking my human with songs that I sing
These are a few of my favorite things!

At nail clip time, things I dislike
When I’m really mad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad!

Calico booties and slices of Gouda
Ambushing like I’ve been launched by bazooka
No consequences ’cause I am the king!
These are a few of my favorite things!

Screeching in anguish at doors closed between us
Shattering Wise Men and statues of Jesus
I helped myself to the buffalo wings
These are a few of my favorite things!

Meow at my bowl as if I’ve been forgotten
Screeching in panic ’cause I see the bottom
Gorging on kibble till I am puking
These are a few of my favorite things!

When I’m told no, ’cause I broke those
When my dad is mad
I’ll get away with my favorite things
Because I’m a real cute cat!

At Exeter Cathedral, Felines Have Feasted For Centuries Thanks To World’s Oldest Cat Door

Viking raiders, Roman ruins, an astronomical clock and a bishop who badly needed the services of a competent feline hunter: the story of the oldest known cat flap.

In 1598 Bishop Cotton arrived at his new post to find he had a serious rodent problem.

The new leader of Exeter Cathedral realized mice and rats were attracted to the animal fat used to lubricate the complex inner workings of the ancient structure’s astronomical clock, so he did what any sensible person would — he got himself a cat and had a flap installed so kitty had free reign of the church grounds and the chambers that held the hidden clockwork.

The newly-discovered details came to light thanks to the efforts of Diane Walker, the cathedral’s historian. One record shows the bishop paid a carpenter eight pence to cut a circular, cat-size hole in the heavy wooden door leading to the clockwork chamber, as well as ledgers showing the cat was officially on the church’s payroll.

“Back in the 14th and 15th Centuries we have records in the cathedral of payments of 13 pence a quarter for the cat and occasionally 26 pence a quarter for the cat,” Walker told the BBC. “We don’t know if that was double rations because they had been doing a good job or whether there were actually two cats.”

365692370_686569446830535_5166972407635373821_n — Credit: Exeter Cathedral

I love the idea of a happy cat licking her lips and cheerfully chowing down on medieval Temptations as reward for a job well done.

The cathedral has provided steady employment for felines, who still keep the rodents at bay on the grounds more than 400 years after Bishop Cotton hired his first mouser. Cute ginger tabby Audrey, pictured above, holds down the fort these days.

Exeter Cathedral has an interesting history besides its feline employees. It owes its existence to the vikings: the church decided to build a new cathedral as the bishop’s seat because his previous post was located near river routes and was vulnerable to raids from viking invaders.

Previously the site of several Roman structures, including a public bath house, the grounds were chosen because Exeter was a prosperous, bustling city and church officials thought it had a bright future.

The cornerstone was laid in 1112 and it took almost 300 years to finish, becoming one of the finest examples of a gothic cathedral in the Norman style.

You Can Brings Cats Raiding With You In Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

With kitty on your prow, Freya smiles upon you!

For anyone unfamiliar with Assassin’s Creed, it’s a series of games that imagine eras of history as digital theme parks filled with grand adventures, with the player as the hero in the middle of it all.

In Origins you’re an Egyptian warrior marauding through a landscape of pyramids, sphinxes, temples, crocodiles and lions. In Odyssey you’re a Spartan-born mercenary sailing the Aegean with Herodotus by your side and Aspasia as one of your BFFs.

These aren’t recreations of the ancient world so much as they’re simulacra of what people living in the 21st century think ancient Egypt and Greece looked, sounded and felt like.

The latest installment, due to arrive in December, is Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, which leans heavily on History Channel’s Vikings and Netflix’s The Last Kingdom for its visual style. The game covers the same territory as those shows as well, taking place during the Viking era when invaders from Norway, Denmark and Sweden relentlessly pillaged the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England.

valhallagif — The male version of Evior, the player character.

eviorfemale — The female version of main character Evior.

The vikings were low-tech raiders — they didn’t have a real writing system, they left no enduring mark on architecture, their smithing techniques were inferior and their technological contributions to humanity were limited to shipbuilding and seafaring.

They raided the Anglo-Saxons, in short, because they wanted to loot shiny shit. Gold and silver chalices, precious gems, crucifixes, woodwork, iron weapons, anything of value worth hauling back to Scandinavia.

In Valhalla, players will assemble their own raiding parties, and apparently they can take cats. The video below shows the player character recruiting a “raider cat” for his longboat. There’s a short sidequest involved. From there, the cat accompanies the player and his vikings across the sea. Like a typical feline, the game’s cat likes to sleep and is usually found curled up in the front of the longboat, but don’t expect kitty to help out when the fighting starts: