Tag: White House

cat stories, Feline Overlords, news

Sunday Cats: Chonky Kitty Gets A Home, Footballer Gets Second Chance After Cat Abuse

Sterling the cat is a cute and playful little guy, and no doubt would have his fans among those who love chonksters, but he has to lose weight.

That was the gist of the message posted by staff at the Humane Society of Huron Valley in Michigan, who wanted to find a home for Sterling but also wanted to make sure his new human(s) would be dedicated to his health.

The silver tabby with a Buddesian coat pattern tips the scales at 30 pounds. Not only is the weight unhealthy, but it makes life as a cat difficult.

“We know, those plump cheeks are adorable. But obesity is terribly unhealthy for cats,” Humane Society staff wrote on Instagram. “Sterling is fastidious about hygiene, but can’t groom himself properly (we had to shave matted fur off his back). He’s so lively and playful, but can’t chase after toys. He’s curious about the world, but can’t jump up to look out the window. He’s so affectionate, but can’t comfortably snuggle with his people.”

An adopter has stepped up to the plate and given Sterling a new family, a deal that includes committing to working with a veterinarian to get the kitty to slim down. The Humane Society haven’t said who the adopter is, but Sterling’s adoption profiles disappeared shortly after the shelter’s impassioned plea on Feb. 9.

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Sterling weighs about 30 pounds. Credit: Humane Society of Huron Valley.

Zouma gets another shot

Kurt Zouma, the Premiere League footballer who earned himself worldwide condemnation over the last week for uploading a video showing him abusing his own cat, won’t lose his job due to the scandal.

West Ham United Coach David Moyes said Zouma’s actions were “completely out of character from Kurt” and compared the abuse incidents to drunken driving.

“He’s a really good lad and we’re going to get him some help,” Moyes told reporters. “Just like people with drink-drive offences have to go to classes to learn the reasons and the damage that can be done, the RSPCA are going to provide some courses for Kurt to understand about animals and how to treat them.”

Moyes says Zouma has repeatedly apologized, and he thinks the French national is sincerely contrite.

“But what do you do?” the coach asked. “Do you keep punishing people or do you give them a chance to make things right? All of us in life need second chances sometimes, and we’re going to give Kurt a second chance.”

The controversy flared up immediately after the UK Sun published a story about three short clips showing Zouma drop-kicking, slapping and throwing a shoe at his cat. The clips were filmed by Zouma’s brother, who can be heard laughing in the background, and involved Zouma’s son.

In his apology, Zouma said the abuse was “an isolated incident,” but said there was “no excuse” for his actions.

“I also want to say how deeply sorry I am to anyone who was upset by the video,” the soccer pro said.

Zouma was fined £ 250,000 — equal to about $330,000 — which is the maximum amount the club could fine him under league rules. He also lost his primary sponsorship with Adidas, which issued a terse statement and immediately dropped the center-back from its roster, and insurance company Vitality pulled its sponsorship from the entire team. Two other sponsors said they would meet with the club to discuss the issue.

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Scotsman Jason Kerr of Wigan gently scoops up Topsey, a house cat who interrupted play on Tuesday night by running onto the pitch in a match between Wigan and West Ham United.

Zouma also surrendered both of his cats — the one who was abused in the video and a second feline — to the RSPCA, which is conducting an investigation. Like the SPCA in the US, which has its own law enforcement division, the RSPCA has the ability to file criminal charges in cases involving animal abuse and neglect.

The felines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Did you know the first Siamese cat to reach America’s shores was probably Siam, who belonged to First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes?

Back when Thailand was called Siam, U.S. ambassador David B. Sickels read that Mrs. Hayes — wife of Rutherford B. Hayes — was a cat lover and sent one of the now-famous Asian cats to the White House.

“I have taken the liberty of forwarding to you one of the finest specimens of Siamese cats that I have been able to procure in this country,” Sickels wrote to the First Lady in 1878. “I am informed that this is the first attempt ever made to send a Siamese cat to America.”

While we’ve written quite a bit about the famous cats who have occupied the White House over the years, the Hayes story and others are also detailed in a new article from Smithsonian Magazine, which marked the occasion of Willow the cat’s arrival by revisiting presidential pet history. It’s well worth a read if you like the idea of kitties roaming the halls of power and even sitting on one president’s lap during state dinners, eating at the table like humans.

cat stories, Feline Overlords, news

Sunday Cats: White House Welcomes Willow

Willow’s in the White House!

First Lady Jill Biden promised a cat would reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as a presidential pet during her husband’s administration, and a year after President Joe Biden was sworn in, Willow the cat has joined the First Family in Washington.

Willow is a gray tabby who got Jill Biden’s attention in a very cat-like way: She invited herself onstage while the First Lady was giving a campaign speech for her husband on a Pennsylvania farm in 2020.

A campaign official later called the farm’s owner, Rick Telesz, and asked if the Bidens could adopt the friendly moggie. Willow is two years old and is the first presidential cat since India, a black American Shorthair who belonged to former President George W. Bush’s daughters, Barbara and Jenna. India lived to the ripe old age of 18, outliving Bush’s two terms as president.

India was named after a Major League Baseball player, not the country. Credit: The White House
India, the Bush family’s cat, didn’t look too thrilled to be part of a Halloween event hosted by then-First Lady Laura Bush. Credit: The White House

The Bidens had another cat lined up, but delayed the cat’s arrival because their dog, Major, wasn’t adjusting well to the White House and was known for biting staff and Secret Service agents. Major’s been sent back to the family home in Delaware, but in the meantime the cat the Bidens were going to adopt got attached to its foster family and became a foster fail.

Willow seems to be doing just fine. Michael Larosa, the First Lady’s press secretary, told reporters Willow has been “settling into the White House with her favorite toys, treats, and plenty of room to smell and explore.”

She’ll be doing a lot of exploring — there are 132 rooms in the White House, and most former presidential cats were given the run of the executive residence as well as the West Wing. Socks, President Bill Clinton’s cat, had access to the Oval Office and was sometimes spotted in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, even choosing the famous podium for a lounging spot once.

Willow’s already found sunny lounging spots in her new home. Credit: The White House
Willow’s been making herself at home since she arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Credit: The White House

Cats have a long and distinguished history in the White House, from the incredible fame of Socks to Abraham Lincoln’s Dixie and Tabby. Lincoln once called the former “smarter than my whole Cabinet,” while he often embarrassed his wife by feeding the latter from the White House dinner table. Click here to read our post from last year detailing the lives and adventures of presidential cats.

Socks photographed in the president’s chair in the Oval Office. Credit: The White House
Unlike India, Socks wasn’t forced to wear a costume while helping out with holiday events. Credit: The White House
blogging, Buddy, news

The Adoptaversary of the King

We’re celebrating Buddy’s belated adoptaversary this weekend. I don’t know exactly when he was born, so we usually mark the occasion on the third weekend in April, which is when I brought Buddy home.

What better way to celebrate than with catnip, Buddy Biscuits treats and his beloved laser pointer?

It’s partay time! Nom nom!
Hilaria buys an Espanish cat, PETA doesn’t approve

Hilaria Baldwin, the indefatigable child collector, has added another little one to her family, but this time it’s a cat. As the San Jose Mercury News notes, as Hilaria “tries to move past her Spanish heritage scandal, she’s been flooding her Instagram with cute family photos from her busy ‘Baldwinito’ household.”

The new cat, Emilio Cookie Baldwin, is a Bengal purchased from a breeder who “specializes in producing pricey, exotic-looking hybrid cats that originate from crossing a domestic cat with an Asian leopard.” In an unusually mild rebuke (the Baldwinitos are donors to the charity), PETA issued a statement saying there’s “no doubt that [the Baldwins] didn’t realize what the impact of buying a cat from a breeder is” and that, “had they known, we’re sure that they would have gone to an animal shelter and adopted a cat who might otherwise die for the lack of a good home.”

No word yet on whether Emilio knows “how you say in English, cucumber.”

Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish child holds her Spanish cat, Emilio. Credit: Hillary Thomas/Instagram
The First Cat

After announcing they were going to adopt a cat, the Bidens have been unusually coy about the who, what and when. Now Jill Biden says a female cat is “waiting in the wings” and will join the family soon. The arrival of the mystery cat will mark the first time since the George W. Bush administration that a cat has occupied the White House. Before India, the Bush family’s cat, there was the Clintons’ cat Socks, who became so famous the White House had a full-time staffer answering his fan mail. Socks even had his own video game in development, which was sadly unreleased but is available for download as abandonware for anyone who can’t get enough Socks.

Socks was a popular little fellow. Credit: The White House
Plagiarists and content thieves be warned

After I went searching for one of my old posts this week and found it had been plagiarized, a casual search turned up five (!) sites that have stolen my work, stripped it of credit, and posted it as their own content — and that was based on search strings from only three of my posts. Who knows how many others have been lifted?

Two of those posts were stolen by sites that copy the Bored Panda model of finding content on the internet and monetizing it. At least Bored Panda contacts the content owners, credits them and links back to them. These other guys just steal content from people like me, present it as their own and profit off of it.

Take a look around: This site does not have a single ad. I have no Patreon account and I don’t ask for donations. This site is a labor of love. At some point I probably will implement limited and tasteful ads, but in the meantime it’s kind of a slap in the face to find your own content has been stolen and has been used to make money for thieves.

So a fair warning to anyone else who might be tempted to steal content from PITB: I’ll go right to Google, file a DMCA and get your AdSense account suspended. I have zero tolerance for plagiarism and content-scraping. It’s no different than walking into a store, stealing products off the shelves and turning around to sell them. Worse, actually, since writers are rarely well-compensated. Fall back!

cat photography, cat stories, Feline Overlords

This Presidential Pet Stuff Just Gets Weirder And Weirder

Did you know there’s a Presidential Pet Museum? Or that protesters in India burned effigies of George W. Bush because they felt naming his cat India was “an insult” to their country?

Or that one Republican congressman was so incensed by Socks, the Clintons’ cat, that he wrote a letter demanding an accounting for how much taxpayer money was spent on postage to write back to Socks’ fans?

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Catmander in Chief. I’ll see myself out now…

I did a little delving into the world of presidential pets after writing about president-elect Joe Biden’s plans to bring a cat to the White House along with his two dogs.

And man, it’s a weird world. To start with, the Presidential Pet Museum’s Andrew Hager told the New York Times he thinks Biden’s choice is subtly political.

“Maybe this is symbolic of Biden’s oft-repeated desire to unify the country,” he said. “I know that that’s kind of trite, but I’m very curious to see how this goes.”

That didn’t work out so well for Bill Clinton, whose cat Socks famously feuded with Buddy, the awesomely-named Labrador who was the Clinton family’s second pet.

“You know, I did better with the Arabs, the Palestinians and the Israelis than I’ve done with Socks and Buddy,” Clinton lamented during the final days of his presidency in 2001, just before his successor, George W. Bush, was about to take office.

Socks remains popular to this day, with a dedicated group of “Socks enthusiasts” who not only love the former White House cat, they raised more than $33,000 to finish and release a cancelled Super Nintendo game called Socks The Cat Rocks The Hill.

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Yeah, Socks had his own game. It was apparently anticipated enough to lead to early reviews and previews in magazines at the time, and featured Socks repeatedly saving the world from nuclear apocalypse at the hands of — and I’m not joking here — “Arab terrorist felines,” bulldogs in Army helmets, and Ross Perot.

According to a preview in 1993’s Playthings magazine:

“In his video game debut, entitled ‘Socks Rocks the House,’ he will venture from the basement of the White House to the Oval Office to create havoc with the President’s allergies. Along the way, while the cat’s at play, Socks must push Millie the dog out the front door as well as avoid Arab terrorist felines.”

There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I value my life so I’ll restrain myself. In any case, the game was finally released in 2018, a quarter century after it was supposed to land on store shelves.

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As the president’s pet, Socks became the most famous feline on the planet.

India, the Bush family’s cat, was often overshadowed by the dogs. While First Lady Laura Bush was often photographed holding India, the president himself was frequently seen walking his pups on the White House grounds.

In July of 2004, a crowd in Kerala, India, gathered and condemned Bush for his choice of name for the cat, a wire service report noted at the time:

Members of the citizens group Prathikarana Vedi assembled before the Kerala assembly saying that Bush calling his cat India was an insult to the country.

“This is a disgrace to our great country and this has come from none other than US President George W. Bush,” said M.A. Latheef, president of the group. “He should make amends.”

It turns out India wasn’t named after the country: Bush’s daughter, Barbara, named the American shorthair after Ruben “El Indio” Sierra, a rightfielder who spent his early career with Bush’s Texas Rangers.

 

IndioCat
India, former presidential cat. (Wikimedia Commons.)

 

Screenshot_2020-11-29 Tyger [i e Tiger], White House cat
In this photo from the 1920s, US Navy Officer Benjamin Fink holds Tiger, President Calvin Coolidge’s cat. Tiger often rode around on the president’s shoulders in the White House. (Library of Congress)

Perhaps the greatest cat-lover among presidents was Abraham Lincoln, who once vented that one of his cats, Dixie, “is smarter than my whole cabinet! And furthermore, she doesn’t talk back!”

Lincoln “doted on his cats,” and to the horror and amusement of guests at a formal White House dinner the president fed Tabby, his other cat, from the table. When his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, expressed her embarrassment, the president shrugged it off.

“If the gold fork was good enough for [former President James] Buchanan,” Lincoln quipped, “I think it is good enough for Tabby.”

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Lincoln with Tabby.

Lincoln was known for doing his thinking with a cat in his lap, sitting silent while petting Tabby or Dixie and drifting into deep thought. U.S. Navy Admiral David Dixon Porter later wrote of watching Lincoln caring for a trio of stray kittens, which the president later left in the care of US military officers, along with specific orders to treat them well and make sure they were well-fed.

“It well illustrated the kindness of the man’s disposition,” Porter wrote, “and showed the childlike simplicity which was mingled with the grandeur of his nature.”

 

cat adoption, Feline Overlords, news

New Administration, New White House Cat

President-elect Joe Biden will bring a pet cat with him to the White House.

CBS News wants us to know this is an “exclusive” report!

The Bidens don’t actually have a cat yet, according to media reports. It’s not clear if they plan to adopt or purchase one, although my best guess is that an image-conscious First Family will go with the former route.

When they do, they’ll put a cat in the White House for the first time since George W. Bush’s India, who lived to the ripe old age of 19.

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Jackie Kennedy and her daughter, Caroline, with a pair of kittens. Tom Kitten, right, was Caroline’s pet cat.

Before that was Socks (Clinton), Cleo and Sara (Reagan), Misty Malarky Ying Yang (Carter), Shan (Ford) and Tom Kitten (Kennedy). Misty and Shan were both Siamese cats. The Obamas had only dogs, as did most historical US presidents, while outgoing President Donald Trump and his family did not have any pets.

Man files lawsuit for return of stolen cat

Pro tip: If someone is obsessed with your cat, comes by just to see him, and repeatedly offers to buy him, it’s probably not a good idea to allow that person to cat-sit your furball.

Zivadin “Chris” Krstic, a 79-year-old shop owner in Manhattan, has accused a woman named Amanda Walker of turning a pet sit into a cat heist after she offered to take care of his cat, Sammy.

Sammy the Cat
Sammy at Krstic’s plant shop in Manhattan.

Krstic was stuck in Florida during the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, with travel severely restricted and doctors advising him not to risk it at his age. (New York was also a complete mess at the time, and travel was severely restricted.)

One of his employees was taking care of Krstic’s cat, Sammy, when Walker offered to “help” by taking him.

When Krstic returned, Walker kept asking “to keep Sammy for a few extra days,” according to a lawsuit filed by Krstic seeking the return of the four-year-old ginger-and-white cat.

Finally, Walker told Krstic she wasn’t giving Sammy back to him. The reason? Walker told Krstic he didn’t clean Sammy’s teeth properly, and the cat was “good company” for her.

After that, Krstic alleges, Walker ghosted him and wouldn’t return his calls. She even threatened to take out an order of protection against him, according to the New York Post.

“The cat is perfectly healthy. I take care of him like my own children,” Krstic, who’s had Sammy since kittenhood, told the tabloid. “It’s very sad. I can do nothing. My cat is like part of me. [Walker] is hiding. I tried the nice way and then finally I say … we have to go to the court and let the court decide.”