Youtube – Page 5 – Pain In The Bud

Kiwi Cat Dad Builds Lift For His Aging Buddy

Frodo the Cat is 20 years old and doesn’t get around like he used to, so his handy human put his handy skills to work and built the little guy his own lift.

Liam Thompson is a 21-year-old Youtuber who’s known for building cool stuff.

His cat’s name may be Frodo, but Thompson said he’s in “Gandalf territory” at 20 years old and has been having trouble getting around to his favorite spots, especially a sunny corner of the backyard where he likes to sit poolside and enjoy the New Zealand warmth.

“Despite his ancient-ness, he still insists on hobbling down these stairs every day to sit out in the sun,” Thompson says in a video about his latest project. “That is, until today.”

The video shows the handy Kiwi building an “elevator” — more like a stair lift for a cat — out of wood, an electronic hoist and a handful of small hardware pieces. The passenger compartment is a simple cart, and at the press of a button the cart descends or ascends the stairs along a wooden track.

“Are you ready to go downstairs without having to move a muscle?” he asks his cat before the maiden ride. “I hope so, because it took me four days.”

Thompson is delighted as the elevator works perfectly and Frodo rides it without fear or protest, laughing as the orange senior cat makes himself comfortable during the ride. The current setup requires Thompson to push a button, but perhaps in the future he can add a simple button for Frodo directly on the cart.

Speaking of elevators, this cat thinks he’s Leslie Chow from The Hangover:

Jurassic Park With A Cat Instead of A T-Rex

Owl Kitty’s human puts his beloved feline into an iconic scene from 1993’s Jurassic Park.

Owl Kitty’s human has put his house panther into The Matrix, John Wick, Home Alone, Titanic — and now the original Jurassic Park as a stand-in for the terrifying tyrannosaurus rex.

Despite standing at least 20 feet tall and weighing several tons, Jurassic Owl Kitty is a kindler, gentler threat to Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and the kids. Kitty just wants to rub up against the Jeep and purr, and perhaps score some cat food, not eat people like that evil dinosaur.

Plus we can now confirm that, even if they were twice the size of African elephants, cats would still be cute:

Why Scaring Cats Isn’t Funny

Scaring your cat with cucumbers or animatronic Halloween toys will damage your cat’s trust in you.

Whether they’re surreptitiously placing cucumbers behind their cats’ backs while the kitties are eating or filming their felines’ terrified reactions to Halloween props, some people apparently love scaring their furry friends.

Since many of the resulting videos go viral, people hungry for online fame have even more incentive to “prank” their cats as they chase clicks. The result is potentially thousands of house cats terrorized by people with ambitions of being the next TikTok or YouTube star.

On the surface, the way cats respond to being startled might seem comical. The term “scaredy cat” didn’t manifest out of nothingness, and cats who are truly frightened have a cartoonish way of leaping back and pumping their little legs while they’re still in the air like Looney Tunes characters.

But when you think about it from your cat’s perspective, in the context of feline evolution and psychology, the cruelty of scaring a cat for “lulz” becomes obvious.

First, cats are ambush predators. It’s why they love boxes, why they do the adorable crouch-and-butt-wiggle routine before pouncing on their toys, and why they like vantage points where they can see but not be seen.

They particularly dislike surprises, which is why they bolt. Cats are supposed to get the jump on other animals, not the other way around. The impulse to flee as quickly as possible — and return unseen — is hardwired into the feline brain, as natural to them as burying their poop or kneading when they feel content. Because domestic cats are small and can be predator and prey, that impulse is even stronger, but it also exists in 500-pound tigers or 200-pound jaguars.

So when you intentionally frighten your cat with an object that will be perceived, however briefly, as a predator, you’re triggering a fight-or-flight response, a rush of adrenaline and fear.

However, scaring a cat in its own territory (your home) or in a place he or she feels especially secure (feeding areas) adds another layer. A cat walking around outside will be naturally wary, but if you’re giving your cat a good home, as well as the love and space she deserves, she’ll feel comfortable. She’s on her home turf, in a closed environment where threats don’t pop up unexpectedly.

When a cat turns around after enjoying some yums and sees a cucumber, her hardwiring takes over, she registers the intrusive vegetable as a snake and goes into flight mode, scrambling to get away as fast as possible. It’s not just that kitty’s shocked or can get hurt scurrying away from a perceived threat, it’s also the inherent cruelty in teaching your cat that the place she thought was absolutely safe from intruders may not be.

We’re not immune to this kind of conditioning ourselves. If you settle down for a nap one day and your spouse, a sibling or a friend thinks it’s funny to wake you by dropping an ice cold bucket of water on your face, will you feel comfortable dozing off on the couch next time?

Trust is implicit in our relationships with our cats. If we abuse that trust, especially for something as meaningless as social media likes, we’re endangering our human-feline friendships and making our cats feel unsafe in their own homes.

Sunday Cat Round-Up: Sanctuary Welcomes Baby Snow Leopard, ‘Two-Face’ Cat Goes Viral

A sanctuary wants help naming a rare snow leopard cub, and the founders of dating app Tabby will pitch to Shark Tank later this month.

When Venus’ human posted photos of her to Instagram, people thought the half-black, half-ginger cat was photoshopped. A video of the unique kitty debunked that rumor, showing the heterochromatic, multitone cat in all her glory. Now Venus is a star, amassing tens of millions of views on Instagram and TikTok:

@venustwofacecat

#twofacecat #notphotoshop #bornthisway #heterochromia #catsoftiktok #tiktokcats #petsoftiktok #nocap 🖤 🧡+💚💙

♬ All Eyes On Me – Bo Burnham

Welcome baby!

Snow leopards Laila and Yarko of the UK’s Big Cat Sanctuary are the proud parents of a newborn cub, and the sanctuary wants the public to help name the little guy, whom they’re calling Little Cub in the meantime.

“He appears to be developing and growing beautifully and is becoming more active day by day. Laila is an experienced mother and is just as attentive and devoted with this little one as she has been before,” Big Cat Sanctuary curator Briony Smith wrote.

Although Little Cub was born on Sept. 15, his birth was not announced until Oct. 21 in the video below:

Tabby founders pitch to Shark Tank

Remember Tabby, the cat dating app that Bud insisted was “fake news” because he can’t even fathom the possibility of sharing his kingdom with another cat?

The app’s founders will pitch to the big fish of Shark Tank on Friday, Oct. 29, looking for investments in return for a stake in their company.

Somehow I don’t see Mark Cuban or Lori Greiner as cat lovers, but Mr. Wonderful strikes me as the kind of guy who has a chonkster at home and secretly dotes on her, as he doesn’t want to harm his image as a ruthless businessman. (Edit: I searched around to see if O’Leary really is a cat lover, and while he described himself as a “non-cat guy,” he reached a deal with cat DNA company basepaws back in 2019, so clearly he understands businesses related to our feline overlords are good investments.)

Cats and Stand-Up Comedy: “There’s No Purpose To Cats”

Corey Rodrigues loves cats because they’re low key and chill.

Last time we posted a stand-up clip about cats, we watched the hilarious Zoltan Kaszas put a room in stitches with his stories about his cat Jessica, her emphatic rejection of a diet, and Zoltan’s wife’s obsession with special-needs cats.

This time we’re checking in with comic Corey Rodrigues, who explains why cats are better than dogs.

After taking a quick, informal poll asking his audience whether they like cats or dogs, Rodrigues turns to a man near the front, points and asks bluntly: “Why don’t you like cats?”

“There’s no purpose,” the dudebro says, shrugging.

“There’s no purpose, right? There’s no purpose?” Rodrigues says, drawing laughs. “Like the cat’s purpose is to serve him, like ‘I’m here for you, meow!’ What do you mean, no purpose? These are the things people say when you ask them if they like cats.”

With the crazy cat lady trope and American society’s weird insistence that felines are strictly pets for women, there’s a social cost for men who love their cats — and a double standard, since guys who have dogs aren’t considered weird.

“It’s weird if you say you like a cat. If you’re at a bar and someone’s like, ‘Wanna see a picture of my cat?’ you’re like ‘You’re a freak, get away from me!'” Rodrigues says, summing up the reaction he gets. “People will show you their puppy all day, right? But you can’t show a cat at a bar. If a dude pulls out a cat picture at a bar they’re like ‘He’s a creep, get away from that weirdo with three cats on his phone! What’s this dude doing?'”

While dogs are overly earnest, cats “just have personality. You can’t bribe them with treats all the time.”

“You pull a treat out on a cat, the cat’s like ‘Yeah, right! Walk away from it! Put it on the ground and walk away from it! I’ll come back and smell it and decide if it’s safe!’ The dog’s just like ‘Give me that treat!'”