Tag: cat

Please watch this. Tears are streaming down my face; it is the most perfect piece of comedy ever executed. It is two minutes of humanity in all its glory. Trust me on this one.

If you wondered what they were saying, you’re in luck: TotD studied Russian at the Cordon Bleu and can help.

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN

“Quiet, babushka. Russian fire department is on scene. Cat is safe.

“Please don’t fuck everything up.”

“Nyet, nyet. Is under control.”

KRSSH

“Window was counter-revolutionary, anyway.”

“You’re a shithead.”

“Babushka, shut your mouth. I am rescuing cat from tree.”

“You’re fucking everything up.”

“Nyet, nyet. I have idea.”

SHWEEEEEEE

WOBBLEWOBBLEWOBBLE

“Has good grip, cat.”

“Shithead.”

“Babushka! By the eyebrows of Stalin, be quiet! Now bring me hatchet.”

CHOP

CHOP

CHOP

…

KUH-SHWACKALACKASHWAZZ

“Meow-ski!”

…

“Cat is out of tree.”

“You fucked everything up, you shithead.”

“We catch cat for you, babushka. Ivan! Go get tank!”

What are you doing?

“I killed this thing.”

Nope.

“Did it with my clawwwwwws.”

…

You get into the catnip?

“Get your fucking piss cup out of my fucking face.”

Wow.

“Think you’re better than me?”

Simmer down, cat.

“I’m like Wolverine, but not Australian: I’ll mess you up, monkey.”

You do not handle the nip well.

“You a narc?”

What?

“Nip narc. You’re a fuckin’ nip narc, maaaaan!”

I regret starting this conversation.

“Prove you’re cool. Do some nip. In front of me. Do it, man!”

How? I’m a person. Catnip doesn’t work on us.

“BANG IT, MAN.”

We’re done.

• Americans own more cats than they do dogs.
• Of course, the number one pet in America is fish, so all that fact proves is how lazy we are.
• Cats are not dogs at all. (I would imagine the feline and canine evolutionary families separated tens of millions of years ago, so you probably can’t even make a cat/dog like you can make a liger or a zonkey. If you have a small dog, you can pick him up and hump him on the cat, but that’s not going to accomplish anything but annoying the cat.)
• Many two-drink minimums have been fulfilled while listening to the differences between dogs and cats, so I won’t, but the important difference in their behavior is this: dogs are a species we created to be our friends and work for us; cats are animals that live in our houses now.
• Dogs were molded by thousands of generations of selecting the animals that best fit into our world; cats were allowed inside if it was raining.
• Felis Catus (the Latin word for cat was cattus) is a worldwide species: there are variations everywhere there are mice and rats and lizard and birds.
• You got food, you got cats.
• Judging from the evidence, “be cat-shaped” is a good strategy for a predator: our kitties are just the smallest in scale across a spectrum that ends in nine-foot-long, 600-pound tigers.
• Along the way, there are variations on the basic feline physiognomy at every size.
• Lynx and ocelot and cheetah and puma and jaguar and lion.
• However big you are, there’s a cat big enough to eat you.
• But all of those big cats share something in common with Tabby or Noodles or Fergus: if they’re raised by and with humans–from birth–then they’ll be totally cool with people.
• It’s just that even if a tiger is totally cool with you, it’s still going to kill you.
• Just by accident.
• You’re gonna move wrong and the tiger is going to snap your neck.
• Now: you’re going to move wrong around a kitty cat, also; that cat is going to attack you, but it weighs 12 pounds and therefore cannot kill you and is doubly therefore adorable.
• Conversely, if a cat isn’t socialized with people, it becomes feral.
• Like a Reddit user.
• There had to be a first pet.
• Human settlements had almost certainly had wild cats prowling around them since their inception; maybe some kittens got stolen and raised by some kids.
• The other people in the village noticed how friendly and companiable the hand-raised cats were, plus they kept the house free from mice.
• Boom: kitties.
• And that was about it: the modern cat is not much different from its ancestors.
• There was never any incentive to direct the breeding because, you know: cats aren’t helpful.
• They don’t actually do anything.
• Let me rephrase that: they don’t do anything because you tell them to.
• Horses, donkeys, cows, sheep, dogs, even elephants will follow orders, but a cat has no respect for the chain of command.
• A cat might climb the chain of command, and perhaps the chain of command would come unattached from its mooring and clatter to the ground, scaring the cat and sending him sprinting under the bed for two hours; that cat will still not respect the chain of command.
• Horses can weigh 800 pounds, and we sit on them and kick them in the sides and hit them with whips; if a cat weighed 800 pounds, it would eat you.
• You cannot sit on an 800 pound cat.
• Cats will not guard your property; they will not watch the flock; they cannot (and would not) pull the plow; they produce neither wearable fur nor drinkable milk.
• And–to take the thought to its unpleasant but inevitable conclusion–you can’t eat them.
• I mean: you can eat anything.
• A guy ate a 747 once.
• You can eat a cat, but that’s a tough meal.
• Can’t eat a cat.
• …
• OH, COME ON, CHINA!
• I was ready to defend you!
• Goddammit, this is why I don’t do research: research is fucking depressing.
• I mean, Jesus: it’s got its own Wikipedia page.
• Everything is not lunch, people.
• Ugh.
• Now I’m sad.
• If a pig were only ten or twelve pounds, it would be just as good a pet as a cat, if not as athletic; I will eat a leftover pork chop later, so that makes me a hypocrite and maybe a little racist, but still: sad.
• To cheer us all up, I will make note of things cats excel at:
• Sleeping.
• Napping.
• Snoozing.
• Dozing.
• Sudden, inexplicable bursts of frenzied activity.
• Takin’ it easy.
• Walking around the house looking at stuff.
• Being up here.
• Now being down there.
• Rubbing their cheeks on things they own.
• Showing you their assholes.
• Occasionally, a cat will do that move where he punches another cat or person seven or eight times in quick succession and that’s just the best.
• To a cat person, that is an expression of love because, hey: cat didn’t pop its claws.
• Cats are obligate carnivores, and shouldn’t be fed anything but meat.
• You may be a vegan, but your cat isn’t.
• Acceptable names for a cat: Mr. Nipples, Cat, Grateful Dead reference, Boots, Socks, Pants, Scarf, Jacob Iceberg the Jewish Glacier.
• Unacceptable names for a cat: the N-word.
• Please don’t.
• People used to.
• 
• The past was terrible.
• I know that’s a dog, but in the old days, every third black cat was named that, too.
• Also, I know that if you’re reading this, then you’re most likely not going to name your cat that, but I just wanted to bring it up in case you had a wayward friend or something.
• Like, if someone says to you, “I just got a new cat,” and you said, “Congratulations, what are you naming it?” and they said, “Well, it’s a black cat, so I was thinking about naming it the N-word,” then you should say “Do not do that.”
• Which brings us to breeding.
• Don’t breed cats.
• Don’t name them hateful things and don’t breed them.
• Every town in America has at least one building being put to the express purpose of housing and perhaps killing the cats no one wants.
• Don’t make more on purpose.
• Plus, to again make the trite dog/cat comparison, at least some dogs are still bred to do stuff.
• Cats, as I said, are congenitally disinclined to do stuff, and are being bred entirely for looks, which is a poor decision.
• Do you know the Scottish Fold?
• The I Can Haz Cheezburger cat.
• This guy:
• 
• Every single Scottish Fold comes from one cat with a genetic mutation.
• I don’t know a lot about genetics, but it can’t be a good idea to artificially select for adorableness.
• Seems like it would lead to problems, but again: I’m a layman.
• It would be unfair to blame cats for the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical.