cat stuck in couch: update

You may remember this post from the fuzzkill about the cat stuck in a couch. The fuzzkill theorized that the cat was actually a demented invader with killing in mind. This still may or may not be true, but Callie, the cat, has now been returned to her original owner.

The story doesn’t end there, though. Callie’s owner, Bob Killion of Spokane, Washington, had been diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2001 and given a year to live. He credits Callie and his other cat, Tiger, with prolonging his life.

Could the fuzzkill be wrong? Could Callie be a life-saver, not a life-ender? I don’t know, but my favorite part of the article was when Tyler, the 9-year-old son of the woman who bought the Value Village couch that contained Callie, said that when the family heard the mysterious meowing, he thought it meant that their new house was haunted by a cat. I like the way he thinks.

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House cat

You may remember a post back in December from the fuzzkill about Oscar, the nursing home cat who predicts patients’ deaths. Well, this story not only captured the interest of those of us here at world wide whiskers, but also the writers of House.

Last week’s episode, entitled Here Kitty, told the story of a nursing home worker, played by Judy Greer, terrified that a cat named Debbie had predicted her death. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that the possibility that Debbie killed the people herself (a possibility raised by the fuzzkill) is addressed. But not with as awesome a picture as this old favorite from the fuzzkill:

Shhh

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the fuzzkill: cats among us

It seems that cats are just getting more and more wily these days. As this news story details, an unsuspecting family was recently shocked to find that a couch they bought at the Spokane Value Village was harboring a female cat that had been “trapped” inside the piece of furniture for upwards of 12 days.

returning to the scene of the crime

First thing’s first: I’m never shopping at the Spokane Value Village again. I’ve often been disturbed by the large amounts of unwashed tee shirts this thrift store has been peddling. I once bought a Monopoly set from them, and there was no steamboat (what’s the point?!). But this is definitely the last straw.

More important than my issue with the SVV is the fact that this is just the beginning of a massive onslaught by feline invaders. The following are just a few disturbing examples of this trend that my devoted readers were good enough to send for your edification.

Dayton, Ohio – Used television purchased on eBay. Cat emerged after three-and a half weeks, then smothered the family’s grandmother as she slept through her soaps.

Hoboken, New Jersey – Movie theater popcorn hid a kitten for 15 minutes. Kitten was thankfully stopped before doing any major damage.

NY, NY – Kitten found in banana purchased at Starbucks on 53rd St. between 5th and 6th Avenues. It was no longer alive, but had been perfectly preserved by the banana itself. Starbucks issued a formal apology.

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the fuzzkill: kitty killers

In the last installment of The Fuzzkill, I outlined the damage cats are currently doing to the earth’s only supply of pink iguanas. As if that weren’t bad enough, a conscientious WWW reader brought something even more disturbing to my attention.

Britain’s Daily Mail recently published an article proving that every cat in existence is (as I’ve been suggesting for some time now) a psychopathic, violence obsessed, sadistic assassin. The February 15th issue of the Daily Mail ran this wonderful headline: “Cats to be tagged to show if they’re mass murderers.” My first reaction was to hope that “tagged” was some Britishism that meant “spray-painted and left for dead” in real English, but no such luck. In fact, scientists in the UK are attaching tracking to 241 house cats to study their hunting habits. The study aims to shed light on just how murderous each of these “pet moggies” is (“moggy” is, in fact, an adorable Britishism, roughly translating to “vampiric, felinic zombioids”).

“It may be a pussycat at home, but behind your back your pet moggy is a ruthless assassin…Now some of these soft-pawed mass murderers are to be electronically tagged to discover exactly how many wildlife deaths they are responsible for. Some experts believe Britain’s nine million cats could be killing nearly 150 million birds, mice, rabbits and other creatures every year.”

Before I continue, let me first congratulate the Daily Mail on somehow escaping the watchful gaze of Big Kitten. I have oft complained about a cat-bias in the media, and now must give credit where credit is due. To refer to cats as “assassins” and “soft-pawed mass murderers” in the first three graphs of an article is a kick in the whiskers aimed directly at the kitty moguls who lord over the mainstream media.

Now to the matter at hand. In my very first article for WWW, I figured out just how many 5 year-old girls cats will one day maim if left to their own devices (18.5 Billion olympic-sized swimming pools worth). Though my prediction is undoubtedly correct, I had no idea that, as this article suggests, the carnage had already begun: “Previous research has shown cats bring only about 30 per cent of their prey home, with large kills such as rabbits too heavy to carry and some creatures eaten on the spot.” Large kills such as rabbits, or FIVE-YEAR-OLD BRITISH GIRLS.

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in case anyone was wondering

The awesome new header above, custom made by The Fuzzkill, is called “Meow Anything.”

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the fuzzkill: creationist cats

This week I’d like to bring your attention to a story coming out of the Galapagos Islands. The good news: a new species of Iguana has been identified on the Galapagos Islands, and it’s pink! This pink Iguana separated evolutionarily from other Iguana species about 5 million years ago, and it is adorable.

The bad news for the extremely endangered pink lizard (and the world) is that feral cats, introduced by cat-loving travelers and settlers (i.e. people like YOU), are eating these poor pinkos alive. I’d go into how this proves the kitty-creationist agenda, and how cats are clearly trying to stop the progress of science by destroying species that could unlock the secrets of our evolution, but it just seems so obvious that I’m not going to even bother . . .

THE BATTLE RAGES ON!

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a special tuesday edition of the fuzzkill: from ye olde fuzzkill archives

While doing research for my forthcoming book, The Black Paw: A Secret History of the Feline Underground that Threatens to Enslave Us All, I came across the following article from the September 18th, 1901 edition of the New York Times. It details a strange incident at the Garrick Theatre, during a performance of Clyde Fitch’s play Captain Jinks and the Horse Marines:

I post this as a strong, early example of the long-standing cat-bias in the mainstream media. Clyde Fitch was the first American Playwright to publish his work. He wrote more than 60 plays (many of them comedies) and made an astounding amount of money. In fact, just 7 months before, the New York Times ran a piece entitled “Clyde Fitch in his New Role of Foremost American Dramatist and Other Topics“. With this in mind, one must try and imagine his horror when he read the words of this despicable NYT reporter, who stated that the cat incident was “…funnier than anything Mr. Fitch has ever invented.”

What could account for this devastating about face? By way of explanation, I offer the following May 30th, 1901 article from the same paper:

It seems clear to me that the kitty-cabal, reacting to an “activist judge’s” decision regarding the value of feline life, infiltrated media outlets everywhere, planting cat sympathizers as “engineers” on Broadway to disrupt the plays of Mr. Fitch due to his penchant for casting dogs (and not cats) in his performances. How they infiltrated the Times, however, is a much darker story . . . one that’ you’ll have to shell out $25.99 for just as soon as these narrow-minded editors realize that The Black Paw is the most important work of investigative journalism since All the President’s Men.

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the fuzzkill: cat robber

You’ll notice that the title of this post is “Cat Robber,” instead of the more obvious “Cat Burglar.” You know why? Because I’m not going to play that game.

This week’s post is about “Frankie”, a cat who has been terrorizing his quiet UK town of Swindon. He is quite an accomplished thief, stealing anything he can get his greedy little paws on: plush toys, rubber “beefburgers” (Oh! British people!), green witch’s heads (?), old socks, “nappy sacks” (??), etc. etc.

Frankie will fu*%ing kill you

Predictably, the mainstream media coverage of this story focuses on how quirky the whole thing is. There no tough questions asked of this cat or its owner. More importantly, the strangest part of the story is completely passed over: this cat has stolen 15 identical toy leopards. Am I the only one who wants to know why everybody in this town owns an identical toy leopard? Sounds like a cat cult to me . . .

Awwwww!

More importantly than this lack of journalistic integrity is the underlying cat/human double-standard that so many of you people are blind to. I can’t just go around stealing things and expect to get away with it, then get written up in the local paper for how cute and quirky I am.

that's adorable!

I call it “the boyfriend rule.” When a cat kills something small and defenseless, then brings it home and puts it in your bed, that’s okay. When your boyfriend does the same thing, all of the sudden it’s “creepy.” When your cat finally learns to use the toilet, you congratulate him, and you don’t even make him flush. Yet when your boyfriend just forgets to flush (maybe he just didn’t want the water in the shower to be all wonky, and then it just slipped his mind) it’s like it’s the end of the world or something. You see what I’m getting at here?

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cat news briefs

If anyone spent their weekend wondering what happened to the Santa who got bitten by what may or may not have been a bobcat, worry no more. When the owner heard that the Santa might have to get shots, she came forward with proof of her cat’s vaccinations. Her cat, Benny, is apparently a mix of a house cat and a bobcat. No word on how that coupling actually came about.

And down in North Carolina, a man who first claimed that his cat shot him finally admitted he did it himself. At first glance, it does seem far more likely that he accidentally shot himself than that his cat did it. But perhaps this is just a coverup? Perhaps his cat’s reign of violence is not over? It sounds like a case for The Fuzzkill.

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the fuzzkill: oscar the nursing home cat/murderer

This week I’d like to talk about a pretty well known cat story, that of Oscar the nursing home cat.  I’m sure most of you have heard of Oscar, but for those of you who haven’t, a short re-telling of the facts from CNN.com

“Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means the patient has less than four hours to live.”

Not surprisingly, the pro-cat media cabal focuses on the positive aspects of the story. Knowing when a resident is going to die gives doctors time to notify the family so that everyone can say goodbye. Also cited as a positive is the power that Oscar has to comfort a dying old person.

 

Am I the only one who thinks that there’s maybe a causal relationship between Oscar’s presence and the death of his victim?  I’m no Dr. House, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that pneumonia is one of the leading causes of death in nursing homes, and that respiratory problems related to allergies can be a contributing factor to development of respiratory infection.  The more likely possibility, considering that Oscar “grew up in a third-floor dementia unit” and might be a little bit unbalanced as a result, is that he simply murders the patients.

 

Shhh

As far as I can tell, the only scientific theory so far is that Oscar’s “behavior could be driven by self-centered pleasures like a heated blanket placed on a dying person.”  So Oscar wants to steal warmth from dying old people?  That’s not quite as bad as murder, I suppose, but still pretty f-ed. 

 

So I guess what I’m saying is that if you like cats, you may as well just kill old people.

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