Oy gewalt! Every time a cat leaps to internet fame, it gets bought out and corrupted by Friskies, forced to tout suboptimal catfood for big bucks. But you have to hand it to that company: it knows the power of internet cats.
First, Henri went over to the Dark Side. Now the latest sellout for thirty pieces of shrimp is by Tard (real name Tardar Sauce), the famous grumpy cat. Alert reader Ginger sent me this communique by Catsparilla:
“I’ve seen a lot of pop-cultural Web sensations rise and fall in my day, but I have never seen people wait two hours in the spitting rain for the chance to be photographed next to a sleeping cat.” – Andrew Leonard, Salon.com
Depending on who you talk to, Tardar Sauce the Grumpy Cat had the best, or worst weekend ever. The popular internet meme made her first public appearance at the South by Southwest music, movie, and tech festival in Austin, Texas, where she shot a celebrity version of “Will Kitty Play With It?” for Friskies, before taking up residency in the Mashable house, where she met with throngs of adoring fans.
Tard, whose unusual appearance is attributed to feline dwarfism, became the breakout star of the interactive event, making headlines from ABC to CNN. On Friday, TMZ posted paparazzi shots of the cat, and reported that she flew to Austin first class, and “was living it up…with her own, full-time assistant to brush her, an endless supply of Friskies as well as other treats, bottled water and her very own room at a four-diamond hotel … king-sized bed included.”
Fans generally responded favorably to the hoopla surrounding the feline star — as one TMZ commenter put it, “I’m down to make the Grumpy Cat the new ‘it girl’ as long as she replaces Kim Kardashian and Lindsay Lohan. Please, TMZ, she’s already more interesting, pretty, and more respected” — but even an 11-month old cat is not immune to controversy.
Motivated by an All Things D article called “People of South by Southwest — Please, Free Grumpy Cat”, several supporters took to Twitter to protest the tiny feline being put on display.
In response to the criticism, Grumpy’s owner, Bryan Bundeson, told The Austin Chronicle, “Yeah, we get a lot of messages about how we’re exploiting her, you know? Or from people concerned that we’re doing something to make her grumpy. But that’s just how she looks. Ninety-nine percent of the time she’s just a house pet. She’s very well taken care of, and we love her.”
The Austin Humane Society also chimed in, tweeting, “They aren’t allowing anyone to touch #grumpycat and she’s getting lots of breaks. She’s doing good.”
Here’s Tard, pretending to be peeved as she rakes in the bucks:
And a tweet from Ed Yong about Tard’s threat to sue interlopers on her “brand”:
Who’s gonna be corrupted by Friskies next—Maru?
I saw this cat on a t-shirt recently. I’d guess that there were no royalties paid.
Well, I did see Maru diving into a box that seemed to say Friskies on its side…:)
Pretty sure Maru has already appeared in some commercial or other.
I’ve been assuming that the cat’s original name was “Tard” but this was frowned on by some, so the owners changed that to “Tardar Sauce.”
Anyone know if this is correct?
What is a healthy diet for house cats? My cat nova is a big female maine coon. She likes royal canin dry food the best. Strangely she wants to eat my oat squares cereal. She will often eat 6 squares for breakfast. She prefers a bit of sugar on the oat square. She has become very troublesome when I eat a cookie. She particularly likes oatmeal cookies or Oreo cookies. That cannot be good for her or me.
Is grain based food good for cats?
Cats do poorly with sucrose, more than about 7g per kg live weight per day should have some nasty effects in the litter box. They seem ok digesting cooked starch but levels in the diet shouldn’t be very high, 24% dry weight of feed is viewed as a safe upper limit according the literature I have here (kittens should not be given starchy foods).
Your cat is not unique, some of the semi-ferals that live around my house really have a thing for dog food (and they’re picky, a few of them don’t eaty fish).
There was some recent scientific work showing that domestic dogs mimic some of the traits of human post-agricultural evolution, in particular the way we adapted to starchy diets. Maybe your cat is the hallmark of a new feline adaptation,
Before moving in with humans, and for quite some time after, cats ate only what they could catch.
Your cat’s ideal diet is fresh small game and insects, whole, with the only grains being whatever is in the game’s stomach at the time of death. Fruit is right out, and refined sugars are far worse than fruit.
You can buy high quality fresh frozen raw food in easy-to-serve portions, especially from Nature’s Variety, at your local boutique pet shop. Such foods also include raw organ meat and bone, ideal sources of vital nutrition. And, of course, the usual traces of refined dietary supplements such as taurine.
If you’re on a budget and have a local butcher you trust, there are recipes on the ‘Net for making your own. It’s not hard — no worse than making your own sausage at home, something lots of people do.
There are also high quality grain-free canned foods that are just fine for those not comfortable with raw foods. Innova Evo comes to mind, but there are others.
I would, though, recommend against any form of dried food whether dehydrated “raw” or (especially) grain-laden kibble. You see, the most urgently needed macronutrient for cats is water, and said macronutrient is missing from dried food. And a cat’s not-so-many-generations-ago ancestor is a wild desert-adapted hunter who gets most of her moisture from her prey (its blood and other bodily fluid reserves) and doesn’t have much of a thirst instinct. A cat whose only source of moisture is a bowl is never going to be properly hydrated.
Indeed, whatever wet food you feed the cat whether raw or canned, be sure to mix in as much water as the cat should ideally be drinking — typically at least a third of a cup per day, and more doesn’t hurt. It’ll make the food a bit soupy, but that’s okay. Start small and gradually increase the amount over time. You know you’ve got too much when the cat is reluctant to slurp it all. You know you don’t have enough if the cat is drinking from the bowl.
And DO NOT mix water in with dry food. Kibble already has a huge bacterial load, and adding water basically causes it to instantly ferment in a bad way. Yet another reason why cats shouldn’t be eating kibble.
The epidemics of renal disease and urinary tract infections in cats? All that could basically be eliminated if cats got sufficient water with their food.
Cheers,
b&
Doesn’t Maru already do litter commercials?
Fucking lawyers when will they do real work?
When they are no longer lawyers?
The sellout is so sad. I wish they had used their fame for gathering dollars for a worthwhile pursuit instead. I bet it was megabucks.
You never know… maybe the money that the cats’ owners make out of this will in turn go to worthwhile pursuits … the owners get money from catfood companies and now can spend it how they like, which might be a better cause than what Friskies would have used the money for.
Money gets passed around and around, over and over, really.
In their defense, Grumpy Cat’s hoomins are donating to animal-welfare charities.
I’m surprised Tardar’s hoomins didn’t sell out sooner.
Baihu has asked me to let it be known that he’s willing to sell out to anybody and everybody for the low, low price of ONE MILLION DOLLARS donated in his name to MSF.
Cheers,
b&
Hmmm…something tells me my description of Baihu’s terms might have gotten caught in a spam trap….
b&
…or not.
<sigh /gt;
b&