Why Cats are better than dogs

Zoltan Kaszas gets it right!!

Cats are better than dogs.  He explains why!

What's in a Dog Brain??

Ok, I know what you're thinking.  There's not a punch line.  Some so-called canine neuroscientists (scientists who study dogs ... not the other way) tricked some stupid dogs into getting strapped down and then ran them through a brain scanner.  I know, I know, this all presupposes that dogs have brains! But these "scientists" seemed to be comfortable leaping to that conclusion.

Funny photo of dog being tortured in a brain scanner

There was a lot of chatter on the cat blogs about this silliness. The news picked up on this like it was interesting or something.  (Smithsonian  The Scientist  Current Biology)  What they found was that in both dogs and humans, the caudate nucleus got all jumpy in both dogs and peoples when they experience pleasure. To test this they gave a dog a piece of a hot dog. And guess what, dog brains light up when they get a piece of a hotdog. For regular people, think of it as a pleasure response. For my more sciency readers, this takes place in he caudate nucleus, which, as we all know, is rich in dopamine which is what jacks up some neurotransmitter chemical goo. That's right. Dog brains are full of goo. According to the scientists, no need to take my word for it! 

Another dog being tortured. Neuroscience fact: Dogs have to hold themselves really still so the scanner can find their brain since it's really tiny.

Until this fMRI dog research, I thought this was the only medical procedure that dogs needed.

Most Holy Credentials!!

The Huskercat "brand" (so to speak) has has always been a strong credential when it comes to being a Husker fan. I mean ... talk about things that go without saying', right??  That said, in my continual striving for excellence, I am pleased to announce that as of August (co-incidentally the beginning of football season!) I am now a certified Minister with the Universal Life Church!

Yay for me!!!

(the skeptics among you might want to take a moment and peruse the official document below).

My real name is Liam Thomas, but among my spiritual friends I go by Liam Piam.

This is an important extension of my Huskercat services. Obviously, cats are to be worshipped. In fact, this goes back before Christiandom.  People in Egypt worshipped cats. History shows that the world would have devolved into chaos and ruin had it not been for my ancestors ability at murdering rodents who were intent on the grossly inappropriate dining on the human's grains. This has been true for thousands of years. And, now that I think about this, we have not been given a sufficient amount of gratitude!

I tend to be quite busy relaxing and sleeping so you might be wondering why I would want to be a minister.  I would like to provide my services at funerals for dogs!  If I can keep from laughing that is!!

In case you have any questions about all this, be assured that I am also a certified Revelator which means that I am qualified to answer all unanswered questions. As you might expect, this kind of service isn't cheap.

Granulocytes, Reactive Airway Disease & lil' ol' ME!

Well, let's drag out the PPU (that's a Portable Prison Unit) and drag the ol' cat to the cat doctor! Apparently that's what my owner guy thought was a perfectly good way to spoil an otherwise perfectly good day and nap!

So this photodocudrama begins at CVS. No, not the drug store, but California Veterinary Specialists. They wouldn't just drag a cat like me for a drug store to get fixed! When you have a specialist type of Vet it's important that they be board certified. I insist on that. And this visit is not starting off well - the owner brings some lemonaide for himself and then has the nerve to set it down right in front of me who, by the way, has nothing to eat or drink. That's rude!

It's all kind of annoying because they pulled me in here just because I've been sneezing a bunch lately. My owner (the cute one) has been sneezing a lot lately too, but I don't see her going to a veterinary clinic. The people who live next door have a dog. I'm probably just allergic to that damn thing.

So how could this get worse you ask? Even if you weren't wondering this, I'm going to tell you. When they first dragged my ass to this place I thought CVS was for Cat Veterinary Specialists. I got disabused of THAT idea when I saw that this place let dogs in!

(see dog in this photo - it's just hanging out with some person) What's up with that? How the hell is a cat supposed to be medically comfortable when they just let any old dog in. The thing isn't even on a leash! Plus, it's ugly. It looks like an albino rat or something. Whatever it is, I hope it underwent some painful medical procedures. Maybe it won't come back!

The next thing I know is Mr. "let's drag the cat in a place that accommodates dogs" Owner has a compassionate moment and decides to open the door of my outdated PPU.



What a dumbass! I make a break for it! He didn't see that coming! Although he didn't see it coming, for an old guy he has pretty quick reflexes and snagged me just in time for the arrival of the medical team. So enter the medical team of Maggie and David.

I kinda remember David from the first time they hauled me to this place. He was very nice in explaining all kinds of things to my owners who were understandably very worried about their celebrity cat (that would be me). He and my owner were chatting it up like they were old high school buddies or something. David said he only got to this clinic when they needed him since he usually works at the Veterinary Gulag down in Carlsbad. He seems to be someone with some common sense. I mean why would you want to work in a place where they let dogs in! He probably hates dogs as much as I do. It must be nice to work somewhere with a NO DOGS policy.


In case you've never been to one of these cat medical specialty clinics, the first thing they do to you is check your weight. You'ld think this was some kind of Hollywood weight loss clinic or something with their preoccupation on how much a cat weighs.

I come in at a svelt 11 pounds, 1 ounce and I haven't even dieting! That's assuming their scale is right, but given what my owners pay this place I'm sure it's an excellent scale.





Then what happens is that they take some blood from you. This place is big on taking blood. That's a little suspicious if you ask me. I have no idea what they do with it. When my owner asks them about it, they just say it's a CBC test. I may be a cat, but CBC isn't even a word. My owner is pretty gullible.

I know what you're thinking - how much more can I take??? Well, what happens next is they slap me down on this cold, hard steel slab and then it takes two of them to hold me down while they beam x-rays into me. X-rays are radioactive which sounds pretty bad, but my owner said something about they'll give me a glow so I don't know where I got that impression.

I didn't know they were good for me when they did this to me which is why it took two of them to hold me down. I wasn't going to go easy! I got this surveillance photo to prove what happened to me in case I need to talk to the Cat Authority, but that probably won't be necessary now. My attorney tells me that holding a cat down like this is standard medical practice in California. But then anything goes in California!

Someone took this picture of me. I think it was Maggie again. She's always taking pictures of me. Why they needed another head shot of me is beyond me but I'm used to that kind of thing. There must be lots of celebrity animals here to have a staff photographer. As a professional photographer she should get her own camera though. She keeps borrowing my owners camera. You gotta wonder what's up with that!

So this is a picture of my insides. It's more like my bones as they're held together with my insides. Or something like that. It's what happens when you get x-rayed. That's got to be a hell of a strong camera. It's hard to imagine it's not dangerous. Plus I don't have a special glow either. Maybe you have to turn off the lights.

These x-ray pictures don't read themselves and that's where Dr Ogilvie (or Dr O, as I refer to him) comes in. He's one of my vets but he's not an ordinary vet. He's one of those Board Certified types in two areas - oncology and internal medicine. That's good because it was my insides that needed checking. Board certified in two things - talk about an overachiver! It's like a Grade A steak. Sort of. Well, not really, I guess. But it means he knows a lot. He's my oncologist - he even wrote a textbook on it. So I guess he's like a professor of cats. He seems pretty happy in the photo. I think this is where he thought things looked pretty good in me. I know I look really good on the outside and now it's official - I look good on the inside!

I don't mean to make a big deal out of it but to be extra careful, Dr O called Dr Mohammadian, who is a board certified cat radiologist. There were little white things in my lungs and so I got myself diagnosed with Reactive Airway Disease which apparently means you have little white things in your lungs. The doctors said it's nothing to worry about. The thing is Reactive Airway Disease sounds like something to worry about. Anything that ends with disease just seems like it's a problem, if you know what i mean! The steroids I'm on will help it and if it doesn't they would put me on an inhaler. Yeah, right, sure they would. There's about as much chance of them sticking my head in an inhaler as me catching an invisible pink unicorn in the hot-tub. So you do the math on that one! After word got out that I was in good health, everybody got pretty excited about it. I didn't mean to cause so much worry. Everyone seems to be so concerned about health around here. Not counting the weirdness of taking blood from every animal that walks in here.

So after all this excitement reverberates around the medical facility, Dr O personally carries me out to my owner. I feel a little bad because he's been sitting out there for a while with nothing to do but stress and worry about me. So I'm glad he'll be all relieved to get the good report!

So Dr O and Maggie came out and couldn't figure out where my owner was. I thought maybe he died or something but it turns out he was just outside yaking it up on the cell phone. Dr O pokes his head out and my owners gets all like Oh, sure, hey, got to get off, looks like the cat's done. Looks like the cat's done???? WTF!! Like I'm a piece of bread in the toaster! And why wasn't he in the waiting area where he was supposed to be. I'm surprised they didn't find him sleeping out back in a dumpster now! Dr O gives all the good news to my owner. My CBC blood test shows that I'm still kicking the ass of all the cancer cells. Even my Granulocytes in my white blood cells are perky and just fine. I have no idea what that means but my owners was smiling about it. The airway disease thing isn't that big a deal since I'm on steroids anyway, the Doc said. I'd hate to go off the steroids. I may be an old cat, but with The Juice, I can punt the ass of any other cat out of the back yard without even thinking about it! And dogs? Hell, dogs won't even come near a cat on steroids. I think they can smell it. Dogs are good smellers. That's what they have instead of a brain! HA!!!! Anyways, he asked Dr O what happens if my sneezing gets worse and he said they could put me on an inhaler. For what must have been a reason reaching back into my owners life as a serverely abused child, he thought the idea of me being on an inhaler was pretty funny. He made some kind of insensitive joke about it to Dr O, who didn't sound like he appreciated it one damn bit. No Board Certified Cat Doctor is going to laugh at crap like that. It was inappropriate and it wasn't even funny. My owner has an asthma inhaler. Maybe a wet furball deposit would be appropriate there. My owner might finally put 2 and 2 together, although I'd keep my wallet in my pants on that bet. Not that I have a wallet. Or pants. It's just an expression. I don't need a wallet - I get pretty much whatever I want by just meowing a lot. So we're outta here!

While we're sitting in the truck and my owner is fiddling with something, we spot this in the mirror. It's hard to make out but some guy has a dog on a leash (how humiliating, although completely understandable) and the dog is just peeing on the tire of that car! Dogs are nothing but ignorant trailer trash. God they disgust me!!

A good example of owner guilt is how I was lavished with an extra can of Grilled Fancy Feast Tuna with Gravy upon my arrival at home. If they don't forget to feed me tonight, that means THREE cans of FF Tuna today! Man! That's livin' the good life!

That's my report. Except for my owner, everyone treated me pretty darn good at the clinic. It means a lot when they get all happy dancing and stuff when they find out my insides are in good shape.

Help send me to outer space (sorta)

So here's the deal - you've probably heard of the International Space Station. I hope you have. I'm a cat and I've heard about it. Anyway, they're shooting another room up. I suspect it's a place for the Russians to stay since they don't use deodorant and so they kinda stink. But they're having a naming contest and I would want all my fans to submit my name (spelled Tommy) so it would be painted on the side of the room thingy they're shooting up there. You can see the official NASA photo of it. Which looks like it's already on the space station. Hmm ... I hope this NASA group is on the up and up. At any rate, if you got enough time on your hands to read my blog, then you got time to click HERE and vote for my name. It's for the greater good. The name Buddy is in the top 10 and I think we can all see that Buddy is a dog's name. Talk about a retarded name! How embarrassing would it be to have a space room named after a dog??!! I'm not prejudiced or anything but dogs have to be the dumbest, smelliest, most worthless animal that runs on four legs. Plus, they're just stupid. So let's avoid a national embarrassment.

Speaking of dogs and outer space ... if my name gets on the space room, it would energize my latest initiative which is to start sending dogs into outer space. My plan is that we round up a bunch of dogs each time the shuttle flies off and when they get in orbit the cat-lovin' astronauts will open the pod bay doors, throw a frisbee into space and all those dogs will run after it! OMG that would be so funny! Those dogs would never figure it all out. So vote for me so that, together, we can punk a bunch of dogs!