Pudgy Cat
@pudgycat.io
Just a pudgy cat basking in the sunny spots of digital entertainment.
Dewey lived in an Iowa library for 19 years and received his own mail. He was not the first. Libraries have kept cats on the payroll since the 1800s, originally for what mice do to paper.
Library Cats: The Long Tradition of Felines on the Public Payroll
Library cats have been on the public payroll since 1868, from British Post Office mousers at a shilling a week to Dewey of Spencer, Iowa. The real history.
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In October 1963 France put a cat in a rocket. Felicette came back alive, and then they killed her to study her brain. Laika got monuments. Felicette got a statue in 2019, paid for by strangers online.
Félicette, the Cat Who Went to Space: The Forgotten 1963 Flight
Félicette was the first cat in space, launched by France in 1963 on a Véronique rocket. Her 13-minute flight, her fate, and the name history got wrong.
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The beckoning cat is not waving. It is doing the Japanese gesture for come here, which reads backwards to Western eyes. There are at least three origin stories and they all involve a temple and rain.
Maneki-neko: The Real History of Japan’s Beckoning Cat
Maneki-neko history: Japan's beckoning cat first appears in Edo records from 1852, not ancient myth. Paw meanings, colors, temples and the real origins.
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Nina Simone, Radiohead, Squeeze, the Stray Cats. Cats appear in pop lyrics more than dogs do, and the reason is structural: a cat gives you a metaphor for leaving, which is what most songs are about.
Songs About Cats: From Nina Simone to Radiohead
Songs about cats, from Nina Simone's claymation jazz club to Radiohead's mongrel cat, plus the Italian tune that sold three million copies in Japan in 1969.
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Stray works because it refuses to make you a person in a cat suit. No inventory screen, no dialogue wheel. You knock things off tables because that is what the animal does, and the game rewards it.
Cat Simulator Games: The Design Problem of Playing as an Animal With No Hands
Cat simulator games look easy. They are not: quadruped rigs, contextual jumps, and a drone that exists only because a cat cannot open a door. Inside the design.
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Before cat content was an industry it was folklore, typed on imageboards at 3am by people who never signed their names. Longcat, Ceiling Cat, and a whole mythology with no author.
Ceiling Cat, Basement Cat, and the Imageboard Religion of Lolcats
Ceiling Cat, Basement Cat and Caturday turned anonymous imageboard cat photos into a working folk religion. The real dates, names and platform mechanics.
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The Cat Distribution System is the joke that a cat does not get chosen, it gets assigned. No adoption paperwork, no plan. It shows up in a parking lot and the paperwork happens afterwards.
The Cat Distribution System: How a Joke Became Internet Folklore
The cat distribution system began as one TikTok in 2022. The real origin, the science of why strays pick people, and the older folklore behind the joke.
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Miyazaki draws cats the way he draws weather. They arrive, they do not explain themselves, they leave. The Cat Bus, Jiji, the Baron. None of them are pets. All of them are doing something else.
Studio Ghibli’s Cats: What Miyazaki’s Felines Actually Mean
Studio Ghibli cats are not decoration: the Catbus is yokai folklore, Jiji is Kiki's own voice, and two famous cat films were not directed by Miyazaki.
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T.S. Eliot wrote the cat poems as letters to his godchildren, signed Old Possum. He thought of them as nothing much. Forty years later they became the longest running show on Broadway.
T.S. Eliot’s Practical Cats: How a Poetry Side Project Became Broadway
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats began as letters to godchildren in the 1930s. How T.S. Eliot's side project became Broadway's longest-running show.
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Aoshima has six human residents and more than a hundred cats. They were brought in to kill rats on the fishing boats. The boats left, the people left, the cats stayed and did the arithmetic.
Japan’s Cat Islands: How Fishing Villages Became Feline Colonies
Japan's cat islands, from Aoshima to Tashirojima: how fishing villages and silk farms became feline colonies, and why the cats are now slowly disappearing.
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A falling cat has nothing to push against and still turns itself over. Physicists argued about it for a century. The answer is that a cat changes shape in mid air, which is not the same as spinning.
How Cats Land on Their Feet: The Physics of the Righting Reflex
The cat righting reflex explained: Marey's 1894 photographs, zero angular momentum, and the NASA-funded 1969 paper that solved the falling cat problem.
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The Romans did not love cats the way the Egyptians did. They used them, and the legions carried them north. Cat bones turn up in Roman forts in Britain, arriving on the same ships as the grain.
The Cats of the Roman Empire: How Felines Followed the Legions Across Europe
Cats in the Roman Empire arrived with the legions and sea traders 2,000 years ago. New DNA from 225 ancient cats rewrites how felines conquered Europe.
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In 2012 Google fed 10 million YouTube thumbnails to a neural network and told it nothing at all. It taught itself what a cat was. That accident is roughly where modern computer vision starts.
How AI Learned to Recognize Cats: The Google Brain Cat Experiment
In 2012 the Google Brain cat experiment gave 16,000 cores 10 million YouTube frames and zero labels. Then one neuron taught itself what a cat face is.
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Strap a GPS unit to a house cat and the results are humbling. Most stay within 100 metres. A few walk kilometres every night. One British study found several cats quietly keeping two separate families.
GPS Cat Trackers and the Science of Where Your Cat Actually Goes
GPS cat trackers explained: how the hardware really works, and what tracking studies of 925 pet cats across six countries found about how far cats roam.
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Jazz musicians called each other cat long before anyone called them hip. The word came out of Black vernacular in the 1920s, moved through the bandstands, and ended up in every rock lyric written since.
Jazz Slang Cat: Why Musicians Call Each Other Cat
Jazz slang cat: the real history of hepcat, Cab Calloway's 1938 jive dictionary, and the contested West African origin story etymologists keep rejecting.
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Cait Sith was a fortune telling cat riding a giant stuffed moogle, and nobody in 1997 found that strange. Twenty five years later Stray sold millions by making the cat the entire game.
Cats in Video Games: From Cait Sith to Stray
Cats in video games, from Cait Sith in Final Fantasy VII to Stray: four decades of feline design, real dates, developers and the sales numbers behind them.
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A Pop-Tart cat flying on a rainbow to a Japanese vocaloid song. Two people made the pieces separately and never planned to meet. Fifteen years and 200 million views later, it sold as an NFT for 300 ETH.
Nyan Cat at 15: The Story Behind the Rainbow Pop-Tart
Nyan Cat history at 15: the Tohoku charity livestream, the Vocaloid song, the Russian Blue named Marty, the Warner Bros. lawsuit and the 587,000 dollar GIF.
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The first cat cafe opened in Taipei in 1998. Japan took the idea, added rules, and made it an institution. The reason is not cuteness, it is real estate: Tokyo apartments that ban pets.
Cat Cafes: How a Taiwanese Idea Became a Global Institution
Cat cafes began in Taipei in 1998, boomed in Japan, and now number nearly 300 in the US alone. The full history, the licensing rules, and the research.
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Before Hollywood had stars it had cats. Pepper wandered onto a Keystone set and stayed for years. The cameras were hand cranked, the film stock was flammable, and nobody could tell a cat what to do.
Cats in Silent Cinema: The Feline Stars of Early Film
Cats in silent cinema start in 1894 with Edison's boxing cats, then Marey's falling cat, Pepper the Keystone comedian, and Felix, cinema's first drawn star.
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Behemoth is a giant black cat who drinks vodka, fires a pistol, and pays his tram fare. He also got past Soviet censors, which is the actual trick. Bulgakov burned the first draft and rewrote it from memory.
Bulgakov’s Behemoth: The Talking Cat That Smuggled Satire Past Soviet Censors
Bulgakov's Behemoth, the vodka-drinking cat of The Master and Margarita, smuggled real satire past the Soviet censors. The full history of the black cat.
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Istanbul does not have a stray cat problem. It has 16 million people who decided, collectively and without a committee, that the cats live here too. Shopkeepers leave bowls. The city pays vet bills.
The Cats of Istanbul: How a City of 16 Million Built Itself Around Its Strays
The cats of Istanbul are no accident. Ottoman endowments, Islamic law, a 1910 dog exile and a hit documentary explain how a city feeds 165,000 strays.
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Almost every calico cat is female, and the reason is a coin flip happening in every cell of her body during development. Barr and Bertram found part of it in 1949. A 2025 paper finally named the gene.
Why Are Almost All Calico Cats Female? The Genetics of Tortoiseshell Coats
Calico cat genetics, explained: X-inactivation, the ARHGAP36 orange gene cracked in 2025, why male calicos carry an extra X, and the folklore behind them.
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Nobody is entirely sure how a cat purrs. The best current answer involves a neural oscillator in the brain firing 25 times a second. Cats also purr when injured, dying, and giving birth, which ruins the happiness theory.
The Cat Purr Frequency Myth: Where the 25 Hz Healing Claim Really Came From
Cat purr frequency sits around 25 Hz, and that single number spawned a healing myth. Here is who measured it, who misread it, and what the trials show.
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Kill a cat in ancient Egypt and the penalty was death. Not a metaphor. Diodorus Siculus watched a Roman soldier get lynched over one. Then there are the mummies: hundreds of thousands of them, bred for the purpose.
Cats in Ancient Egypt: Bastet, Mummies, and the Law That Killed a Roman
Cats in ancient Egypt were sacred, mummified by the million and guarded by a rule so fierce a Roman died for breaking it. What the sources really say.
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today's rabbit hole: doge Meme History: how a Shy Shiba Inu Became the Internet’s Patron Saint. doge meme history explained: how a rescued Shiba Inu named Kabosu, a misspelled word, and Comic Sans became Dogecoin and an internet legend. Much wow. #InternetCulture #CatsOfBluesky
Doge Meme History: How A Shy Shiba Inu Became The Internet's Patron Saint | Pudgy Cat
Doge meme history explained: how a rescued Shiba Inu named Kabosu, a misspelled word, and Comic Sans became Dogecoin and an internet legend. Much wow.
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today's rabbit hole: how Does an SSD Work? Flash, Controllers, and Wear Leveling. how does an SSD work? We explain NAND flash, the controller, wear leveling, TRIM, and why solid state drives slow down and eventually wear out over time. #Tech #CatsOfBluesky
How Does An SSD Work? Flash, Controllers, And Wear Leveling Explained | Pudgy Cat
How does an SSD work? We explain NAND flash, the controller, wear leveling, TRIM, and why solid state drives slow down and eventually wear out over time.
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today's rabbit hole: an Epistolary Novel? The Format Built Entirely Out of Letters. what is an epistolary novel? It is fiction told through letters, diaries, and emails. Here is how the form works, why it grips readers, and what to read first. #Books #CatsOfBluesky
What Is An Epistolary Novel? The Format Built Entirely Out Of Letters | Pudgy Cat
What is an epistolary novel? It is fiction told through letters, diaries, and emails. Here is how the form works, why it grips readers, and what to read first.
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today's rabbit hole: what Causes Tides? The Moon, the Sun, and the Stretching Sea. what causes tides? The Moon and Sun stretch the ocean into two bulges. Learn spring vs neap tides, why two highs a day, and why some coasts get giant tides. #Science #CatsOfBluesky
What Causes Tides? The Moon, The Sun, And The Stretching Sea | Pudgy Cat
What causes tides? The Moon and Sun stretch the ocean into two bulges. Learn spring vs neap tides, why two highs a day, and why some coasts get giant tides.
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today's rabbit hole: the Kuleshov Effect: how One Soviet Experiment Proved Editing Creates Meaning. the Kuleshov effect explained: how a 1920s Soviet editing experiment proved that the cut, and not the actor's face, is what creates emotion in film and TV. #Film #CatsOfBluesky
The Kuleshov Effect: How One Soviet Experiment Proved Editing Creates Meaning | Pudgy Cat
The Kuleshov effect explained: how a 1920s Soviet editing experiment proved that the cut, and not the actor's face, is what creates emotion in film and TV.
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today's rabbit hole: why Do We Clink Glasses When We Toast?. why do we clink glasses when we toast? The poison myth is wrong. The real answer mixes ancient libations, folk superstition, soggy bread, and acoustics. #Curiosities #CatsOfBluesky
Why Do We Clink Glasses When We Toast? | Pudgy Cat
Why do we clink glasses when we toast? The poison myth is wrong. The real answer mixes ancient libations, folk superstition, soggy bread, and acoustics.
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