The Fluffington Post

The pandemic has been a boon for Bruce, a cat from Bryn Mawr, PA whose socially distanced walking tour company has taken off.

Launched with little fanfare in mid-2019, the walking tours have become a go-to activity for families looking for a safe way to spend some time together over the past couple of years.

“His timing couldn’t have been better,” says friend Nicole Martinez. “I mean, some days he grapples with the moral implications of making money off a global pandemic. But most of the time he’s just happy he’s helping people have fun safely.”

Bruce currently offers two tours under his Bryn Pawr Walking Tours brand (we know, groan). One highlights all the houses with angry dogs, while the other is a three hour round trip walk with stops at the place where Bruce once found a mouse, and the front porch of a friend’s house where he left it as a present.

Tours run daily through the end of the year.

via u/abacad_rex

If there’s one thing you wouldn’t expect to hear from a quiet suburban backyard at 2am, it’s polka music. But residents on the social network NextDoor have reported late-night accordion music blasting from Miller Place.

“I woke up to such a racket,” says Jeffrey Berger, a neighborhood resident. “It sounded like someone was being murdered. So I put on pants and ran down the street.”

Those screams were nothing more than the elated cries of dancing cats, getting down to the sweet sounds of polka.

“They had hired a one-man-band to play for hours,” Berger tells The Fluffington Post. “It was the middle of the night, and there are cats dancing everywhere.”

Berger was not the only concerned resident. At least a dozen posts on NextDoor alluded to the commotion, most asking what was going on, while others more irate.

“WTF is happening on Miller?” wrote one concerned citizen. “It sounds like Weird Al is being mauled by cougars!!”

The party has since dispersed, and no attendees could be reached for comment by press time.

via u/emoposer

A new study released today by the National Restaurant Association finds that take-out ordering was up 437% among cats in 2020. While take-out dining was already trending up, there was an extreme spike in March of last year as pandemic-related in-feline dining closures hit.

“This mirrors what we’re seeing across other species,” said Restaurant Association spokesperson Latoya Reynolds. “We saw similarly large jumps in take-away and delivery habits among dogs, horses, and cockatiels.”

Many restaurant owners had to scramble to shift-away from on-location dining to pickup and delivery.

“We didn’t have a paw-friendly app before last year,” said Joe Montez, owner of Carribe Grill in Pasadena, CA, referring to an online ordering experience with buttons large enough to accommodate appendages that lack opposable digits. “We partnered with a local developer to revamp the user interface of our ordering site and immediately saw a jump in pet-related orders.”

Other interesting findings from the National Restaurant Association study:

• The most popular dish among cats was Grilled Salmon followed closely by Lobster Newberg.
• For dogs, the most popular dish ordered last year was That Thing We Dropped on the Floor. Perennial favorite Is that Bacon? It Smells Like Bacon! came in second.
• As a group, cats tip at 25% below the national average.
• While dogs rate “delivery speed” as the most important aspect of the take-out experience, they were 5 times more forgiving of cold food than any other animal group.

Via imKohl.