animals

Cat Becomes First Feline Ball Boy at U.S. Open

Lost amidst all the great on-the-court drama is a storyline of feline interest at this year’s U.S. Open, which concludes this weekend at Flushing Meadows in Queens, NY. This year’s tournament contains an amazing first: Stanley, the very first cat ball boy.

Stanley, who has been a life long chaser of balls, got his crack at the big time last week when a human ball girl – Monica Verandez – pulled out with flu like symptoms.

“We decided to give the cat a shot,” said Candace Randazzo, VP of Ball Retrieval Operations for the USTA. “We’d been monitoring his career for awhile, and liked what we saw at an amateur tournament earlier this year at the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI.”

Randazzo has to feel good now about making that call. Stanley has been off-the-charts good, with a 99.4% retrieval success rate – unheard of among rookies.

“We’re pleased,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of Stanley. He’s a natural.”

Via No_Water.

Cat Unhappy with Low Quarterly Numbers

The quarterly earnings report at FluffStar Corp., the manufacturer of Mr. Fluffer’s Reconstituted Fish Bits Snack, was released yesterday. The numbers were not good and the company’s stock dove in after hours trading.

FluffStar has suffered declines in key demographics across the board for the third consecutive quarter. Analysts say part of the poor earnings has been due to a sustained salmon shortage in the Pacific Northwest that has put a strain on FluffStar’s supply chain, but also warn that the product has other problems.

“The market for reconstituted fish bits just isn’t what it used to be,” said Mark Wasserman, a senior investment advisor at Merrill Lynch. “The cat snack food market exploded in the past decade and there are just a ton of far more appetizing choices now for discerning felines. FluffStar has not innovated.”

A spokesperson for FluffStar said that company CEO Leon Fluffer, a Scottish Fold, was “of course not happy with the report.” The spokesperson indicated that Fluffer would be gathering key executives in the coming days to figure out how to reinvigorate the company.

Via mrbrimleythecat.

Report: Cat Bookmarks Not Catching On

It seemed like a good idea, and it even attracted some mild interest from investors on an episode of ABC’s Shark Tank (though none of them actually put in money). But a year after launching on Kickstarter, cat bookmarks are not catching on in the market.

“It’s not the product is bad,” said Miles Cowley, an analyst for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “they’re actually very well made and super adorable.”

Rather, said Cowley, the market just isn’t there.

“No one reads paper books anymore,” he explained, “and digital editions don’t need physical bookmarks. This would have been a killer idea a decade ago. Now? Not so much.”

Via stanshall.