So this was spotted in Brooklyn. (Where else? And by “where else?” I mean “probably here.”) It’s a “Cat Pack.” For… ummm… carrying around your cat on your back.

catPack.jpg

  • Photo via Fucked in Park Slope

Okay then. LET’S DO THIS.

Don’t forget to defend your answer in the comments below! (After all, your vote doesn’t count unless followed by a pithy, Dorothy Parker-esque witticism.)

75 replies on “Cat Packs: CONDEMN OR ALLOW?!?”

  2. Awww, the kitty looks so sad. Still better than having the cat perch on your shoulder, like you were too poor to buy a parrot and an eyepatch. Yaaarrr, I be homeless teen, gimmie some xtasy!

  3. If people can carry their itty bitty dogs around in purses as some kind of twisted fashion statement, I damn well want to be able to carry around my morbidly obese 25 lb cat on my back.

  6. Seems like a convenient way to get your cat from place to place if you live downtown and have to use public transportation or walk.

  7. Is this in bad taste or what? Carry your damned cat to the vet or whatever and keep your hands free. Who cares? I’m moving on with my life. Or getting a drink.

  8. While it might make it easier for the vet to administer his knock-out shot when he goes in for check-ups, I doubt the menace he presents caged in a backpack would make up for the potential hazards involved carting a hissing, spitting, screaming feline with a discernible lack of social skills around in public. Just sayin-

  10. Oh, this is going too far. I saw this post earlier on The Portland Mercury’s “Blogtown.” (Yes, I read both SLOG and Blogtown.) I’m not happy that the two blogs are beginning to become one.

    This post is aggravating because Steve originally made an apt joke about Portland, and you have transposed it to become a joke about Seattle. An apt joke? I don’t know, but I do care. Do others care? Is there anything to be gained by keeping SLOG and Blogtown separate?

    I know Steve and Dan Savage have always double-posted — they are columnists for both papers — but lately it has gone beyond that, to the point where the majority of Blogtown is often written by The Stranger’s staff (usually in the mornings).

    So, SLOGtowners, condemn or allow?

    I

  14. It’s an abomination! No cat should be subjected to such humiliation. The only reason a cat should be on your back is if it’s jaws are slowly choking the life out of you from behind. Ask any self-respecting cat…they’ll tell you.

  20. I remember carrying a 15 pound cat a mile and a half to the vets in a standard plastic carrier. I was thinking I should have stuffed him in a damn backpack.

  21. if anyone has ever tried to walk any distance with a heavy (or even a not heavy) cat in a “normal” carrier you would know why this is BRILLIANT.

  22. @10, I will condemn it if you promise to write another goddam novel already. I know you’re prolific enough with other things, but I want a novel out of you. Deal?

  25. I have two cats, my vet is two blocks, or about 0.4 miles from my apartment. It doesn’t make any sense to call a cab or rent a car, but if I want to take both them to the vet at the same time, I have to make two trips (or do some serious weight training to be able to carry two cat carriers that far, but I don’t think that is going to happen). I need one of these! It is more than acceptable: it is brilliant!

  26. Cat, silly cat, on the back – your little paws of courage trapped within the confines of a sack.

    So sad.

    Stop peeing on the porch.

  27. If I still had a cat (sadly my kitty passed away last fall) I’d want one of those. Most cat carriers are far from easy to carry. A backpack would be a lot kinder on my back than the carrier was on my arm and shoulder not to mention the bruises I usually got from it hitting against my leg.

  29. I have one of these. What you can’t see in the picture is that, in addition to the backpack straps, it has wheels and an extendable handle, like roller-luggage (well, I guess you can kind of make out the handle on the top). It comes in handy if you’ve thrown out your back but you need to get your cat to the vet and you’re wondering how the hell you’re going to lift a carrier. It also folds up very compactly so it takes up less storage space, and it weighs a lot less that a standard carrier.

  31. I have one of these. What you can’t see in the picture is that, in addition to the backpack straps, it has wheels and an extendable handle, like roller-luggage (well, I guess you can kind of make out the handle on the top). It comes in handy if you’ve thrown out your back but you need to get your cat to the vet and you’re wondering how the hell you’re going to lift a carrier. It also folds up very compactly so it takes up less storage space, and it weighs a lot less that a standard carrier.

  33. @24, no, I haven’t yet, but will almost immediately. I’m so glad – bless your pea-picking heart.

    (can I picture the vivid red cover of my paperback edition of A Murder of Quality right now? yes! did I pass out last night with six pages left in my umpteenth runthrough of Tinker, Tailor, this one brought about by learning Tom Hardy’s playing Ricky Tarr in the new movie version? yes!)

  34. My late, strictly indoor cat would have *loved* this. The outdoors both tantalized him and scared the living bejeezus out of him.

    I would have had to make him go to the litter box first though. I think the excitement would have caused him to lose control of his bodily functions.

  36. I was going to condemn…

    But then I saw that little chihuahua (or wheteverthefuck that little dog is) in the background. And then I thought it would be entertaining to stuff both the cat and that little dog together into the pack at the same time. So I changed my mind to ‘allow’.

    Yes, I know, sometimes I’m a little twisted.

  40. @10 I could be wrong, but Keck owns both of these-transsexual-prostitue-advertising weeklies. And the websites that actually cover the news that nobody reads in the print editions. Keck is all about the benji’s (and the blood of children) so I would assume that eventually the blogs will merge. Plus, if they do, people besides yourself might actually read and comment on blogtown.

    But Humpy was ours first! He was just on the early Portlandia plan, retirement for young people. And I think he liked the crystal there more.

  42. Well, I can understand if you live in a city and don’t own a car. You might need something like this to transport your cat to the vet. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

  47. I have decided to allow this.

    But only on condition that the cat be instantly transformed into a howling Tasmanian Devil (WB edition) gouging chunks of flesh from the back of the Brooklyn hipster carrying it. As any self-respecting cat would.

  48. I vote allow with grave reservations:

    Have you ever been sitting on the outside seat of a crowded bus and standing just in front of you is a person with a large back-pack, who doesn’t have any awareness that their pack is an extension of their body? If waves back and forth inches from your head and occasionally smacks you in the head. You tap on the person because they can’t hear you due to head-phones, and say “Stop hitting me with your back-pack.” They give you a dirty look and reply, “You could at least say excuse me, you don’t have to be rude about it.” Then you think, but don’t say, “Who’s the rude one here, why should I ask to be excused?” because you don’t like talking to oblivious assholes.

    This happens on elevators, too.

  49. I will allow thee only becuase it is utilitarian in appearance… No pink leopard print or rhinestones to speak of… And I can see where this would be much handier in the city if you have to walk to the vet. Those plastic ones are super clunky and the crappy cardboard things are torn to shreds in minutes by a determined feline.

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