The Aug. 2 column included a passing mention of watching "those cute pet videos on the TBD network." The lack of cable has combined with covid-19, and my decreased tolerance of regular TV shows, to make me quite the fan of these.
TBD is one of the "families" of channels that dominates on free-TV these days; in the Little Rock market, it's KATV 7.4. Its intended audience? Millennials. But hey, if you're a millennium or two old, they won't mind if you tune in. After the early days of landing on this channel while surfing, going "What the heck?" then moving on, I finally decided to investigate.
Much of TBDs' content is video snippets ... humans, trying doomed-to-fail stunts and busting their behinds as part of the channel's "FailFactory" show; and animals, doing what animals do (including some things that I, at least, had no idea they did) as part of "Animals Unscripted." I've enjoyed a fair amount of episodes of the former, in which human accidents are usually followed by the "bleep" sound; but I've become hooked on the latter.
I'm not a pet owner and, where I currently live, couldn't have one if I wanted one. So I had to learn via "Animals Unscripted" that cats beg on their hind legs too ... and high-five their owners!
The usual scenario at the Williams home: I hole up in the bedroom, watching "my" animals. Dre pops in periodically, rolls his eyes, then heads back to the living-room TV to watch the never-ending reruns of "Walker, Texas Ranger" on the Charge! network, KATV 7.3. I shrug and go back to the animals, whose video morsels fall into the following categories:
• Pet camaraderie: Pets teasing, playing with, pal-ing around with, licking/grooming or napping with fellow pets ... all the more entertaining if the pet buddy is of another species.
• Pet conflict. The best ones: Small cat intimidates big dog.
• Pet interrogations. The dog has completely torn up the house. The owner records the dog averting its eyes when the owner calls the dog's name and asks "Who did this?" Or the variation: Two dogs are sitting in the middle of the carnage, and when asked by the owner who did it, one dog rats on the other by placing its paw on the other doggy.
• Cats and water, not mixing. Curiosity "kills" the feline that decides to risk walking around the perimeter of the filled-up tub ... or bats at the tub water several times before deciding to voluntarily take a plunge. The cat's frenzied efforts to escape are priceless.
• Cats and water, mixing. Some cats apparently like water. Or at least, they've somehow been trained to stay still, stone-faced, while being scrubbed like smelly babies.
• Siberian-husky howling. They sound almost human!
• Pet musical accompanists. Dogs, especially Siberian huskies, howling along while their owners play piano or some other musical instrument.
• Cat costume wearing. The best are the ones that show cats wearing costumes that, from the front, make them look like tiny two-legged creatures. Usually the cat is also wearing a facial expression indicating its total awareness of having been robbed of every shred of its dignity.
• Pet spas. Dogs and cats enjoy being massaged, too!
• Mirror, mirror. Pet sees self in mirror and freaks, thinking it has a rival.
• Scratch the surface. Dog or cat furiously scratches at window or computer screen separating it from some other pet or moving object that it desperately wants to play with, examine or eat.
• Other assorted visual morsels. My faves: Pets sleeping and snoring with their eyes open. Pets skateboarding and surfing with their owners. (Also shown: A plethora of other animals -- burgling bears, hilarious horses, teetering turtles, pilfering primates and more.)
We all enjoy the proverbial cat video or two. And granted, it's summer ... a time when regular TV under normal life circumstances might possibly drive us to watch such fare. But watching pet antics now reminds me of the very thing I've preached often: the old Van Camp's Pork and Beans commercial slogan was right. Simple pleasures are the best. One of the biggest things this health ordeal has caused us to do is once again appreciate the simpler things in life, whether it be gardening ... cooking ... catching up on those books we'd promised ourselves we'd read ... painting ... watching that paint dry ... and appreciating the antics of God's four-legged creatures.
Especially since they aren't finding nearly as many reasons to fight as his two-legged ones are nowadays.
Awww. That's a gooooood email!
hwilliams@adgnewsroom.com