The internet is an unwieldy, amorphous thing. If interested, you can watch its statistics slowly balloon: 1.3 billion websites and counting; 120 billion emails sent today already; 40,000 search queries sent per second on Google alone. What might those websites and emails and search queries contain?
Within the shifting, infinite hallways of this information megastructure, it’s impossible to take a census. Somewhere between 4 and 30 percent of it is porn. Another frankly implausible quantity is Donald Trump and articles about Donald Trump. Friskie’s once claimed that 15 percent of the internet is cats, which has since been debunked but still feels true enough. Fifteen percent of what we see is cats. In the past few years dogs have gained traction, suggesting they’re at least close to cats in internet real estate. When you add in the rest of the bounties of creation—birds, elephants, porpoises, owls, monkeys, dolphins, and so on—the total quantity of animal-related internet content begins to feel dizzying, almost vertiginous.
Animals on the internet have the unique quality of being both totally unimportant and massively individually important. They do not matter in the larger sense, but they matter intensely to you. Moreover, they beg to be shared, and there are always more of them to share. A hot cat story this week will not negate the market for a hot cat story next week. The appeal is eternal.
If you have not been able to keep up, don’t worry. Here we have compiled a brief recap of some of this week’s most important animals from the internet—a cheat sheet for busy people so they will be better informed during Friday-night cocktail parties and Sunday-morning brunches. It is impossible to know every animal online, but it is crucial to remain abreast of the most newsworthy.
Big fucking garbage-eating pig
This absolute unit, which has been dubbed Pigzilla by the Daily Mail, was spotted rearing up on his hind quarters, surprisingly not shattering the concrete beneath him, and eating an old television set or something from inside a garbage bin in Hong Kong. Please note the presence of tinier, less Okja-like boars present in the frame alongside the seismically large pig, ably giving the footage a sense of scale. While locals have expressed concern about the fact that the boar seems to have lurched to life from Princess Mononoke, many of the comments on the video are decidedly chill about the whole thing. Vice translates one as, “Wild boar has the right to live and freedom. He is only hungry for food,” which is a true and beautiful statement. We are, each in our own way, only hungry for food.
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Sworn-enemy cats kick each other’s asses
Meanwhile, in London, a pair of cats who hate each other’s guts keep kicking each other’s asses. Larry is the name of a mouser who lives at 10 Downing Street, a noble guy with shockingly white legs and an enjoyably striped tail who has endured Brexit and several administration changes in his undying quest to chase mice out of the administrative building. In these efforts he must endure the intrusion of Palmerston, an upstart government cat with whom he has feuded intermittently since at least 2016. Today they got into it again.
Larry, who has more Twitter followers than you, even responded to the brouhaha on Twitter.
Westminster Dog Show occurs, names correct dog best dog
It was a busy week for dogs, but then, what week is not busy for man’s most industrious friend (do not fact-check this claim). At the Westminster Dog Show, a wonderful bichon frise named Flynn won Best In Show, beating out a giant schnauzer, a pug, a Sussex spaniel, a borzoi, a border collie, and a Norfolk terrier, all of whom are undoubtedly excellent dogs but none of whom look like they were shot out of a confectioner’s gun.
Apparently in celebration the dog will get a steak lunch and a trip to the top of the Empire State Building, where he will complete his metamorphosis into an actual cloud.
And in an extremely unverifiable story that, for purposes of the heart, we are best served to believe in its entirety, two dog siblings who were separated at birth met at Seattle’s Pike Place Market and freaked the fuck out because they knew. They even had matching tattoos to prove it. Please enjoy, below, video of them being immediate best friends. Now happily reunited, their owners promise to continue to bring them into each other’s proximity regularly, such that they can compare tattoos and produce more viral videos.
Cow escapes slaughterhouse to wander earth
In a story that reads infinitely better when translated by a Google AI from its original Polish, a truly fucking badass cow escaped her fate in the slaughterhouse and now wanders the earth like a ronin warrior, presumably solving the problems of villagers and teaching other cows to be free. While leaving the cowshed, the cow jumped over some safety lines, dove underwater, and wound up on a beach. When someone went to retrieve her, they came back with a broken arm, some bruised ribs, and no goddamn cow. Now, instead of trying to retrieve the cow, the farmer that raised her just brings her food on the island. A veterinarian got called in to bring the animal down without harming it, but ran out of tranquilizers in the effort. The story concludes, “For now, the cow is doing great on the loose.” She is also probably just hungry for food.
Cat would prefer not to
Lastly, here is a four-second video of a cat, utterly unmoved by time or space, the economic imperatives of urban design, or the needs and wants of man. The cat sits and stares, utterly unyielding to the presence of a camera and the screaming chaos of the modern world. The cat is content in both senses of the word.
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