Cravendale - The Cows and The Cats

Lactose intolerance is when someone can’t properly digest lactose, a sugar found in milk, because they lack a specific enzyme. I too lack that enzyme, along with an increasingly large amount of the global population. So you can imagine how much attention I’ve been paying to Cravendale milk, produced by Arla Foods UK Ltd. Hint: It’s less than one. But it turns out I’ve been missing out on a bit of a phenomenon. A phenomenon of random-ass and adorable stuff.

For several years, Cravendale used a trio of Cow, Pirate and Cyclist to promote their filthy white gold. But eventually the time came to retire these strange stop-motion figurines, which was a sad day:

But don’t feel too sad, friends. After the click we can find out about the Cravendale cats – everybody knows the internet loves cats!

There is a history of Cravendale inspiring hostility and aggression in animals. Who can forget the terrible bovine crime wave from a few years ago? Generations of Londoners will remember the terrible braying and mooing that echoed through the nights each time the cows had taken another victim. The cow’s campaign of reclaiming the Cravendale, the symbol of our dominance, left many supermarkets destroyed:

Of course, those were just the mundane, un-enhanced cows. For years the food industries have been creating more effective cows:

 Imagine it ground up and cooked, that way it’s less grotesque

Arla Foods UK Ltd is no different. To produce their ‘Hint Of’ milk range, that contained traces of flavours like strawberries? They actually genetically engineered a super-secret cow species that produced strawberry cow-juice in deep underground laboratories beneath Raccoon City. I mean, how else would you do it? But maybe mankind was not meant to tamper with these things. The side effect was a deep psychosis in the mind of every strawberry-patterned cow. They were twisted and malicious. When they escaped they didn’t target supermarkets like logical cows. Oh no. These targeted individuals, punishing them for their milk purchases:

Their attacks were coordinated and cruel. Few people who bought the ‘Hint of Strawberry’ Cravendale milk have survived and every year a few more take their own lives, unable to live with what they’ve seen. Those who remain are either in hiding abroad or in devoted survivor communities where they receive 24 hour care for their physical conditions and deep psychological scars – experts now believe the strawberry cows allowed this second group to survive to serve as an example.

Of course, cows can be (and were) defeated by simple stairs, nevermind the full range of humanity’s weapons. But deep in the Arla Foods UK Ltd laboratories, there were other experiments with more subtlety. These were the infernal creatures that watched from their cages and mazes as the cows escaped. These were the creatures that had patience. These were the creatures that learned:

CATS! And yes that was Tim Curry narrating.

This is what Arla Foods UK Ltd has wrought. This is the terrifying bounty delivered to us by Cravendale. The scientists learned a lot from the cow rebellions but so did the cats, observing everything with wide, blank-eyed cat-stares. The escaped cats know that a straight-up campaign of violence and terror is going to be a failure. Their best strategy is to use their advanced feline cunning and opposable digits to outwit us. It seems this is entirely feasible:

It’s okay if you laugh at the last line, ‘not on our watch, pussies…’ because I did too. Also he said it in a slightly strange way.

The online campaign is one of their strengths, masterminded by Bertrum Thumbcat. On twitter he has over 10,000 followers and on Facebook over 76,000 likes. The Cravendale YouTube channel has several videos of cats doing things and over 3000 subscribers.

We all know the internet loves cats. But why do we love cats? Is it because they’re cute and their antics are hilarious? Or could it be that the cats are purposefully being cute and funny to exploit our innate human weaknesses? The online popularity of cats could all be part of the scheme of Bertrum Thumbcat. If this is the case then we have already lost. All we can do now is surrender the Cravendale. Of course, I have no special use for milk so I’m personally okay with handing over the poisonous teat-slime in exchange for peace with the terrifying thumb-cats.

Just to lighten the mood before you click away, here’s the Cravendale advert that featured two of the Muppets back when they were promoting their latest film:

MAGIC POTATO!