Sixty-odd articles in, I've used Tuga to explain cat flaps and Lightning channels, dust attacks and doorstep offerings, the warm spot on the wardrobe and why volatility is the price of the high shelf.

What I've never done here is show you the actual cat.

So: tugathecat.com is live, and this is the invitation. It's the home for everything these articles keep circling — the real animals, the real vet bills, and the Bitcoin argument told through them rather than at you.

The Cats Are Real

This is the part that matters most, and it's the first thing the site establishes.

Tuga is a tricolor who was rescued at about two weeks old and now runs this household with the confidence of someone holding the deeds. She is not a brand mascot, a stock photo, or an AI-generated creature with a wallet address. She is a cat who sleeps in the car boot for reasons she has never explained.

And there is Os Amigos da Tuga — the Friends of Tuga — the outdoor colony of six to eight regulars who turn up at dusk every day and have done for years. They're the reason the donation section exists at all. Food twice a day, every day, plus the vet bill that arrives without warning when one of them shows up limping.

The site has a diary: dated entries with photos, from real days, updated as things happen. If the Bitcoin half doesn't interest you, that part stands on its own as a cat you can follow.

The Bitcoin Half

The site's hero line is "Nine lives. Zero leaks.", and the whole argument sits underneath it in four pieces — the same ones I've been unpacking at length here:

• Bitcoin as a battery for human energy: your time and work, stored in something that doesn't leak. Fiat as the sack of food with a hole in it.
• Sovereignty, framed the way a cat already understands it: the difference between a hotel room and your own territory. A bank balance versus keys you hold.
• Lightning as the cat flap — the thing that lets value move without asking anyone to open a door.
• Backing up the seed, because every other idea on the list is decoration if the twelve words are on a photo in your phone.

If you've read these articles, you'll recognise the arguments. The site is the short version, in plain language, for the friend you've been failing to explain this to.

Send a Zap, If You Want To

The donations are in sats over Lightning, and they're denominated in things rather than numbers, because that's what the money actually becomes:

• 1,000 sats — one meal for the colony.
• 5,000 sats — a full day of food.
• 21,000 sats — a week of litter.

There's a Lightning Address with a copy button and a QR code, and for anyone without a Lightning wallet, a Ko-fi page that takes a card.

I'd rather you used Lightning, obviously. Not for me — because sending a few hundred sats to a stranger's cats, instantly, for a fee that rounds to nothing, is the single best demonstration of what this technology is for. It takes thirty seconds and it teaches more than any article I could write about it.

What Else Is There

• Gear that actually gets used — the food, the beds, the toy, the outdoor camera I watch the colony with at dusk. Those are Amazon affiliate links, disclosed on the page: I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you'd rather buy elsewhere, buy elsewhere.
• Three languages — Portuguese by default, with English and Polish. I'm Portuguese, living in a Polish village, writing for an international crypto audience, and the site reflects exactly that mess.
• No tracking theatre, no newsletter popup, no token. It's a static site that loads fast and asks you for nothing.

The Honest Bit

I'm not neutral. I hold bitcoin, I take donations in it, and the site carries affiliate links — the full disclosure is at the bottom of every page and in my article about reading crypto content without being farmed. Read me with that in mind, as you should read everyone.

And the cats are fine. The donations make the colony easier to sustain and take the sting out of the vet, but nobody is going hungry if you don't click anything. Visit because you like cats, or because you want the Bitcoin argument in a form you can send to your brother-in-law. Both are good reasons. Neither requires your money.

The Point

Everything I write here starts in a garden in a Polish village, with a tricolor cat who has strong opinions about chairs and a colony that arrives at seven whatever the weather.

Now you can go and see them.

🐾 tugathecat.com — nine lives, zero leaks. ⚡