Clothes, sneakers and hats. Vitamin supplements, energy drinks and probiotics. Backpacks and costumes.
What do all those things have in common? People are buying them for their pets, not themselves, and they’re part of the reason people in the UK spent more on pets in 2024 than childcare, hobbies or dating, according to Nationwide UK.
The problem is, they’re not doing it for their pets. Experts, including veterinarians and animal behaviorists, tell The Guardian that most cats, aside from hairless varieties like Sphynx cats, don’t like wearing clothing, nor do they like wearing costumes, or taking baths with heavy perfumes and essential oils.
Influencers — or petfluencers — stage elaborate “pampering” scenes, and make their pets wear different clothes to show off their shopping “hauls.” Some pose their animals like dolls and find ways to coerce them to remain still. Audiences think it’s cute. It’s not.
As for me, I’ve got a handy chart when I’m unsure if Bud will be cool with something:
- Make him wear clothes. Result: Get clawed to death
- Give him baths with essential oils. Result: Get clawed to death
- Make him wear sneakers. Result: Death by bite to the jugular
- Force him to eat supplements or guzzle energy drinks. Result: Shredded skin and lots of blood, perhaps some light homicide.
While the animals themselves aren’t thrilled with these new trends, they probably won’t go away any time soon. There’s just too much money involved.
The average pet owner in the UK spent the equivalent of $163 per month on their companions, and only half of UK households have pets compared to 66 percent in the US. Although there’s not an apples to apples comparison of total expenses on pets per month by household in the US, Americans spend $68 a month on cats on average, according to research by ValuePenguin. For dogs, it’s about $110 a month.
‘Salty liquorice’ cats owe their unique coats to a missing snip of DNA
It’s always an interesting occasion when nature gives us something new, and the salmiak cat is definitely unprecedented in the world of feline aesthetics.
The unique cats, named after a popular liquorice candy from Finland, have a coat pattern that results from a gradient on individual strands of fur, starting out black and getting lighter toward the tip. It gives their coats a singular peppered look, and in photographs the unusual felines almost look as if they’re rendered in monochrome stippling.
The salmiak cat wasn’t the product of any breeding program, and reports in Finnish media say strays with the new coat pattern/color first emerged in 2007.
To find out how the salmiak emerged, a team of Finnish, British and American scientists sequenced the genomes of two salmiak cats. They found a mutation in genes that express coat color that resulted in a missing sequence of DNA, and they confirmed the mutation is recessive. That means to get salmiak kittens, both parents have to have the mutation.
Pain In The Bud 
disturbingly the words “petfluencer” and “UK” are occuring in the same written piece… I met ‘Starina Esperanza’ – a ragdoll, a few years ago at a charity feline fund raiser and she was exceptionally chilled. She would (seemingly)happlly put on light clothes. Not something I would pursue or try on any feline ever. I value my skin too much and it cannot be a good thing as it encourages others to force it on cats as many morons follow “influencers”
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It really is an inane word. It was only a decade ago when people would mock be journalism professor Jeff Jarvis for inventing terms like “thinkfluencer,” and now they’re part of everyday speech.
I’ve seen videos of people posing their pets and the things they do to force them to stay still and hold a certain pose for photos.
It requires coercion, dominating through implicit threats, and destroying any real bond or trust.
Screw that.
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With you 100% – Screw that totally
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ENERGY DRINKS?! Are you effing kidding me?!! Other stuff is tame compared to this ANIMAL ABUSE!! I hope to God someone calls some sort of law enforcement if they can find these vermin. Vitamins? My vet gave me CAT VITAMINS. Any vitamin a human takes can kill them. And i know how to give a sick cat L-lysine.
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Yeah, and CBD supplements, some sort of mushrooms for dogs that they claim have health benefits, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s a crazy rabbit hole to go down, and it can make you feel like you’re letting your pet down if you don’t remind yourself that animals really don’t care about this stuff.
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Yup!!! Key words being “clawed to death!”
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I wouldn’t blame him either. It would be a huge violation of trust. He doesn’t like wearing things, just like he doesn’t like being picked up or being baby talked.
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The star is for the salt-n-pepper coat.
Tomorrow Neptune moves into Aries for a 13-year stay. We will be moving away from illusions and blurred realities. With the no nonsense Aries taking charge we will finally be able to separate the real from the virtual. No more sitting on the sidelines as The Warrior spirit of Aries will DEMAND you show up and grow up. Influencers have long jumped the shark and it’s time we feed them TO the sharks.
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Me and Bud are both Aries (Arieses?) though he probably thinks he’s a Leo.
The thing about “Petfluencers” is they can make major money if their audience is big enough. Like others have pointed out in previous posts, it’s a lot like family content influencers in terms of how far they’re willing to go to get attention. I always think of that woman who wanted compelling content of her kid crying after they took his dog to the vet, and accidentally uploaded a video in which she’s telling her kid to sob and to look more miserable.
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Astrodienst puts it this way:
Neptune’s position in the zodiac, among other things, provides clues to the zeitgeist and the prevailing ideal. During the years of its stay in Pisces (from 2012 to 2025), this often revolved around the relationship between the individual and the collective, recognizable, among other things, in social media, where one of the most important criteria for success and quality is the number of followers – the more, the better. Neptune in Aries could now increasingly refocus attention on individual behavior, on one’s achievements, independence, and personal “heroism”.
Their narcissistic days are coming to an end. Thank Goddess.
I use the term “arian”. My beloved Diego and I shared a birthday: April 4th. On what day(s) were the both of you born?
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I was born April 13 and I don’t know when he was born, but we celebrate his birthday as the day I brought him home, which was April 19.
I like celebrating both around the same time. Obviously not the exact same day like you guys, but it’s nice to give him a special Buddy Day.
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I’ve never had a cat who would have willingly put on clothes. For years, people have put Halloween costumes on their cats. (If you’re interested, I did a post on people dressing their cats up for Christmas: https://cat9984.com/2020/11/28/yule-cat-as-fashion-police/)
There is a long ways from that to what s going on now. No cat should be exposed to energy drinks or dietary supplements not prescribed by their vet. It’s the same issue as using their kids as props. If the animal can’t give informed consent, they shouldn’t be in the video
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I’m not fond of clothing on cats though I stay friendly with a few bloggers who lightly dress them only if the cats seem okay with it … I say, draw a picture, edit a photo, tell a story, but don’t clothe the actual cats … Influencers, supplements, energy drinks, pssst! to all that … That is fascinating about the Salmiak Cats. There was a new breed developed not so long ago in the US from kittens found in VA and TN, the Lykoi breed. They were found in various other locations in the US too. It’s sort of a roan, brindled look though there’s more to it than just a mix of light and dark fur. While Lynx Kitten was young I thought he had patches of roan fur, but it all darkened as he matured. Fascinating that such variations are out there, though I’m not cool with breeding cats while there are so many strays, ferals, and shelter cats in need of homes and sustenance.
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Re: clothes for pets.
I got my first kitten – Cuddles – just before I turned age 8. And I did what every little girl does when she gets a kitten: I dressed the kitten in baby doll clothes, and put her in my doll coach, and went for a stroll.
Even The Simpsons had Lisa doing this when she got a kitten.
It’s pretty much hard-wired for little girls to do this. But after the second or third time I tried to dress her, my kitten made it clear she preferred not to wear doll clothes, so I stopped dressing her.
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Well, you were also 8 and figured it out in a few days, and not a 35-year-old who’s been forcing her pets to wear clothes for years for internet points, attention and potential sponsorships.
I’m a bit of a hypocrite in this regard because I put sunglasses on Bud for a few seconds. They were mini sunglasses my then 8-year-old niece got for Bud for Christmas, and she was so excited that I felt like I had to get a photo of Bud wearing them and send it to her.
For what it’s worth, I apologized by giving him a bunch of treats, so that smoothed things over. Otherwise, I may have been mauled.
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