Patches was the biggest cat the staff at a Virginia animal shelter had ever seen, and was within snacking distance of the all-time record.
When Patches was surrendered to a Virginia animal shelter in mid-April of 2023, the staff — including longtime veterans of cat rescue — were taken aback.
The six-year-old feline weighed in at a staggering 40-plus pounds and was so big, the shelter staff had to keep him in an office because the largest crates they had were barely large enough for Patches to turn around.
“We thought we had seen big cats before, but he was definitely the biggest that we’ve ever seen,” Richmond Animal Care and Control’s Robin Young told the Washington Post at the time.
Patches was in dangerous territory for his personal health, and if allowed to continue gaining weight, he’d threaten the world record for a domestic cat, which is more than 46 pounds. (Guiness World Records stopped recognizing the heaviest cats decades ago because the organization didn’t want to encourage people to overfeed their cats in pursuit of the record.)
Top row: Patches in the early days shortly after his adoption. Bottom row: Patches after losing a significant amount of weight.
Last week, Patches reached a new milestone, weighing in at 18.94 pounds after more than two years of eating healthy and getting exercise with the help of Kay Ford, a retired businesswoman who adopted him.
It’s an incredible achievement, and one that was hard-fought, as anyone familiar with cats will know. Many well-fed cats can convince almost anyone they’re starving.
Ford’s pitch to the shelter made it easy for them as they fielded a flood of adoption applications for the chonkster, who had attracted plenty of attention as soon as the shelter posted about him online.
Ford told the shelter she was experienced, committed to helping Patches get down to a healthy weight, and would look forward to the challenge. She’d put on a few pounds during the pandemic, she added, and would lose weight alongside her new pal.
“I’ve had cats all my life,” Ford told the Post at the time. “It just seemed like the right thing.”
Ford with Patches shortly after meeting him. Credit: Richmond Animal Care and Control
She agreed to meetings at the shelter to review a weight loss plan and began documenting Patches’ progress on a Facebook page, Patches’ Journey, which now has more than 53,000 people following the feline’s transformation.
His diet isn’t over, and it’s a lifestyle change meant to be permanent, but there are a lot of people who are proud of the (much less) big guy, who now looks like a completely different cat.
Sheba and a geneticist who specializes in cats are looking for felines descended from ancient Egypt’s royal buddies.
“You may call me Budtum Ra Budhotep Bhufu Amun Buddeses, human. Now serve me!”
Bud’s already enormous ego just got a little bigger after I used Sheba’s Pharaoh Cat Finder to analyze his pharaohness.
The online tool says he’s up to 75 percent pharaoh:
I didn’t do it entirely out of altruism to give the little guy an ego boost. The winner of the Pharaoh Cat contest gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Bud’s been eating Sheba for 10 years. We’ve never endorsed any particular cat food here on PITB, partly because every cat is different, some have special nutritional needs and what works for one furry overlord may not work for another.
But as food motivated as he is, Buddy cannot scarf down more than half a can of wet food at a time, and he’s an enormous pain in the Bud when it comes to leftovers, so Sheba’s Perfect Portions saves me from wasting food.
While the online Pharaoh Cat Finder tool looks like it may be RNG combined with clever marketing, there’s a genetic basis for the search. The company is working with Dr. Leslie A. Lyons, a geneticist who specializes in the DNA of our furry little friends at the University of Missouri’s Feline Genetics and Comparative Medicine Lab.
The legendary funerary mask of pharaonic feline Buddankhamun Budstet Ra Budshepsut, Buddy’s royal Egyptian ancestor. Credit: The Grand Museum of Magnificent Feline Stuff
Lyons was part of a research team that extracted DNA from mummified cats buried in ancient Egyptian tombs and sequenced their genetic code.
While the project verified that the Egyptians domesticated cats long before they began mummifying them and affording them revered status, Lyons says a DNA sequence from the ancient felines “has only been found in cats in Egypt and the U.S., unlocking even more questions to be explored.”
“We are looking at mitochondrial DNA only found in these pharaoh cats and a few cats in the U.S. So it’s really hard to find these cats, hence this hunt with Sheba pet food,” she said. “We’re on that quest to find the cats that went from Egypt into the U.S. and are the divine cats of the pharaohs. They should be worshiped like they were.”
The Temple of Amun Bud is guarded by gold statues of domestic cats instead of sphynxes. Credit: National Gallery of Buddesian Artifacts
I don’t think there’s any doubt that the aptly named Dr. Lyons is on team cat.
So here’s to hoping Bud gets a lifetime supply of Sheba, and Dr. Lyons is successful in her quest to find the elusive pharaoh cat lineage. In the meantime, we should probably start work on an impressive new pyramid here in the US, lest we disappoint our new feline pharaoh.
Feeding strays is now punishable by a $150 fine in an Ohio town, the latest municipality whose elected leaders chose to ignore expert guidelines on managing feline populations.
Every time the stray cat issue comes up, local town boards and city councils act as if they need to reinvent the wheel.
Imagining that they are the first to deal with this extremely common problem, they make decisions from positions of ignorance, dismissing the concerns of people who actually work with cats. Or they “do the research” and come up with their own ineffective policies instead of simply looking at what other towns and cities have tried in the past.
At least that way, you know what works and what doesn’t, and how much your decision’s going to cost taxpayers.
But that would be the smart thing to do, which is why our local elected leaders don’t do it. Instead they pull stunts like the village board of Mogadore, Ohio, a town of 3,700 about 10 miles east of Akron.
The Mogadore board just passed a law that makes feeding strays and ferals punishable by a fine of up to $150, as if that will stop cats from finding food and breeding.
Tellingly, Mogadore’s elected leaders say their ordinance applies to “wild, stray, or un-owned” cats, which means they don’t understand they’re all the same species.
Apparently neither do the reporters at WOIO, a local news station in Cleveland. A story from the station is confidently incorrect in telling readers “[d]omestic cats that have become wild, meaning live outdoors, roam free, and rarely interact with humans, are also considered feral.”
Credit: Sami Aksu/Pexels
Felis catus is a domestic animal. By definition a domestic cat is not wild and cannot become wild. Evolution cannot happen to a single animal.
While evolution is a constant process, speciation — wolves becoming dogs, wildcats becoming house cats, wild boar becoming docile farm pigs — is a species-wide shift that takes at leasta few hundred years but often much longer, “from human-observable timescales to tens of millions of years” depending on the species.
The whole process results in changes at the genetic level. The transition from wildcats to domestic cats, for example, involved changing only 13 genes.
This is not rocket science, it’s basic stuff we all learned in high school science classes.
But that’s almost beside the point.
Fining people for feeding stray cats, including caretakers who voluntarily manage cat colonies, will not solve the problem. It doesn’t work. It has never worked in any town anywhere in the world.
It also creates a needlessly adversarial relationship with the passionate people doing the hard work of managing the feline population, often thanklessly and at their own expense. Why make enemies of them when they’re doing a public service?
Mogadore’s village board had a representative from Alley Cat Allies and people from local rescues on hand to inform them that fines don’t work, and to offer the humane and effective option of trap, neuter, return. TNR may not be perfect, but it’s better than anything else people have tried.
Mogadore’s board and mayor ignored the experts and went ahead with their plan to fine people instead.
They’re not alone. This happens thousands of times across the US, Europe, Australia and most other places where domestic cats live. Japan and Turkey take a more humane approach, and they’re better for it. But here in the US, we often deal with issues by ignoring precedent and engaging in wishful thinking.
If the residents of Mogadore are lucky, their elected officials will realize their mistake sooner rather than later.
Stray and feral cats already have a difficult existence without ill-advised laws making it illegal to care for them. Credit: Mehmet Fatih Bayram/Pexels
Cats are blamed, to the exclusion of almost all other factors, for the decline in native bird populations in New Zealand.
A New Zealand group canceled a cat-hunting competition for kids after receiving massive backlash for the plan, but one Kiwi journalist told a national audience he thinks the cat hunt is a great idea and doesn’t go far enough.
“When it comes to feeral kets, I’m on the soide of the kea, the kākāpō and the kiwi ivery sangle doy of the week and my missige to [the organizers] is ‘Git the competition back on, git the keds back out thea,'” said the vowel-desecrating morning show host Patrick Gower. “If thea gonna hunt and thea’s feeral kets in the way, then we hif to woipe them out. Feeral kets need to be shot, they need to be run ovah, they need to be trepped, they need to be woiped off the foice of Aotearoa and I imploah the school to git it back on, and look, I’ll put up some rewoade as well foah any kets these kids git down theah as well.”
English translation: “I think the cat-killing contest is a wonderful idea, cats need to be shot, run over and exterminated from New Zealand, and I hate cats so much that I’ll put up some of my own money as prizes for the children who bag the most kills.”
You’ve got to wonder what cats have done to Patrick Gower for him to hate them so much, and fortunately dear readers, PITB has the answer!
Gower lost the New Zealander of the Year competition of 2020 to a cute orange tabby named Mittens.
Think about that: All those years of doing Pulitzer-worthy breakfast show kitchen demonstrations, of slaving away at the anchor desk bringing viewers important news about reality TV stars and parroting former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s declaration that New Zealand’s government is “the single source of truth” on COVID, and Gower loses the honor to a damn cat. Mittens even has the key to the City of Wellington, and Gower does not.
So sad.
Mittens receiving honors that have eluded morning show host Patrick Gower. Credit: Wellington City Council
It’s unfortunate when a man in influential position, small country or not, enthusiastically encourages children to practice being future serial killers by slaughtering innocent animals because he thinks — despite the complete absence of evidence — that arbitrarily gunning down and running over sentient animals will save birds.
Really, you’d think before calling for the extirpation of an entire species of animal that these people would have something, even a single bogus research study, claiming that bird populations would recover if only people started killing cats on sight.
But no such proof exists, and the burden of proof rests with Gower, fellow Kiwi cat-hater Gareth Morgan and others who harbor an irrational and ill-advised hatred of tiny animals who are simply behaving the way nature designed them to behave.
What we do know is that managing cat populations can be done, but it’s difficult, time-consuming work that requires dedication and patience.
Cities like Washington, D.C., with its exhaustive cat count, and communities across the US have provided the blueprint with TNR efforts and a mass push for all pet owners to spay and neuter their cats. The results have been remarkable, and shelters save more than a million felines a year compared to just a decade ago. There’s still work to be done to bring the number of euthanizations down to zero.
Gower
It’s also worth noting that the organizers of the North Canterbury Hunting Competition and supporters like Gower are coming from a place of ignorance. In their original, now-deleted announcement, the organizers offered a “guide” to telling the difference between feral and pet cats, unaware that they are the same species. The only difference is that pet cats are fortunate enough to have homes, and strays and ferals do not.
The group said it was offering its “guide” as a way to prevent children from killing pet cats, but how exactly would they do that when a pet is indistinguishable from a colony stray or a feral? Would they find a microchip on the corpse of a cat they killed and say “Oops, guess that one doesn’t count!”?
Does a cat somehow feel less if it doesn’t have a home? Is its life worth less if it doesn’t have a collar and eat from a bowl?
It’s barbaric and so poorly thought-out, it really boggles the mind that the idea of a cat-killing competition for kids was voiced, let alone approved, planned and promoted by supposed adults.
As for the contest itself, we’re very glad it’s been called off, even if the organizers want to play victim and say their feelings have been hurt by the response to their murderous event.
That, however, doesn’t solve the problem. The fact that the organizers thought this was a good idea in the first place, and the increasingly pitched rhetoric from the likes of Gower and Morgan, are normalizing the idea of slaughtering innocent animals who have their own minds, thoughts and feelings, and who have been shaped by 10,000 years of history to live with and depend on humans.
Instead of calling for blood and whipping people into a frenzy, influential New Zealanders should read about cats and animal cognition in general, so they’re aware that felines experience the full range of primary and secondary emotions and are very much capable of suffering the same way we do when we’re injured, stressed and our lives are in danger.
That, unlike claims that cats are primarily responsible for the decline in bird populations, is hard scientific fact. We can peer into the brains of felines, watch their neurons fire, see different brain regions light up as they think specific thoughts and respond to specific smells and sights.
Maybe if people who hate cats understand what they are, they’ll feel some empathy for a beautiful species, animals who have been companions and literal life savers to humans since before deepest antiquity, animals whose lives have intrinsic value regardless of what they mean to us. At the very least, we owe them that.
The protesting felines, tired of being cast as villains, demanded “cuddlier representation” in movies and TV.
LOS ANGELES — Marching in a broad circle outside the Universal Studios headquarters on Monday, a group of about 200 cats demanded “more cuddly representation” in television and film.
The felid contingent included house cats, pumas, bobcats, tigers, lions, leopards and even a few jaguars, each holding signs with messages like “Cats are more than claws!” and “Stop The Stereotyping!”
“What do we want?” a house cat shouted into a megaphone.
“Cuddlier representation!” the crowd of cats shouted.
“When do we want it!”
“After our nap!” they replied in unison.
Monday’s protest was prompted by Universal Studios’ 2022 thriller, Beast, but protest organizer Buddy the Cat said the felid group was protesting “decades of tropes and injustices committed against cats by Hollywood and TV.” Examples include the undead cat in Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, the rampaging lion in Dutch horror-comedy film Prey (called Uncaged in the US), the many murderous felids in the CBS series Zoo, and Jackson Galaxy’s My Cat From Hell.
“We’re tired of always being cast as villains while dogs are the heroes. Take a cat like me, for instance,” Buddy told a reporter. “It’s easy to mistake me, with my razor sharp claws and ripped physique, for a threat to humans. But really I’m just a cuddly little guy who likes chin scratches.”
Linus, a 14-year-old Bengal tiger who starred as Richard Parker in the 2012 hit Life of Pi, said he was a young actor who didn’t know better when he agreed to portray the threatening antagonist.
“Now that I’m older and I have all this Frosted Flakes money coming in, I can be picky about the roles I accept and only choose movies I think will be Grrreat!” he told an interviewer. “But what about the next young tiger, or the jaguar fresh off the boat from the Amazon, who doesn’t have the power to tell the director a certain scene is offensive?”
Linus also took issue with the script, in which the writers have him refusing to share fish with Pi.
“Did you see the boat? It was filled with fish! What am I, some sort of glutton who’s gonna eat 200 pounds of fish while the human starves?” Linus asked, bewildered. “I mean, according to Hollywood we’re angry, dangerous, murderous criminals and we stuff our faces all the time. No wonder people are scared of us!”
Prey, also known as Uncaged, depicts an angry lion rampaging through Amsterdam and eating pretty much everyone.
Beast stars British actor Idris Elba and tells the story of a widowed medical doctor who takes his two daughters to South Africa, where they stay with a family friend and embark on a tour of the native wildlife.
Unbeknownst to them, an adult male lion is on a rampage after a team of poachers entered the reserve the previous night and slaughtered his entire pride. While Elba’s character, his two daughters and his friend (Sharlto Copley) explore the reserve, they discover the mutilated remains of an entire village’s population and eventually come face to face with the murderous lion.
“What’s all this barney, then?” Elba said when asked about the felid protest. “Well that’s unfortunate, innit, mate? I played a tiger in The Jungle Book, a proper tiger. I love cats.”
The actor, who rocketed to fame off the strength of his portrayals of Stringer Bell in American police drama The Wire, the title character in British detective thriller Luther, as well as major roles in franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Star Trek reboot movies and science fiction action-adventure Pacific Rim, said he’s taken the cat’s criticism to heart.
“Buddy’s a good bloke,” says Elba, pictured with his feline friend.
“Me and me mate Buddy, we like to grab a pint on the regular, d’ya know what I mean?” Elba said. “This tosh with the movies, it’s gotta stop. Me mate Buddy is a good bloke, innit? So if he says Hollywood has to have more positive portrayal of cats, then that’s what we’ll do.”
In addition to their negative portrayal in films, which felids likened to the offensive portrayal of Italian-Americans as mafia figures, many cats cried foul at the idea that one of their kind would harm the beloved South African actor Sharlto Copley.
“That’s a very offensive portrayal,” said Chonkmatic the Magnificent, King of All Cats. “Sharlto Copley is the guy who made District 9, about aliens who eat cat food. Everyone knows cats love District 9. We wouldn’t lay a claw on Sharlto!”
Pain In The Bud 