Here a woman on Facebook, “CircuitCindy” designs and manufactures a treat-dispensing slot machine for her cat, who catches on quickly. My only question is whether the machine dispenses treats on every pull, regardless of whether the three designs match.  If it does, then the cat will become addicted to gambling.

This is one talented woman, and you can see her website here. Her self ID is this:

Cindy explains in this video that there was a huge demand for these machines (of course), and if you want one you can put your name on a waitlist/information list by clicking on the screenshot below and then clicking on “notify me”.  I’ve signed up, though I don’t have a cat; I will let readers know any updates.

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This article comes from The Washington Post, and reports on a poor kitten stuck in a car’s grille. It was disovered. . . well, I’ll put an excerpt below. Click on screenshot to read:

An excerpt:

On a sweltering day, an unusual call came into Central Iowa Towing and Recovery: A tiny kitten was trapped inside the grille of a car that was in line at a drive-through, and the cat seemed to be suffering.

“I’ve never gotten a call like that in my life,” said Jordan McKnight, 38, an employee at the tow company in Ames.

McKnight and his co-worker Cole Denning rushed to Scooter’s Coffee on July 27 and found people crowded around a car. A woman was in the drive-through line, they said, and after placing her coffee order, said she heard an animal crying from inside her car. She looked around and realized a tiny cat somehow was stuck behind the front grille of her Honda.

“You could hear the cat crying out,” said Kathy Pike, an animal services officer with Ames Animal Shelter, who arrived at the scene after a Scooter’s employee called and reported the situation. “We didn’t know how to get it out. I tried to crawl under and figure out where this little thing got into the small spot.”

A group of people waiting at the drive-through gathered around the car, trying to figure out how to free the cat. The driver of the car, who did not reply to an interview request from The Washington Post, told Pike the cat was not hers, and she did not know how the animal could have gotten into the body of her car.

. . .But they were running out of time to save the cat, who was panting and holding out her bright-red tongue.

“I was almost certain it was not going to make it,” Pike said, noting the 96-degree temperature that day that felt like 118 degrees with the humidity.

Pike was able to get only a few fingers through the grille before deciding she needed help. She called Central Iowa Towing and Recovery, figuring the front of the car would need to be taken apart.

“We rushed over,” Denning said.

Denning and McKnight raised the front of the car off the ground to get a better look underneath.

“We both came to the conclusion that the only possible way to get her out was to disassemble the whole front clip of the car,” McKnight said.

They worked quickly, removing panels around the hood and headlights, until there was enough of an opening for Denning to reach in and scoop the cat out. It took about 15 minutes to free the kitten.

Pike drenched the cat in water to cool her down and brought her directly to the vet.

“I wanted to get her as quickly as possible to the medical experts,” she said.

. . .The kitten, believed to be about 2 months old, is a domestic shorthair. She had a fever and a blister on one paw but was otherwise well after the rescue. She weighs just under two pounds.

Pike named her “Fika,” a Swedish word that describes a coffee break. She thought it was a fitting name.

“We all took a break from our lives to help this animal in need, and it was related to coffee,” she said.

Fika is being cared for at the Ames Animal Shelter and has become a favorite among staff.

Fika is okay, and there was a rush to adopt her. Here’s a news report showing the kitten.

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here

From nicenews.com, we have another area besides Turkey where the residents are cat lovers. This time it’s Dubrovnik, a lovely town in Croatia that I visited in 1972.  Here’s an article and some videos below.

An excerpt:

Coastal Dubrovnik in southeastern Croatia was originally founded over 1,400 years ago, but one demographic that’s been there for centuries had nothing to do with its incorporation. The city is home to a thriving stray cat community, and likely has been since the Middle Ages.

Today, photos of Dubrovnik’s felines are all over social media, and there’s an entire souvenir store dedicated to them in the ancient seaport. Locals and visitors can even take part in the SOS Dubrovnik Cat Safari 2026 this summer, a campaign encouraging people to snap pics of the kitties and share them online. Five winning shots will be selected for a charity postcard collection, with proceeds supporting an animal rescue that helps care for the cats.

But even before they were tourist attractions, the city’s cats played a very important role in its prosperity: pest control. While hard facts about their history are hard to find online, locals refer to the four-legged mainstays as Dubrovnik’s “oldest citizens,” suggesting they were brought there around the 13th century to hunt rats, which were believed to carry the bubonic plague and other diseases.

Indeed, a medieval manuscript from Dubrovnik marked with inky, feline paw prints made headlines over a decade ago. Photographed in 2011 by then-graduate student Emir O. Filipović, the manuscript dates back to the 1400s — capturing a cat quite literally “walk[ing] through history,” as National Geographic put it.

The cats now stick primarily to Dubrovnik’s Old Town, a seafront neighborhood largely encircled by medieval walls that once fortified it against attacks. Visitors list the Church of the Holy Annunciation, a Serbian Orthodox church at the center of the neighborhood, as a prime spot to see them, though they can also be found near restaurant doorways and lounging around the harbor.

, . .“They are very patient and rarely beg; they know that a small fish is usually coming their way as a ‘tax’ for their presence,” reads a post by local company Cava Tours.

Residents care for the kitties, and SOS Dubrovnik Cats, which is based outside of Croatia, assists from afar. The organization collects donations and arranges for medical care and foster homes where injured cats can recuperate.

Here are a few videos about Dubrovnik’s cats from social media. Sound up on all of them

@sightsofsara

come visit the cats of Dubrovnik! #croatia #cats #travel

♬ Love You So – The King Khan & BBQ Show

Click on the screenshot to go to the Instagram page, and put the sound up:

@beautiful.croatiaa

It’s part of Croatian culture /‘fee-yah-kuh’/ 💆🏻‍♀️ Credit @l.zux #nijelako #dubrovnik #summerindubrovnik #croatia #fjaka #uvalalapad #dubrovniklapad #lapadarea #hrvatska #hrvatskadubrovnik #catsofinstagram #catsofdubrovnik #catsdubrovnik #fyp

♬ original sound – beautiful.croatiaa

Finally, lots of lagnaippe today—four items, to be exact. Click on screenshots to go to the originals, but these aren’t videos.

An ancient standoff:

And a ham-guarding moggy:

From Facebook with the caption:

A classic milk bar in Krakow, one of the old canteen-style spots, has a cat named Pierog who patrols the room like a floor manager and sits at the end of the counter watching the pierogi go out. He does not beg. He inspects.

The staff hung a small hand-written Polish sign by the register that reads: “The cat is on duty.” Regulars say he has a route – counter, then the window table, then back – and that he does it in the same order every day. He has never been fed at the counter, on principle, and disapproves of everyone who tries.

Below: from Fat Cat Art with the following caption:

The famous Belle Époque ad poster of a black cat sipping absinthe was created in 1902 by the renowned industrial designers Mourgue Frères (brothers) for the Bourgeois distillery in the French town of Pontarlier. They say there was no absinthe in the glass, but milk, to make the cat pose for the poster. The artwork was so popular that it is used as decoration in many bars and homes till nowadays. The story behind the poster is a hilarious cat art story. The cat’s surroundings are heavily based on a painting by Charles Maine, a local artist of the Pontarlier region. Maine’s painting depicted a table with an absinthe bottle, a decanter of water, glasses, and a folded copy of a Pontarlier newspaper. The painting was very popular and used for Émile Pernot distillery advertising. Evidently, Mourgue Frères, ironically remade the painting, including the cat, to beat the Bourgeois distillery’s competitors! And they succeeded with their art, which became much more popular than the original painting. Cats make everything better!

Interesting that you can still find the cat in advertising, but now on their former competitor’s heirs, Les Fils d’Émile Pernot’s absinthe bottle label

h/t: Ginger K., Loretta

Okay we’ll have a Caturday this week, but we’ll see about forthcoming weeks. If you have a cat-related item for me to consider, by all means send it along.

First, we have an eight-minute video of a real “cat lady”, who has over a thousand moggies. She’s turned her house into a sanctuary/rescue center/adoption center, so that’s not so “crazy.” They’ve saved 28,000 cats.

You can read more about “The Cat House on the Kings” by clicking on the link below:

Here’s a seven-minute video of a day in the life of the Cat House on the Kings:

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As you must know by now, Larry the Cat, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, turned nineteen, and has been at 10 Downing Street for 15 years, serving under seven Prime Ministers. Still he abides. Here’s a video of Larry “causing mischief,” though not everything it shows is “mischief”.

And here’s a short video of Larry chasing a rather emaciated fox from Downing Street. He may be a poor mouser and bad at catching birds, but he’s good at chasing off d*gs and other canids.

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Now it’s time to learn some cat evolution by reading about Proailurus, the earliest known “true cat” (i.e., an animal placed in the family Felidae). We find its fossils from about 30 million years ago, and you can read about it in this article by Will Newton from Discover Wildlife. It may have been the common ancestor of all cats today, but I consider that unlikely; it was probably related to the ancestor of all living felids, but finding THE “missing cat link” would be nearly impossible. But it does show us what a very early felid was like.

Click the screenshot to read.

A few excerpts (indented):

What was Proailurus?

Proailurus is an extinct cat that lived in Europe and Asia from the Late Oligocene (30 million years ago) to the Early Miocene (25 million years ago). It’s widely considered to be the first ‘true’ cat and the ancestor of the entire cat family, which includes everything from extinct sabre toothed cats to living lions, tigers, and leopards.

Proailurus is known from three different species, two of which – P.lemanensis and P.bourbonnensis – were roughly the size as a house cat, weighing in at 7-10kg. The third species, P.major, is thought to have been more than twice as large, but it’s only known from a single specimen and, as a result, is shrouded in mystery.

What did Proailurus look like?

Looking somewhat like a miniature cougar, Proailurus had a lengthy, low-slung back, relatively short limbs and a long, flexible tail. These features suggest it lived an arboreal lifestyle, hunting, resting, and perhaps even playing high up in the tree canopy. It may have also hunted on the ground, just like the modern Geoffroy’s cat (Leopardus geoffroyi).

This bodyplan and arboreal behaviour bears remarkable similarity to the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox) – a cat-like predator found only on Madagascar.

. . . Where did Proailurus live?

The first remains of Proailurus were described in 1879 by French naturalist Henri Filhol who found a handful of small, cat-like fossils at a site in Saint-Gérand-le-Puy, Central France.

Since this discovery in the late 19th century, fossils of Proailurus have been unearthed in neighbouring Spain and Germany and, surprisingly, Mongolia. This suggests Proailurus had a very wide range and occupied a niche that had very few, if any major competitors.

Several fossils believed to belong to Proailurus, or at least a Proailurus-like animal, have been found in North America, including the famous Ginn Quarry cat. This specimen is represented by a complete skull, which has dentition very similar to the type species (P.lemanensis) originally described by Filhol.

The jury’s still out on whether the Ginn Quarry cat was truly a Proailurus, but its discovery suggests that cats – or at least cat-like animals – had already dispersed from Eurasia into North America, establishing a lineage that, millions of years later, would give rise to some of the largest cats that ever lived.

What did Proailurus originate from?

Proailurus is widely considered the first ‘true’ cat and the basal member of a family known as Felidae. This furry family is nestled within a larger mammalian order known as Carnivora, which includes everything from cats and dogs, to bears,mustelids, hyenas, and seals.

The origins of Carnivora can be traced back to the Early Eocene, roughly 52 million years ago and just 12 million years after the extinction event that wiped the non-avian dinosaurs from the face of the Earth.

The earliest carnivorans would have resembled small weasels or genets and, like many living carnivorans, would have likely been nocturnal. From these small, stealthy predators, two large sub-groups emerged: the feliforms and the caniforms.

While the caniforms diversified into an astonishing array of shapes and lifestyles (just look at how different skunks are from walruses, for example), the feliforms largely retained a sleek, agile body plan and exhibited far less diversity in terms of their morphology, diet, and behaviour.

And it’s from Feliformia that Proailurus, and its lineage Felidae, eventually emerged 30 million years ago.

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Lagniappe: Several items today, starting with this Facebook entry about a cat image being used to sell gin (see the text below the photo):

I’ve often shown medieval images of cats, asserting that for some reason artists of that era simply couldn’t draw even a decent moggy. Here’s a FB video showing some pathetic attempts to paint or draw cats. You can see more here and even more in the panoply of hilarious images at the Google Search page for “medieval cat paintings.”

This statue of Alice in Wonderland was photographed by Jean Greenberg in Central Park.  It shows two cats: Alice’s cat “Dinah” on her leg and the Cheshire Cat over her shoulder (see below).

h/t: Jean G., Ginger K.

We have three cat-related items today, and a bit of lagniappe.

From Facebook’s F’d Up Facts (note that the image is AI):

And the information attached to it:

At the Glenturret whiskey distillery in Scotland, there was a cat named Towser. She was a long-haired tortoiseshell. Her job was to keep the place free of mice.  She did her job very well. In fact, she was the best mouser in the world. Over 24 years, she is believed to have killed 28,899 mice. That’s about 3 mice every day for her entire career. The Guinness Book of Records officially recognizes her record. She became a legend in the distillery. A statue was even put up to h…

I found this video on Facebook (below) and investigated further:

It’s the story of a cat named Riley who became the “village cat” of the town of Ambleside in Cumbria, and was so beloved that she’s remembered with a statue.  You can see the story at the BBC article below (archived here) and at the Westmoreland Gazette site (second headline).  Click screenshots to read the story of Riley.

From the BBC:

A statue has been unveiled of cat found in a snowstorm and later adopted by a town.

Riley, who died in January, was discovered in Ambleside, Cumbria, in 2011 and became a regular face there over the years.

More than £4,000 was raised to create the bronze figure as a way to remember her.

It was made by Cumbrian artist David Cemmick, and will be located in Millans Park, in the spot where she spent most of her time lying in the sun.

Laszlo Papp, who organised the online fundraiser, said: “She never really went into anyone’s home, she was no-one’s pet but also everyone’s”.

He said she was found on an “especially cold day” and he thought she had been abandoned.

Because she was “only little”, he felt sorry for her and started to feed her.

He added tourists and locals all looked after Riley, and it was a “big sadness for everyone” when she died.

A photo of Riley and her bronze statue credited to Laszlo Papp:

From the Gazette:

The statue will be unveiled on the garden wall of No1 Millans Park, which is where she used to sit, and people would visit her.

There will also be a blue plaque commemoration. The unveiling will be at midday on June 21.

Riley was known by other names in the community, such as the Millans Park Cat and The Dodd’s Cat.

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The YouTube site Latent Creations has several AI-generated cat songs, and we’ve featured one before. Here’s a new one about someone stepping in fresh cat poop; it’s called “You stepped in it.” It must take a lot of work to do this; note that the cat mouths the lyrics properly. (All cat owners are familiar with this experience—either that or stepping in cat vomit.)

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Here’s another beloved cat who recently passed away: this one, a long-haired orange tomcat, died at 19. Curiously, Nutmeg loved to hang out in the local CVS store (an American pharmacy chain).  An evil local tried to get Nutmeg booted out of the store, but I gather it didn’t work.

You can read Nutmeg’s story by clicking the headline below from The Oregonian:

From the paper:

A beloved cat who was dubbed the “unofficial mayor of Sellwood” has died, his owner said.

In a Saturday Facebook post, Gabi Moore, the owner of Nutmeg, a cat known for frequenting the CVS at Southeast 17th Avenue and Tacoma Street, wrote that the 19-year-old feline had died.

“He led a beautiful, full life, and he’ll forever be remembered by so many people who got to know him and love him,” Gabi Moore wrote

In a Saturday phone call with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Gabi Moore said that she and her husband, Joe, were glad that they could spend Nutmeg’s last years with him.

“It means a lot to us that we were able to give him his retirement life,” Gabi Moore said. “He really fulfilled his purpose in his life here by touching the lives of so many people.”

In May, community members rallied around the elderly cat after someone filed a complaint against Nutmeg with CVS’ corporate offices. Residents circulated a petition in support of their furry friend and sent messages to the pharmacy chain’s customer-service team online.

Age-wise, Nutmeg was literally off the charts. A cat age chart on Chewy.com, an online retailer of pet supplies, tops out at 16, which the site says translates to about 87 for a human. At 19, Nutmeg would’ve been pushing 100.

Nutmeg’s fans mourned his passing in the comments on Moore’s post.

“Devastating news, but grateful to have known this incredible feline who captured the hearts of the neighborhood,” Catherine Pollock-Robinson wrote.

Angela Thompson wrote that she was one of the residents who wrote CVS customer service in support of Nutmeg.

“I was proud to see Nutmeg at my visits. Always gave me a positive purpose for picking up yet another Rx to chase my failing body’s needs,” Thompson wrote. “Our precious animal babies provide us with an elevated life experience and must be honored.”

Elise Friedrich wrote that she met Nutmeg for the first time two weeks ago while out on a walk.

“I had seen so many posts about him on this group and he definitely lived up to the hype. So friendly and enchanting. Walked right up to greet us as we approached the CVS block,” Friedrich wrote. “Thank you for your service, Mr. Mayor, you will be truly missed.”

Here’s a news report about Nutmeg:

The customer who claimed about Nutmeg is BAD. Nutmeg loved being inside, and was even considered an employee.  I have no patience for the complainer.

An earlier video about Nutmeg, made when he was still alive.

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Lagniappe:  This is true, and you can read some of Li You’s cat poems here.

Here’s one poem translated by by writer Xiran Jay Zhao:

h/t: Marion

From Cats.com we have a list of world records set by cats. And you know they’re right because they’re validated by Guinness!

Click below to see the records. I’ll present five, and go to the site to see the rest:

Excerpts (indented):

Ludo, a cat who lives in the UK, measures an astonishing 3 feet and 10.6 inches long [JAC: 118.33 cm]! Not surprisingly, he is a Maine Coon, a breed of larger cats. Ludo made the Guinness World Records 2017 Edition. Kelsey Gill of Wakefield, England, got the Maine Coon after she fell in love with the big tabby cats in the Harry Potter movies.

Ludo, a Maine Coon who lives with his owner Kelsey Gill in Wakefield, UK, is the Longest domestic cat (living), measuring an astonishing 118.33 cm

And a video of Ludo (the Guinness verification is here):

Another:

In June 2020, a super-smart tortoiseshell named Alexis in Austria performs 26 tricks – including a high five, waving paws, and shaking her head – in one minute! The cat’s owner, Anika Moritz, said she started training the cat just a few weeks after she got her as a kitten. You can watch Alexis in action here and read Moritz’ story about training with positive reinforcement.

The Guinness record is here, and below you can see Alexis doing her repertoire, though some of the tricks look dubious!

This is a good one:

It’s anyone’s guess how the cat and owner pulled this bizarre one off: Bibi, a white and black domestic shorthair cat in Malaysia, carried 10 stacked dice on a steady paw for at least a few seconds in 2017. Bibi’s human, Siew Lianchui, must have done some funky training to make this happen.

The Guinness record is here.  And here’s Bibi holding cards. (Is he anesthetized?)

Finally, a long-jumping moggy:

Under the training of Melissa Arleth, an American cat named Sputnik jumped 7 feet 6 inches on the set of the show Lo Show Dei Record in Milan, Italy. That happened recently – in February 2024. That’s quite a leap!

The Guinness record is here, and adds this:

Oscar is owner by Theodore Shiells (USA). He is a 7 year old rescue cat and was only given a 50:50 chance of survival when they took him in.

He’s described as a very smart cat who likes learning tricks. Theodore started training him to jump two years ago, and they were eventually able to beat the previous record by over 25 cm!

And here’s Sputnik performing in the Cirque du Sewer:

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I found this on Bluesky and wanted it to be real.  I checked around and, despite accusations, could find nothing definite. Until an hour ago, when I found what’s below the meme.

I would kill or die for Larry

— Jon Phillips (@jowiph.bsky.social) 2026-07-03T22:50:21.122Z

From Grok:

The post comes from the Cat Overlords Facebook page (posted July 2, 2026) and includes a funny text graphic/meme that basically says:
“TRUFFLE DOG FINDS THE TRUFFLES — ‘TRAINEE’ CAT DIGS RANDOM HOLES AND FINDS DIRT.”

facebook.com

It’s pure cat energy: zero clue what the actual job is, but 100% committed to looking busy and important.Why It’s Going Viral

• Thousands of reactions (mostly “Haha”), hundreds of shares.
• People are loving it in the comments — calling Larry the emotional support cat, the team supervisor, the spore-spreader for next year’s crop, or just “emphatically on the team” no matter what the handler says.
• It’s spreading to X/Twitter, Mastodon, Reddit, etc., with people sharing the same story and adding their own jokes.

This isn’t a breaking story from major news outlets (yet) — it’s classic wholesome internet cat content based on a real (or at least very convincingly told) anecdote from an Oregon truffle hunter.No widely available photos or videos of the actual Larry in action turned up in searches (just the text post + meme graphic), but the mental image of a confident cat aggressively digging useless holes while the dog does the real work is comedy gold.Want me to dig deeper for any updates, related truffle-hunting videos, or similar cat chaos stories? Just say the word!

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A reader sent this, and I liked the song, which is clearly AI-generated. I can has music? Ladies and gentlement, brothers and sisters, and comrades: “Dead Mouse Delivery”:

Normally, I avoid AI posts. This one is true and funny to me. Cat sings about gifting his ungrateful human.
Enjoy! 🤭 pic.twitter.com/hAS0s3kSbH

— Bluegrasspatriot (@kylawndog) July 8, 2026

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Lagniappe: If you don’t recognize this, go here.

More Lagniappe: A Pennsylvania library with five cats on its staff, from FB. All libraries and bookstores should have resident cats; for some reason, cats and books go together. You can see a lot more about these cats, including Princess Buttercup, at the Cupboard Maker Books site.

Even MORE lagniappe!:

h/t: Nicole, Merilee, Su

There’s little doubt that the richest cat in the world was Choupette, the pampered and beloved blue-cream Birman cat owned by fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.  She was reported to have earned $3 million in one year alone, and, as the Atlantic article below notes, she had all her needs met—and more, until Lagerfeld died in 2019. First, here’s the pair from an Instagram post (click on screenshot to go to it). I don’t think she’s broke: read the Atlantic piece.

Click below to see the archived article; excerpts are indented:

More than seven years later, here is what is known for certain about the details of Lagerfeld’s will and estate: nothing. (Under French law, such matters are not made public.) But plenty has been rumored. Various figures close to Lagerfeld have been suggested as beneficiaries, including several male models and fashion executives, his bodyguard, his housekeeper, and the princess of Monaco. Even so, from the start, one improbable name has stood out: Choupette, Lagerfeld’s blue-cream Birman cat.

In the years before he died, Lagerfeld often spoke in extraordinary ways about the role Choupette played in his life. Listen to just a fraction of his avowals: “I never thought that I could fall in love with an animal like this.” “She is the center of the world. If you saw her, you would understand. She is kind of Greta Garbo.” “She has lunch and dinner with me, on the table, with her own dishes. She never touches my food. She would never eat on the floor.” “I have only one great love, my cat, Choupette.” And, ruefully, “There is no marriage, yet, for human beings and animals.”

The first public window into this change in Lagerfeld’s life came not long [after 2011], when a friend of his posted a picture of Choupette sitting wistfully in Lagerfeld’s apartment, next to what appears to be a full bathtub, an arrangement of several dozen roses arching over her. By that summer, Lagerfeld was explaining in interviews that Choupette was “like a kept woman”; that she had “two personal maids, for both night and day—she is beyond spoiled”; and that these maids, aside from their other duties, were charged with writing down every detail of Choupette’s behavior when he wasn’t around so that he might know what he had missed: “Everything she did, from what she ate, to how she behaved, if she was tired, and if she wasn’t sleeping.” Already, Lagerfeld declared, there were 600 pages of such documentation.

Choupette’s fame swiftly grew, and Lagerfeld routinely extolled the extravagance of his cat’s day-to-day life: how she ate chef-prepared meals off the best china, traveled by private jet, appeared with models on magazine covers, and starred in advertising campaigns. Lagerfeld proclaimed her the most famous cat in the world, and declared that her advertising work had made her independently wealthy. “She has her own fortune from things she did,” he stated. “She’s a rich girl!”

According to Lagerfeld, in 2014 alone, Choupette earned more than $3 million from campaigns for Opel Corsa cars and Shu Uemura’s Shupette makeup line. That same year came a book, Choupette: The Private Life of a High-Flying Fashion Cat, including photos, biographical tidbits, and details of Choupette’s beauty regimen. A second book, Choupette by Karl Lagerfeld, 53 photos of Choupette taken by the designer on his iPhone, followed in 2018.

Once he adopted her, few Lagerfeld interviews failed to include testimony to Choupette’s outsize role in his life, albeit clearly one that reflected his own particular tastes and needs. “She’s peaceful, funny, fun, graceful, she’s pretty to look at, and she has a great gait,” he’d explain, “but her main quality is that she doesn’t speak. It was love at first sight.”

Then reality intervened. Lagerfeld had learned he had cancer several years before his death in a Paris hospital on February 19, 2019, but this was information he had shared with almost no one. To ensure that Choupette was properly taken care of after he was gone, he designated his housemaid Françoise Caçote, who had long been the cat’s primary lady-in-waiting (and diarist), as her ongoing caretaker. During Lagerfeld’s last days, she surreptitiously brought Choupette to his hospital room. Once, not long before Lagerfeld’s death, Choupette caused great panic by disappearing, feared lost in the wider hospital, until her tail was spotted sticking out from her hiding place in Lagerfeld’s en suite bathroom.

As the post-death arrangements were made (Lagerfeld would be cremated with a piece of aquamarine jewelry bearing Choupette’s likeness), the media speculation about Lagerfeld’s estate began. The narrative that this involved Choupette had been primed by Lagerfeld himself, who had referred to how, should he die first, Choupette would be lavishly provided for. Although some reports that week allowed that any bequest to Choupette was, as yet, unconfirmed, a fair few were more absolute—led, as many such narratives are, by the British press, even its supposedly more respectable sectors. Their cumulative message was clear: “A cat belonging to the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died on Tuesday, is reportedly in line to receive up to $300m (£230m) of his estate” (The Telegraph); “Karl Lagerfeld’s cat, Choupette, may be set to inherit some of his £150 million fortune” (the Daily Express); “Karl Lagerfeld’s cat Choupette is reportedly set to inherit some of the formidable fashion designer’s £150m fortune” (the Independent).

The rest of the article—and it is a long one—deals with settling Lagerfeld’s estate (still unsettled because of French tax complications) and detailing what Choupette is doing: mostly occasional ads that punctuate her usual napping. The article is full of photos of the eccentric Lagerfeld and Choupette, so have a look.

Lagerfeld used Choupette’s image in his own products, and here are three photos I took of Choupette-y Lagerfeld products on offer at a fancy department store (Galeries Lafayette) in Paris in 2018:

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If you know anything about famous American cats, you’ll know about a cat named “Room 8” after a classroom the cat entered and inhabited for 16 years. Here’s an introduction from Wikipedia, but there are videos and more information below:

Room 8 (c. 1947 – August 13, 1968) was a cat who became a celebrity for attending Elysian Heights Elementary School in Echo Park, California, United States. He wandered in through a window in 1952 and quickly made himself at home in Room 8, where he joined class for the next 16 years. Room 8 vanished each summer and reappeared in the fall when students returned, a routine he kept up until the mid-1960s.

In the 1960s, Room 8 became world famous. Beverly Mason, the school principal, said in a 1968 newspaper story: “He disappeared all summer, but the minute school started, the day the first bell rang, down the street he’d come. On the first day of school, every newspaper and television station in town showed up at the crack of dawn to watch this cat appear from out of the hills.”

A short from Jen,  Good News Girl:

More about Room 8 from Purr-n-Furr (click screenshot to read). It’s a good shortish summary with photos:

But if you really want to get into the details about how a feral tabby cat became world famous, and how students competed to get the coveted position of Cat Feeder, there is a 50-minute documentary film, and it’s a really good one:

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And from the Guardian we hear of a recent sighting of a sand cat (Felis margarita) in Libya, where it was not known to exist. Now there’s a short video (below).   Click to read:

An excerpt:

When wildlife photographer Mohammed Almuntasir uploaded 18 seconds of footage to YouTube, he thought little more about the small, pale cat seen digging a hollow in the sand in the remote dunes of south-west Libya.

The video, however, posted in 2017, turned out to be the first material evidence that the sand cat (Felis margarita), the world’s only felid adapted to true desert conditions, existed in the country.

“When I posted it, nobody believed it had been filmed in Libya,” he said. “Everyone denied it, but I kept insisting that the cat is here, in several places; one of them was only 70km (43 miles) from Zintan, where I live.”

Nearly a decade later there is increasing evidence that this was not just one sand cat but that south-western Libya may represent a previously unrecognised stronghold for the species. The sand cat is no bigger than a domestic cat and its sandy colour means it is almost impossible to spot in the terrain it inhabits, earning it the nickname “ghost of the desert”.

Almuntasir did not actively circulate his film of the cat, but it drew attention on its own, prompting numerous researchers to contact him over the years, including Firas Hayder, a zoologist specialising in small carnivores and a postdoctoral researcher at Sol Plaatje University in South Africa.

. . . Their efforts culminated in a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Arid Environments in February 2026 documenting the sand cat at 13 sites across the Libyan Sahara, as well as the Saharan striped polecat at eight new locations, seven of them outside the species’ recognised IUCN range. A high proportion of sand cat sightings, 15 out of 36, were concentrated in Wadi Armet, an isolated valley roughly 1,000km south-west of Tripoli.

. . .“This valley is incredibly vast,” Almuntasir says. “More than half of it remains unexplored because of how rugged the terrain is. Animals migrate there in summer because of the water. Many of them come from the Tassili n’Ajjer reserve on the other side of the Algerian border.”

The findings suggest that the species is more widespread and in better condition in Libya than previously believed, and that the country’s south-west may represent a strong refuge for desert-adapted species. The sand cat is one of a number of mammals considered threatened in Libya, including the cheetah, dama gazelle and sand gerbil.

. . .Because sand cats feed primarily on rodents such as jerboas, as well as venomous snakes and scorpions, they have an important role to play in preventing cascading damage to the limited vegetation that sustains desert ecosystems

“All Libyans should be involved in conservation efforts,” says Hayder. “They need to feel a sense of responsibility, that these species represent their environment and represent their country.”

Here’s the dispositive video showing the kitty getting some shade (and a scratch):

And here’s the distribution of the sand cat from Wikipedia. Notice that it doesn’t include Libya, but that should now be changed:

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Lagniappe: Three  good items today! The first is a satirical take on the oppression of moggies:

Extra lagnaippe! A cat who loves “soggy time”: taking a shower!

And a cat in a Ramen shop that has its own stool:

h/t: Matthew, Ginger K.