Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
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.
Mr Papp said he did not realise how many people Riley had touched until he had set up the fundraiser.
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.
********************x
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.)
***********************
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:
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.
********************
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:
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!
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:
********************
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.
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!
Sadly, I just came across this. I should have known. I will try not to post AI stuff here, but the third Caturday item is AI but still funny.
Oh, the fakery! Facebook is rife with AI writing, and I usually stop following anybody who does that.
*******************
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
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.
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:
********************
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:
********************
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:
On May 9, the AP’s odd news site recounted a kitten rescue (click on screenshot to read):
An excerpt:
As storm chaser Ashton Lemley picked his way through a tornado-ravaged Mississippi trailer park, he heard the unmistakable meow of a kitten pierce the predawn darkness.
The homes were flattened just hours earlier as storms spawned at least three tornadoes across the bottom half of Mississippi, injuring a dozen at the trailer park in the rural community of Bogue Chitto.
Lemley had no idea where the kitten was, but he was determined to find it. After a few minutes, the meowing stopped, and Lemley feared the worst.
Then, five minutes later, he heard it again.
“I said, ‘Oh, he’s still alive!’” Lemley told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Lemley quickly dug under insulation from a flattened wall until his flashlight beam found the kitten — wet, scared and hiding between two wooden posts.
Lemley captured the moment on video: “Oh my goodness, I found him!” he says to the camera. “Are you OK? Come here – it’s OK. … We’ll get you cleaned up, baby. Don’t you worry.”
Lemley held the kitten in his arms for a few minutes before handing it off to the commander of the United Cajun Navy, a volunteer disaster-response group, who dried it off and took it to safety. Lemley marveled that it didn’t appear to be injured.“I’ve been in these situations so many times,” said Lemley, who has been chasing storms since 2010. “I don’t try to get overly emotional. But it is very heartbreaking to see any type of animal or human go through something like that.”
Lemley says there’s already a lot of interest from people who want to adopt the kitten if its owners are not located. Some, he said, want to name it Tornado.
It won’t be coming home with him, though: Lemley is allergic to cats.
Here’s a short video of the rescue. Look at that sodden little moggy! But it will be okay.
********************
From PetHelpful, we have a Tik Tok video and the video notes (indented below).
Little Bear Visits My Bedroom Window
An unexpected guest can make for a delightful surprise, and nothing illustrates this better than when I found a little black bear gazing curiously through my bedroom window. This moment was not only adorable but also a wonderful reminder of the beauty of wildlife right at our doorstep.
Bears are fascinating creatures known for their intelligence and curiosity. When a bear approaches residential areas, it often piques curiosity and concern among homeowners. Observing animals in their natural habitat can lead to valuable insights about their behavior. In this case, Little Bear seemed intrigued by what was happening inside the house, highlighting the need for a peaceful coexistence with wildlife..It’s important to remember that while these encounters can be entertaining, maintaining a safe distance from wild animals is essential for both human and animal safety. Living close to nature offers unique experiences, but it also requires responsibility. If you find yourself in a similar situation, enjoy the moment, take pictures if safe, but avoid feeding or trying to interact directly with wild animals.
In closing, this little bear visiting my window was a charming experience that reminded me of the vibrant wildlife that surrounds us. Have you had any wildlife encounters in your area? Share your stories or tips on safely observing animals in nature!
Here’s a very short video of the cat, safely inside, lashing out with its paw at the bear. Bear heads for the hills!
If you own a cat, you probably know that they can’t taste sweetness in food. This article from Space Daily (click on screenshot) explains why. Well, it’s not rocket science: cats don’t have the rcceptors to taste sweetness. Or rather, they have the genes that allowed their ancestors (and their living mammalian relatives) to taste sweetness, but the genes are broken. (This is, of course, proof of evolution: why else would a cat have genes that function in its relatives, but that are broken in felids?
An excerpt:
Cats are notoriously indifferent to sweet things. Pour syrup near a dog and the dog will investigate. Pour syrup near a cat and the cat will ignore it. Veterinarians and cat-food companies have long noted that cats show no preference for sugar in feeding tests, no matter how much sugar is presented. The reason is not a behavioural quirk or a learned aversion. It is genetic, and it traces back tens of millions of years to the point at which the ancestors of modern cats became obligate carnivores, eating only meat. The gene that produces a working sweet receptor on the tongue, called Tas1r2, has been broken in cats for so long that it no longer functions at all. A cat looking at a sugar cube is in the same sensory position as a human looking at an ultraviolet light source: the signal exists, but the receptor that would detect it does not.
The molecular discovery came in 2005 from a team led by Xia Li and Joseph Brand at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, in collaboration with colleagues at the Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition in the United Kingdom. Their paper in PLOS Genetics, titled “Pseudogenization of a Sweet-Receptor Gene Accounts for Cats’ Indifference toward Sugar,” established that the cat sweet receptor is not just inefficient. It is, at the genetic level, non-functional.
. . . The animals affected included the California sea lion, the southern fur seal, the Pacific harbor seal, the Asian small-clawed otter, the spotted hyena, the fossa (Madagascar’s largest carnivore), and the banded linsang. Crucially, the disabling mutations in each of these species occurred in different places within the Tas1r2 gene, indicating that the losses happened independently in each lineage, not via inheritance from a common ancestor. The same evolutionary pressure that turned off the gene in cats turned it off, separately, in at least seven other carnivorous lineages over the same broad timeframe. Behavioural testing of two of the genotyped species — the Asian small-clawed otter (broken Tas1r2) and the spectacled bear (intact Tas1r2, and predominantly herbivorous despite its order) — confirmed the pattern. The otter showed no preference for sweet compounds. The bear preferred sugars and even some non-caloric sweeteners.
. . . The animals affected included the California sea lion, the southern fur seal, the Pacific harbor seal, the Asian small-clawed otter, the spotted hyena, the fossa (Madagascar’s largest carnivore), and the banded linsang. Crucially, the disabling mutations in each of these species occurred in different places within the Tas1r2 gene, indicating that the losses happened independently in each lineage, not via inheritance from a common ancestor. The same evolutionary pressure that turned off the gene in cats turned it off, separately, in at least seven other carnivorous lineages over the same broad timeframe. Behavioural testing of two of the genotyped species — the Asian small-clawed otter (broken Tas1r2) and the spectacled bear (intact Tas1r2, and predominantly herbivorous despite its order) — confirmed the pattern. The otter showed no preference for sweet compounds. The bear preferred sugars and even some non-caloric sweeteners.
And since people here should know some science, you’ll be able to understand this from the paper’s abstract:
Because the mammalian sweet-taste receptor is formed by the dimerization of two proteins (T1R2 and T1R3; gene symbols Tas1r2 and Tas1r3), we identified and sequenced both genes in the cat by screening a feline genomic BAC library and by performing PCR with degenerate primers on cat genomic DNA. Gene expression was assessed by RT-PCR of taste tissue, in situ hybridization, and immunohistochemistry. The cat Tas1r3 gene shows high sequence similarity with functional Tas1r3 genes of other species. Message from Tas1r3 was detected by RT-PCR of taste tissue. In situ hybridization and immunohistochemical studies demonstrate that Tas1r3 is expressed, as expected, in taste buds. However, the cat Tas1r2 gene shows a 247-base pair microdeletion in exon 3 and stop codons in exons 4 and 6. There was no evidence of detectable mRNA from cat Tas1r2 by RT-PCR or in situ hybridization, and no evidence of protein expression by immunohistochemistry. Tas1r2 in tiger and cheetah and in six healthy adult domestic cats all show the similar deletion and stop codons. We conclude that cat Tas1r3 is an apparently functional and expressed receptor but that cat Tas1r2 is an unexpressed pseudogene. A functional sweet-taste receptor heteromer cannot form, and thus the cat lacks the receptor likely necessary for detection of sweet stimuli. This molecular change was very likely an important event in the evolution of the cat’s carnivorous behavior.
The upshot: tasting sweetness in mammals requires a protein that is a dimer made from the product of two genes. In house cats (and some other carnivores), one of the genes is expressed normally but the other is nonfunctional because of a large deletion of the DNA sequence, so that the dimer itself isn’t formed. Ergo cats can’t detect sweetness, and thus you shouldn’t expect your cats to like sweets (they shouldn’t get them anyway). If your cat licks ice cream, it is tasting not the sweetness but the dairy-ness: fats and proteins. Cheetahs and tigers also lack the dimeric protein.
Why do dogs taste sweetness and cats don’t? Because dogs produce the dimer and cats don’t. Somewhere in the ancestor of all felids, the gene for Tastr2 experienced a deletion. Because all cats are obligate carnivores, and don’t eat stuff like berries, they have no “need” to taste sweetness, so a deleted gene is not a deleterious gene. It just continued to mutate, staying in the DNA but doing nothing.
I suppose d*g ancestors, and mammals like bears and hedgehogs, do benefit from sugar in their diet and so have retained the genes to detect it. (We do, too: sugars were valuable components of the diet in us and our primate relatives, and so our taste chemistry evolved to not only detect sweetness, but also find it pleasurable so that we seek out a needed nutrient. Unfortunately, sugars are much more common now than in the millions of years of our ancestry since we diverged from the chimp/bonobo lineage; and so we eat too many of them and get cavities and grow obese.)
The alternative theory is that God decided to make cats obligate meat-eaters, and so he left out their ability to detect sugar. But that doesn’t work because why would God give cats genes that are very similar to those of their sweetness-tasting relatives, but don’t work? The creation-by-God theory fails, and we’re left only with common ancestry, i.e., evolution.
We have a similar broken gene, as I describe in Why Evolution is True:
The most famous human pseudogene is GLO, so called because in other species it produces an enzyme called L-gulono-γ-lactone oxidase. This enzyme is used in making vitamin C (ascorbic acid) from the simple sugar glucose. Vitamin C is essential for proper metabolism, and virtually all mammals have the pathway to make it—all, that is, except for primates, fruit bats, and guinea pigs. In these species, vitamin C is obtained directly from their food, and normal diets usually have enough. If we don’t ingest enough vitamin C, we get sick: scurvy was common among fruit-deprived seamen of the nineteenth century.
The reason why primates and these few other mammals don’t make their own vitamin C is because they don’t need to. Yet DNA sequencing tells us that primates still carry most of the genetic information needed to make the vitamin.
It turns out that the pathway for making vitamin C from glucose involves a sequence of four steps, each promoted by the product of a different gene. Primates and guinea pigs still have active genes for the first three steps, but the last step, which requires the GLO enzyme, doesn’t take place: GLO has been inactivated by a mutation. It has become a pseudogene, called ¯ψGLO” (ψ is the Greek letter psi, standing for “pseudo”). ψGLO doesn’t work because a single nucleotide in the gene’s DNA sequence is missing. And it’s exactly the same nucleotide that is missing in other primates. This shows that the mutation that destroyed our ability to make vitamin C was present in the ancestor of all primates, and was passed on to its descendants. The inactivation of GLO in guinea pigs happened independently, since it involves different mutations. It’s highly likely that since fruit bats, guinea pigs, and primates got plenty of vitamin C in their diet, there was no penalty for inactivating the pathway that made it. This could even have been beneficial since it eliminated a protein that might have been costly to produce.
A dead gene in one species that is active in its relatives is evidence for evolution, but there’s more. When you look at ψGLO in living primates, you find out that its sequence is more similar between close relatives than between more distant ones. The sequences of human and chimp ψGLO, for example, resemble each other closely, but differ more from the ψGLO of orangutans, which are more distant relatives. What’s more, the sequence of guinea pig ψGLO is very different from that of all primates.
Only evolution and common ancestry can explain these facts.
Inactive pseudogenes that are functional in relatives constitute some of the strongest evidence for evolution, as there is no alternative theory that explains them. The article above alludes to the gene loss being a product of evolution, but doesn’t mention something that I see as crucial given Americans’ reluctance to accept evolution: the nature of the gene loss and the sequence similarity among pseudogenes is strong evidence for evolution.
We have three cat-related items today, the first from the Journal of Chemical Ecology.Click to read it, and after doing so you might consider giving your cats silver vine rather than catnip.
Silver vine (Actinidia polygama) grows in the mountainous areas of NE Asia, and has long been known as a cat attractant. Here’s a photo from Wikipedia labeled, “A silver vine plant with the eponymous silver markings on its leaves.”
Qwert1234 at ja.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Wikipedia says this about its effect on cats. (it has other medicinal and culinary uses for humans):
Silver vine has long been known to elicit euphoric response in cats. The reaction to silver vine is similar to the response to catnip, but appears to be more intense. Silver vine is an alternative to catnip, and many cats that do not react to catnip will respond positively to silver vine powder made from dried fruit galls. Typical behaviors include rolling, chin and cheek rubbing, drooling, and licking. The effect usually lasts between 5 and 30 minutes, but afterwards cats exhibit a refractory period lasting roughly an hour during which they are unresponsive to further dosage.
A study published in January 2021 suggests that felines are specifically attracted to the iridoidsnepetalactol and nepetalactone, present in silver vine and catnip, respectively. The compounds were found to repel mosquitos, and it is hypothesized that rubbing against the plants provides the cats with a chemical coat that protects them against mosquito bites.
That sounds weird but may be true: cats’ behavior may have evolved so that the moggy became attracted to the plant and rubs all over it: those cats who behave this way get fewer mosquito bites. I suspect that’s wrong, though. Do cats get malaria or other reproduction-reducing maladies from mosquitoes?
Here’s a gif from Wikipedia of “A cat under the influence of Actinidia polygama“. It’s baked!
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Here’s the paper’s abstract:
Chemical cues that appear potent in controlled laboratory bioassays do not necessarily function as effective behavioural cues under natural conditions, where animals can freely approach or ignore stimuli. How chemical detectability translates into voluntary behavioural engagement, therefore, remains an important unresolved question. Plant-derived semiochemicals provide a tractable system for examining this issue because the same compounds can be presented either as intact natural sources or as purified chemicals. Domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) show a characteristic self-anointing response to iridoid-producing plants, including catnip (Nepeta cataria) and silver vine (Actinidia polygama), both widely regarded as cat-attractants. Here, we tested whether these plants differ in their ability to induce voluntary engagement under free-choice conditions. Free-roaming cats rarely showed self-anointing behaviour (face-rubbing and rolling) toward intact catnip plants, but consistently engaged with silver vine. The same bias toward silver vine was observed in captive cats presented simultaneously with plant extracts. Chemical analyses confirmed that catnip contained abundant bioactive nepetalactone, indicating that weak responsiveness was not explained by a lack of bioactive compounds. These findings demonstrate that chemical abundance and laboratory bioactivity do not necessarily predict behavioural reliability under natural encounter conditions. Instead, whether a cue consistently elicits voluntary engagement may determine its ecological effectiveness as a behavioural cue.
But can you buy silvervine, and is it dangerous? The answer to the second question is a firm “no”; vets say it is safe and nontoxic. The only dangers are possible ingestion of chew sticks if you buy silvervine in that form, and some stomach upset if the cat ingests too much. Here’s Grok’s summary:
Silvervine comes in safe forms like powder (from the fruit galls), sprays, toys, and the aforementioned sticks. Powder or sprays are often sprinkled on toys, beds, or scratching posts. Some products are designed for light ingestion.In short: Silvervine is one of the safest and most effective plant-based enrichments for cats. It’s widely recommended by vets as a catnip alternative with an excellent safety profile. If your cat has any pre-existing health conditions, it’s always wise to check with your veterinarian before introducing new toys or treats, but for the vast majority of healthy cats, it’s perfectly fine and enjoyable.
As for buying it, Amazon has a gazillion silvervine items on its site, including sticks, powder, and toys. The sticks have another advantage over catnip: they clean the cat’s teeth when it’s chewing them. If you’ve used silver vine, report below, or try them out!
********************
The Good News Girl reports on something that cat cognoscenti have known for a long time: Disneyland is populated by over 200 feral cats recruited to keep the rodent populations down (not Mickey or Minnie, I hope!). Here’s her report, click to hear:
Here’s a longer but good video (6-minutes) explaining the origin of the cats and their care (they get food and veterinary care, and are also trapped and neutered). Kittens or overly familiar cats get adopted out.
***************
Finally, in one Indiana city, at one time seven years ago, you could pay off parking tickets by giving the cops food for cats! I saw this on FB and decided to check it out:
Here’s a 2019 article from the Washington Post about the program, though my investigation showed that this program operated only in Indiana in 2019 and is no longer in practice. In some places, however, you can pay tickets by giving food for homeless people.
An excerpt:
There were too many kittens in the animal shelter, just as there had been last year and the year before that. Like other shelters that swell to capacity during cats’ annual breeding season, Muncie Animal Shelter in Indiana was struggling this summer to meet the need.
“One day I was standing by the counter and somebody brought in six kittens,” said Officer Chase Winkle, a spokesman for the Muncie Police Department. “And before they could get those checked in, somebody came in with another four.”
To ease the pressure, police created a trade-off: For five days in July, people could pay for their parking tickets by donating to the shelter the equivalent value of cat food or litter. Residents who brought their donations to the police chief’s office with a receipt proving the value got their tickets wiped away. A police officer’s daughter works at the shelter and had made the department aware of the organization’s need.
Muncie is among cities across the country that are opting temporarily to accept charitable donations in lieu of monetary payments for parking infractions. From Anchorage, to Woodstock, Va., municipalities are writing off tickets in exchange for school supplies or cat litter — a way to fill a community need while lessening the sting of getting a ticket. Some cities offer a discount to people who pay with a donation, while choosing the donation option in other municipalities simply allows the payer to feel good.
In Muncie, about a dozen people made donations to pay for roughly $600 in parking tickets, Winkle said. Only offenses that didn’t pose a safety hazard counted: Donations couldn’t resolve a moving violation or a ticket for parking in a handicap spot. Most tickets that people paid with donations were worth about $25 each and had been issued for parking too long in a certain zone, Winkle said.
From the CNN article above:
What’s the cost of a parking ticket in Muncie, Indiana? For a few days in July, it was a cat food or supplies donation for a local animal shelter.
In an effort to help the Muncie Animal Care and Services Shelter, the Muncie Police Department asked violators to pay their parking tickets in cat food.
The request came after a couple of officers toured the shelter and found that it was running short on supplies to care for over 350 cats and kittens.
“If you have a $25 parking ticket, you can bring up to $25 worth of cat food or litter to the Clerk’s Office, and you can get your parking ticket to go away with the exchange of the donation,” Officer Jamie Brown said on a July 15 video shared by the police department on Facebook.
Although the offer ran only from July 15 to 19, the department quickly learned that people will do practically anything when little balls of fur are involved.
“This room was almost empty before we started! Most of the folks that donated didn’t even have parking tickets,” Muncie Police said in a tweet with a photo of all the donations.
. . .”I don’t know if the police department plans on doing this again, but we’re incredibly grateful to them and the community. Their response was overwhelming,” Ashley Honeycutt, the shelter’s office manager, told CNN.
I think they need to reinstate this program!
**************************
Lagniappe: A famous cat in a riad (a fancy Moroccan house converted into a boutique hotel). Click on the screenshot to read more,. but I’ve put the whole text below:
A small riad in the Marrakech medina has built a wall display in its entry courtyard out of guest reviews. The reviews are not about the riad. They are about the cat, an orange tabby named Mishmish, who has been working the front gate for about six years.
The owner started noticing the pattern when his bookings began increasing for reasons he could not initially explain. He pulled the reviews.
A representative selection: “Mishmish was very professional.” “Mishmish escorted us to our room and approved.” “The location was good but Mishmish was the highlight of our trip.” “Mishmish let me cry in the courtyard for a long time and did not say anything.”
The owner printed his ten favorites, framed them in cheap wooden frames, and hung them on the wall above the reception desk. Mishmish now sits underneath the display like a portrait subject seated beneath his own gallery.
Booking inquiries now routinely ask whether he will be on duty during the guest’s stay.
If you want to stay at this place, here’s how to do it (from Grok):
Riad Julines is praised overall for its clean, charming traditional Moroccan decor, friendly staff (like hosts Raja/Raga and Daniel), excellent breakfast on the terrace, indoor pool/terrace, and peaceful vibe despite the central location. It’s a boutique-style guesthouse that feels like a home.If you’re planning a stay and love cats, this riad is a great match—many reviews note how the resident cats enhance the experience. You can find it on Booking.com, TripAdvisor, or by searching “Riad Julines Marrakech.” Note that cat policies can vary, so confirm directly with the riad if you have allergies or preferences.
When I visited Peru with a girlfriend many years ago, I traveled to Nazca, in the western desert, to see the famous Nazca lines, a series of large and mysterious geoglyphs that Wikipedia describes this way:
They were created between 500 BC and 500 AD by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and leaving different-colored dirt exposed. There are two major phases of the Nazca lines, Paracas phase, from 400 to 200 BC, and Nazca phase, from 200 BC to 500 AD. In the 21st century, several hundred new figures have been found with the use of drones, and archaeologists believe that there are more to be found.
Most lines run straight across the landscape, but there are also figurative designs of animals and plants. The combined length of all the lines is more than 1,300 km (800 mi), and the group covers an area of about 50 km2 (19 sq mi). The lines are typically 10 to 15 cm (4–6 in) deep. They were made by removing the top layer of reddish-brown ferric oxide–coated pebbles to reveal a yellow-grey subsoil.The width of the lines varies considerably, but more than half are slightly more than 33 cm (13 in) wide. In some places they may be only 30 cm (12 in) wide, and in others reach 1.8 m (6 ft) wide.
We hired a small plane for a pittance—about 30 bucks‚—to fly us over the lines, the only way to see them. They can be properly viewed only from above, which makes them all the more mysterious. There are many theories about their significance, including some who assert that they were made by those extraterrestrials who stubbornly refuse to make their presence known. The location of the lines is shown on the map below from Wikipedia:
They are still finding these lines, which have been effaces by time and by humans roaming around. Now, as the Guardian reveals (click on screenshot to read), a huge cat-shaped Nazca line has been found.Click below to read:
An excerpt:
The dun sands of southern Peru, etched centuries ago with geoglyphs of a hummingbird, a monkey, an orca – and a figure some would dearly love to believe is an astronaut – have now revealed the form of an enormous cat lounging across a desert hillside.
The feline Nazca line, dated to between 200BC and 100BC, emerged during work to improve access to one of the hills that provides a natural vantage point from which many of the designs can be seen.
A Unesco world heritage site since 1994, the Nazca Lines, which are made up of hundreds of geometric and zoomorphic images, were created by removing rocks and earth to reveal the contrasting materials below. They lie 250 miles (400km) south of Lima and cover about 450 sq km (175 sq miles) of Peru’s arid coastal plain.
. . .“The figure was scarcely visible and was about to disappear because it’s situated on quite a steep slope that’s prone to the effects of natural erosion,” Peru’s culture ministry said in a statement this week.
“Over the past week, the geoglyph was cleaned and conserved, and shows a feline figure in profile, with its head facing the front.” It said the cat was 37 metres long, with well-defined lines that varied in width between 30cm and 40cm.
Isla said between 80 and 100 new figures had emerged over recent years in the Nazca and Palpa valleys, all of which predated the Nazca culture (AD200-700). “These are smaller in size, drawn on to hillsides, and clearly belong to an earlier tradition.”
The archaeologist said the cat had been put out during the late Paracas era, which ran from 500BC to AD200. “We know that from comparing iconographies,” said Isla. “Paracas textiles, for example, show birds, cats and people that are easily comparable to these geoglyphs.”
The geoglyph was restored to its original condition; it was presumably made between 200-100 BC.
Here’s a four-minute video also showing the feline. I’m not sure what it is. It’s surely not a house cat, but, asking Grok, I got this:
[It] most likely represents the Andean cat (Leopardus jacobita, also known as the Andean mountain cat).
That species is a denizen of the mountains, not this area, and is now highly endangered. It’s the size of a large house cat. Here’s a four-minute video about the discovery:
*********************
Here’s another Guardian article (click to read) about Japan’s cat obsession, and how capitalists have parlayed it into a lot of yen. Click to read (and go to the article, where there are lots of photos).
An excerpt:
Feline features stare out from the covers of umpteen novels, they have an officially designated day devoted to their mystique and popularity, and have outnumbered dogs as pets for a decade.
The influence of cats is evident across every corner of Japanese society, with a recent report crediting them with generating an expected ¥3tn ($18.8bn) in value to the Japanese economy this year – a phenomenon dubbed “catnomics”.
The power of the paw is especially evident in one retro neighbourhood of Tokyo, where on a recent afternoon North American, Australian and European visitors milled around the capital’s self-proclaimed “cat town”.
“There have always been cats in Yanaka because there are lots of Buddhist temples here,” says Yumiko Yamashita, owner of several cats and of the Neco Action store. “In the old days they roamed around and even went into different houses, but they’re less visible these days. They prefer to stay indoors on a hot day like this.”
The global boom in Japanese literature has turned the cat into a marketing juggernaut, more than a century after Natsume Sōseki wrote one of the country’s best-known novels, I Am a Cat, told from the point of view of a household cat.
Cats figure prominently in the surrealist novels of Haruki Murakami, and in dozens of other works, notably Hiro Arikawa’s The Travelling Cat Chronicles and Takashi Hiraide’s The Guest Cat. Publishers have even exploited feline marketing power to create covers for books that have little or no connection to the animal.
. . . In a nation of pet lovers – where domesticated dogs and cats outnumber children aged under 15, Japanese households kept 8.8 million cats in 2025, compared with 6.8 million dogs, according to a survey by the Japan Pet Food Association. The average cat-owning household, the survey said, spends almost ¥1.8m ($11,300) over the course of their moggy’s life.
It is that level of devotion that makes cats big business. In his most recent report on “catnomics”, Katsuhiro Miyamoto, professor emeritus at Kansai University, estimates that animals will add just under ¥3tn ($18.8bn) in value to the Japanese economy in 2026.
Combining estimates of consumer spending at cat cafes and on items such as photo books with sales and salaries among cat food manufacturers and related companies, Miyamoto noted that the estimate fell just short of beating the economic impact of the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka.
He added, though, that cats were still generating “a comparable economic effect, demonstrating the significant contribution cats are making to the Japanese economy”.
High-profile cat owners in Japan include the emperor and empress, and the prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has expressed a preference for cats over dogs.
Here’s a short Indian video (in English) about Japan’s cat obsession:
But this is a better video; it’s 52 minutes long but very amusing and informative (the stuff about the maneki-neko figures is great):
*********************
From IHeartCats, we hear about an American cat named Effie whose favorite food is mashed potatoes—potatoes that must contain the right amount of butter. Click below to read:
An excerpt:
Some pets become gentler with age, while others grow wonderfully stubborn about the things they love most. Effie, an adorable senior tabby with soft gray and white fur, has reached a point in life where she refuses to settle for anything less than exactly what she wants at mealtime. Her favorite comfort food happens to be mashed potatoes, but there is one very important condition. The potatoes must contain the perfect amount of butter. If they do not meet her standards, Effie will loudly let her family know she is disappointed until her dinner is prepared properly.
The lovable moment was shared on TikTok by @kateisaac25, where viewers quickly fell in love with the gray-and-white senior cat and her very specific dinner standards. According to the caption, Effie will loudly complain if her spoonful of mashed potatoes is missing the right amount of butter.
It is hard not to smile at the sight of her happily digging into the creamy meal with complete satisfaction. Sitting comfortably at the table, Effie looks like a tiny grandmother enjoying her favorite comfort food after a long day.
Her owner explained that the butter ratio is extremely important to Effie. If there is not enough melted goodness mixed into the potatoes, the senior cat wastes no time voicing her disappointment. The little demands have become part of her daily routine, and honestly, everyone in the house seems happy to spoil her.
. . .Effie’s strong opinions at dinnertime show just how comfortable and loved she feels in her home.
Her soft fur, relaxed posture, and determined little meows tell the story of a cat who knows she is safe. She has likely spent years building trust with her family, and now she confidently expects her meals to be prepared exactly the way she likes them.
The video captures more than just a funny moment. It highlights the special bond people share with aging pets. Small routines like preparing a favorite snack or responding to a familiar meow become treasured parts of everyday life.
. . . Viewers online could not get enough of Effie’s adorable behavior. Many related to her love of buttery comfort food, while others joked that she had earned the right to be demanding after so many years.
And here’s the TikTok video mentioned above (also here). Effie just gets a spoonful of mashed potatoes, but oy, is there butter!:
From People magazine (also at the UPI), we hear about a brave moggy whjo chased off a coyote. Click on the screenshot to read:
An excerpt:
A Pico Rivera, California, resident captured some surprising footage: a cat fighting off a coyote in the middle of the day.
“I was in shock,” Debbie Beltran, the cat’s owner, told KTLA-TV, after viewing the video. “It took me a while to see—is that our cat or somebody else’s? And no, it’s our cat.”
Beltran said she was at work on May 1 when a neighbor sent security camera footage of her cat ferociously fighting a coyote outside. The video shows the cat standing its ground outside the family’s yard on Manzanar Avenue before it climbs a tree and escapes the coyote.
“Coyotes usually come out when the sun goes down,” Beltran said. “So to see this happen in broad daylight, that was shocking.”
Beltran said her cat, named Mama, has been with her family for about 5 years and is believed to be about 10 years old. She notes that Mama has always been a courageous cat who doesn’t back down from a fight.
“She’s always been feisty, this type of cat, and has got into fights before, so it doesn’t surprise me,” the pet parent told KABC.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time a coyote has attacked one of Beltran’s pets. She said that last year, one of her cats died in a coyote attack. Now, she’s giving Mama some extra attention since her caught-on-camera battle.
The video is below (turn off the closed captions, as they interfere with seeing the scrap). Mama is a brave cat: watch at her bristle, hump her back, and chase the d*g! However, cats should really be kept indoors because not all predators are so timorous.
********************
From IHeartCats, we here about a high-tech way Dubai has developed to feed street cats. Click headline below to read.
An excerpt with a video below:
As people stroll through Dubai’s carefully maintained parks and busy public spaces, a quieter sign of compassion is beginning to appear beside the city’s modern landscape. New feeding stations for stray animals are being introduced across several locations, giving homeless cats a cleaner and more dependable place to find food and water. For years, many residents relied on leaving bowls wherever they could stop to help, often hoping hungry street cats would discover them in time. Now, Dubai is taking a more organized approach that blends kindness, sanitation, and public care into one thoughtful effort designed to support both animals and the shared spaces around them.
Dubai has launched a pilot program featuring 12 feeding units placed in parks and other public areas. The project is designed to support stray animals while also improving cleanliness and organization in shared spaces. For years, many residents and volunteers have cared for street cats on their own, stopping to leave food and water wherever they could. While compassionate, those efforts often created scattered feeding spots that were difficult to maintain.
Now, the city is taking a more structured approach.
The stations aim to make feeding more consistent and sanitary while helping caretakers provide support in designated locations. It reflects a growing recognition that animal welfare is connected to a city’s overall health and appearance. Instead of treating stray-cat care as an informal act left entirely to volunteers, Dubai is weaving compassion into its public infrastructure.
For the cats wandering through busy streets and quiet parks, the change could mean something deeply important: reliability.
Street animals often survive day by day, never knowing when food or water will appear. Many endure extreme heat, exhaustion, and long stretches of uncertainty. Having fixed feeding stations creates a sense of stability for animals that spend their lives navigating harsh outdoor conditions. Even a simple sheltered feeding spot can offer relief and comfort.
Dubai’s decision also highlights how cities are beginning to rethink the relationship between urban development and animal care. Modern public spaces are usually designed around people first, but this initiative acknowledges that stray animals are part of the environment, too.
The feeding stations are intended to reduce mess and discourage random food waste while still allowing residents to help animals responsibly. By centralizing feeding efforts, the city can better manage sanitation concerns without removing the compassion that inspired people to feed the cats in the first place.
The idea transforms what was once a scattered, individual effort into something shared and supported at a civic level.
Not only that, but the station combines feeding with recycling: if you put a can or bottle into the station, cat food is dispensed into the station. See the video below. Great idea!
********************
From The Animal Rescue Site we hear of an unholy interspecific friendship between a cat and a d*g species: “Wild fox befriends cat“, by Malorie Thompson. Here’s an excerpt, with a video below:
Cats and foxes seem like two of the same, but it’s rare that we see them interact.
They’re both sly and cunning, playful and adorable. Yet, they’re different species and they likely rarely cross paths in a meaningful way.
However, a wildlife photographer managed to capture a sweet exchange between the two animals and you have to see it to believe it.
Turkish wildlife photographer Ali ihsan Öztürk (@aliihsanozturk.65) shared a video of a cat and a fox hanging out on Instagram and it’s really something special.
He captioned the post (translated): “Fox and cat’s friendship. I couldn’t believe even while taking the picture. what a beautiful friendship.”
In the video, you can see the cat come up behind the fox and nuzzle the wild animal. Surprisingly, the fox didn’t seem to mind one bit and took it as an invitation for friendship!
The two animals continued to nuzzle each other in a playful way. It’s easy to see why Ali was so surprised to witness it!
Below is the Facebook post, which you can also see by clicking on the picture. Here’s the entire text:
In January 2026, a story began spreading online that many people could not stop thinking about: two stray animals who soon became known as the “street brothers.”
A fox and a cat had somehow learned to survive together outdoors. They shared warmth, protection, and the feeling of not being alone. Life on the street was hard, but they always stayed close to each other. The fox, a little bigger and stronger, often let the injured cat lie right by his side. On cold nights, it almost seemed as if he was quietly keeping watch so nothing would happen to his small companion.
When rescuers finally brought them to safety, the cat received the medical care it urgently needed. But at the shelter, something became obvious right away: whenever the two were separated, both became visibly stressed. Restlessness, searching, whining — as if the most important support in their lives had suddenly been taken away. Their closeness had long become more than a habit. It was their home.
So the team did everything they could to keep them together. Eventually, their story reached a kindhearted person who did not want a half-solution. He did not adopt only the cat — he took in the fox too, so the two would never be torn apart again.
Their journey is a reminder of what loyalty really means. And that friendship sometimes appears where no one expects it. Family does not always have to be the same species — sometimes it is simply the same bond holding two hearts together.
Fox-and-cat-friends videos are not rare: here are two more. All of these, oddly, feature cats that are mostly white.
*****************’
Lagniappe: From Reese: “Our Michael” from Archaeology & Art on Facebook, featuring an old photograph that was apparently for sale on eBay but that has been sold. Lovely cat! Here’s the whole text and the dead link:
Oct, 1938: our Micheal [sic]
The love radiating from the phrase “our Michael” alone is enough to warm our hearts.
The photographer and story are unclear. The source of this vintage photo is an old eBay listing, but the link isn’t active:
