Note: the video below will auto-start and then run into the next story, but can be controlled by hitting pause.
Biscuit is yet the latest fat cat to make the news. A story in the St. Louis Dispatch yesterday got picked up and carried in multiple new outlets today, and has spread as far as New Zealand and Australia. Biscuit’s story is more than that of a fat cat on parade, though. He is a displaced fellow looking for a home for the second time in a little more than a year.
Biscuit was first surrendered to the St. Charles, MO Animal Control shelter a year ago when his guardian, a disabled woman who lived with her mother, could no longer care for him. He weighed 40 pounds. “I think she fed him lots of treats,” lead animal control officer Teresa Gilley said. “She didn’t mean the cat any harm, I just think she didn’t know any better.”
The shelter put Biscuit on a diet and got him down to 35 pounds, then adopted him to a woman who cared for him over the past year but had to surrender him when she moved to an apartment that does not allow pets.
Back at the shelter again for the past week, weighing 37 pounds this time, Biscuit is on a controlled portion weight loss plan, getting one and a quarter cup of diet formula cat food a day.
The original short print feature on Biscuit ran on Friday morning, and by Friday afternoon the shelter had received over a hundred offers to adopt him, as well as a request from Anderson Cooper’s TV program for Biscuit to appear on the show. The shelter says it would prefer to place Biscuit locally to spare him the stress of travel, and has not yet publicly given its decision on allowing Biscuit to travel to appear on TV.
Biscuit’s adopter will have to agree to keep him on a diet to decrease his weight and improve his health and well being. The cat was barely able to walk when he entered the shelter for the second time just over a week ago, but now is walking around and is even able to make a very short hop up into his cage.
Officer Gilley said Biscuit is an easygoing cat who enjoys being petted. “He’s sweet and loving, and if you talk to him, he’ll talk back,” she said.
Here is Biscuit in action, with commentary from Teresa Gilley, who says she has never encountered a cat as big as Biscuit in all of her time in animal control work.
