Editor’s note: Have you seen the new Catster print magazine in stores? Or in the waiting area of your vet’s office? This article appeared in our March/April. 2017 issue. Click here to subscribe to Catster and get the bimonthly magazine delivered to your home.
Up until a couple of years ago, I was never any sort of a fan of Taylor Swift’s music. Now I sometimes sing a version of the popstress’s mega hit Shake It Off with the lyrics altered to talk about how my own cat, Mimosa, loves eating gravy and indulging in grooming.
Why the change? Simple: I stumbled across Taylor’s Instagram account and discovered that she’s totally besotted with her two cats, a couple of Scottish Folds named after Meredith Grey (from the TV show Grey’s Anatomy) and Olivia Benson (the commanding officer in Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit). Once you realize that someone is a fellow feline fancier, it’s a whole lot easier to look on her music in a sympathetic fashion — and Tay Tay is far from alone in being an artist who fills up her social media streams with cat-centric posts.
Shura is another chanteuse who’s all about her cats. The English singer-songwriter scored a viral breakthrough with the synth-pop hit Touch back in 2014. She currently cohabits with two cats named Winnie and Flump, whom she rescued from what she calls a “crazy old pet store” in London. Whenever she finishes up a stint on the tour circuit, Shura knows the best thing about returning home is having her cats there to greet her.
“Cats aren’t humans,” she said, “but they become ch part of the family so quickly and they feel like another character.” It’s no surprise that when Shura thought she was having a heart attack one night at home, she insisted on waiting for the medics outside in a cold hallway so there was no chance her cats could escape should she keel over. (In the end, it was just a regular panic attack.)
Over in the hip-hop world, you’ll find Danny Brown strutting around the crazy cat person fort with an energized swagger.
Hailing from Detroit, he raps in the sort of high-strung caterwaul that could make you think a couple of tom cats are going at it outside your window in the depths of the night. (Trust me, in Danny’s case, this is an endearing thing.) He also devotes much of his social media output to pictures of his two Bengals, Siren and Chie, whether they’re sleeping together in a circular wicker basket or posing next to an old-fashioned gramophone. When on tour, Danny’s allowed himself to be filmed raiding the racks of a pet store to load up on gifts for his beloved Bengals and even uses the Facetime app on his laptop to talk to his cats while he’s on the road.
Keeping with the hip-hop vibe, we come to the curious case of Tyler, the Creator. He’s the leader of the rabble-rousing Odd Future collective from Los Angeles, and he’s definitely, without doubt, 100-percent totally cat obsessed. Tyler’s posed with cats in press photos, he’s named a song Tron Cat, he’s released clothing and merch lines that star cats, he’s signed on to voice a one-eyed, three-legged, broken-tailed tuxedo cat named Oscar in the upcoming animated movie The Adventures of Drunky, and he’s even posed for selfies with Justin Bieber’s cat, Tuts. But Tyler doesn’t actually own a cat himself, claiming that he’s never at home long enough to take care of one.
Back in the shiny pop realm, Katy Perry has blessed us with probably the most famous pop star cat of all time. Named Kitty Purry, this humble-looking domestic shorthair tabby has turned into a cross between an alter ego and a muse. She stole the show in Katy’s “I Kissed a Girl” video, often hits the road with her human to be present during after-show meet-and-greet sessions with fans and is homaged on stage when someone struts out in a giant purple cat suit (complete with bedazzled heart and bow) to dance around with Katy. Oh, and let the record show that Kitty Purry’s human also has a Hello Kitty tattoo.
The flame-haired English singer-songwriter ED SHEERAN is a fellow mainstream pop figure who’s always down to switch out his guitar for a feline. When he’s not cradling kittens while posing for selfies, you might find him donning deliberately cheesy cat sweaters or cavorting with Taylor Swift’s kitties in the studio. (The two of them collaborated back in 2012 on Swift’s Red album.) Well, that’s when he’s not setting up Twitter accounts for his own rescue, Graham, a domestic shorthair he saved from euthanasia when he was barely 1 month old.
Finally, we come to Bethany Cosentino from the Los Angeles indie band Best Coast, who can lay claim to being one of the original cat-crazed musicians. In this case, her kitty is a ruffled-haired ginger chap named Snacks, who was given up by a neighbor before deciding that Chez Bethany was a more preferable place to reside anyway. Snacks has also cracked the music world himself, appearing on the cover of Best Coast’s 2010 debut album Crazy For You, and lending some coy meows to a cover of the Roy Orbison song Crying. Make sure to spend those royalty checks wisely, Snacks.
