Fat City
And Little Joe is the mayor. Or ate the mayor. One of those.
For Little Joe’s area-rug impression, click the link…
On the upside, this photo shows off his unique striping patterns to good effect. On the downside, this photo indicates that there is an enormous cat throwing my mattress out of alignment.
For reference, the pillows in the photo measure about 15 inches square. For further reference, the pillow in the foreground is actually a very very fat cat. A cat-shaped pillow wouldn’t have such hilariously tiny ears. Or bite you when you sat on it. Or be…that fat.
Towards the bottom of the photo, you can see a toy mouse — standard size. You can also see the toe of a size-nine slipper towards the right there. And in the middle, there is a huge cat.
Parker Posey is quite petite, but my cat is still eight times her size.
The chair seen here is actually the one the statue sits in at the Lincoln Memorial. Heh. Okay, seriously. The bike is right next to him and it’s a standard ten-speed.
Tags: feline fun times photo essay
Awwww….Little Joe isn’t quite so little. He’s still a very handsome kitty, if that helps any!
Wish I could sympathize, but I have a kitty that has trouble putting on weight. If only his owner had that problem! :-)
Hee. The aerial shots are best to show his girth. I think you should submit to dictionary.com as the photo example for ‘rotund’
My Galileo (so named because he likes to push boundaries) looks an awful lot like this, including the enormous rotundity, but he’s only topping out at about sixteen pounds. Some cats are just colossally huge, I guess.
There is a “DAWSON” joke in here somehow.
THere is also one faaaaat cat.
Gravity really isn’t doing Little Joe any favours. Poor dear.
I just realized you have to lug him around when you take him to the vet.
In the second one, he reminds me of a kangaroo. With a joey inside her pouch.
I hope that diet works. People with dial-up connections should get to see pictures of Joe too.
Ha! He looks like my sweet, fat boy, Pico, only Pico has more white on his face. He’s great! Nothin’ wrong with a hefty cat.
Aw, “Little” Joe. I just want to hug him.
Next up: video of a Hobey/Joe smackdown?
I take it tripping Joe to the vet is at least doing wonders for your upper body strength.
He looks a bit like my cat Spike, who also spent some years being quite rotund, although he was less loaf-y and more thug-looking. Spike has lost a little weight, lately.
Spike was also diagnosed with diabetes a few days ago, and I warn you that that *really sucks* so go go weight loss.
Little Joe is way cute though.
I’ve got a big cat too, although you’ll laugh when I say he’s big boned. He really is, though. He’s topped out at 20 pounds, and then he looked like a black and white Little Joe. He’s currently 15 pounds, a reasonably healthy weight for him according to his vet, as he’s about half again as long as our other kitty. He is diabetic, though, and I concur that that does indeed suck. The injections are easier than I expected, but keeping to his injection schedule is a pain and a half.
Little Joe looks my friend’s cat, Fat Bill. (Yes, that is her name. She is so fat). She has these udders that sway when you chase her up the stairs at my friend’s house, so look at it this way. Little Joe could be fat and a gross udder-y freak.
…unless he does have udders. Then I suppose there is no bright side.
I think the standing photo from above is definitely the “WOW that cat is fat” photo. He does a good job of hiding it, especially when curled up.
So cute though. I love his little squinchy face in the second one.
Hee! Oh, he makes that Lucky magazine look like one of those, like, 3×5 little magazinelets they sell at the grocery checkout that you wonder if anyone ever buys. Or a religious tract you found stuffed under your windshield wiper. Awesome.
Fat Kitty Porn makes me so happy.
To show Giant Joe’s true size, put him next to a dollar bill. That’s what my mom does to show size in pictures. We have baby pictures of me lying next to a single.
I have a very similar looking female cat of nearly equal girth (17.5 lbs). Would Little Joe like a date? She likes eating both cat and dog food, hissing at small children and sleeping while making odd, wheezy breath sounds.
Oh, wow. Little Joe is the biggest cat I have ever seen. Your previous descriptions, though hilarious, did not really quite do him justice. Just… wow. But the two of them are so cute!
My little tortoiseshell Gypsy (not so little anymore) looks about that big from above. She’s a scary little thing, though. I’m afraid to take away her kibble, lest she hurt me. She’s also much shorter in stature than my Lucky, who is older and doesn’t have nearly as much girth. It’s still kind of funny to watch a kitty with a round belly try to jump on top of things without calculating for the extra poundage.
God, he looks like my Mister Kitty (I didn’t name him! He came to me as the Kitty! Mister was an improvement!) MK weighs in at around 17 lbs and is diabetic. My life revolves around giving him shots 2x a day. His stable weight is in the 15-17lb area, though my abs protest when he leaps on them. He is fat, I’ll grant you that, but with the diabetes, keeping him at a stable weight (if FAT) is good.
Also, he does an Elvis sneer, courtesy of missing a fang. It’s awesome.
All of our cats have been reasonably trim (Ninja is tipping the scale a bit more but he’s also a Maine Coon, they’re large kitties anyway) but we do have a somewhat spherical dog. Snoozer, a collie, was inherited from an aunt diagnosed with end stage lymphoma, we’ve been taking care of him ever since she died and that dog was ROUND when we got him. He’s lost a lot of weight from getting to run around (we live on a 27 acre farms and all our animals are outdoor animals) but he still has a skin flap on one side from the weight he lost. So when he lies down on his side, he makes a Snoozer puddle. Anyway, great photos. Little Joe is a beautiful cat, or two.
Hmmm…you should teach that cat to walk on a leash! Good exercise….plus you don’t have to carry him anywhere. Good luck with his diet! We’ll call these his “before” pictures.
Aw…so cute!
But yeah….fat…kitty needs to have the salad more often methinks.
And sarameg? Your description of Mr Kitty makes me happy cos it makes me think of him as looking like a Godfather gansta cat, with the sneer and the fatness and the Mister and whatnot.
Just me?
Ok then….
Hee!
I had two cats and boycat was just over 18 pounds, girlcat was about 14. So trips to the vet meant 30+ pounds to lug. And of course when I told them to hold on, they decided that meant to slide back and forth so that the carrier would shift wildly in my grip until they got belted into the car. That I don’t miss.
The boycat was pudgy but not anywhere near Little Joe-esque. He was diabetic for the last 5 years of his life. It was a pain to arrange to always be at home at those times every day for five years but it was otherwise not a big deal. It was expensive though.
Awwww! He’s still Little … it just depends on what you compare him to. The entire Lincoln Memorial, for instance. Or your average galaxy. My Domino is about his size, and unfortunately believes that it is a sign of True Love on my part if I feed him Every. Time. I. Go. In. The. Kitchen. Or stand up. Or, you know, if he yodels. On the rare occasion that I buy a donut, he’ll wrestle me for it. And he has an uncanny ability to find surgical incisions and stand on them, to prove he loves me.
And yet Hobey wins wrestling matches with “Little” Joe? I’m impressed. Must be some excellent strategy and skill on his part.
Are you sure Little Joe didn’t EAT Parker Posey?
I love his sleepy face in the second picture! That’s my most favorite of all kitty faces. I also love how teeny tiny the toy mouse looks in the third picture–that’s a good indicator of how big Little Joe really is. Love the pictures, thanks for sharing.
(Seems to be another Erin around! Hello, other Erin!)
He doesn’t squash the Hobe in fights?! You must teach him to use his weight to his advantage! ;-)
My good friend used to work at a vet and she has told me horror stories about having to give shots to diabetic cats. Seriously. You don’t want to go down that road. I recommend a laser pointer (or sometimes a flashlight works, too). Leash training is great, but you have to get one of those harnesses for the cat that goes around his chest and, well, I think you see where I’m going with this.
Seriously, he’s adorable. I want to come snuggle him all up.
I’m beginning to wonder if Little Joe has a thyroid problem. Of course, I don’t know if thyroid problems affect cats the same way they do with humans. He is ridiculously cute, and I hope you’re able to get him to enjoy the kitty diet kibble.
Sars,
As a fellow Jersey Girl-turned-New Yorker (and recently back to Jersey), I thought you might enjoy this story:
In high school, we had a road rally/scavanger hunt. Since we lived so close to Rutgers U., one of the quests on our list was to bring back a Fat Cat. Most teams brought back the sandwich, but one team who was not familiar with the “delicacy” brought back their neighbor’s cat who looked a LOT like Little Joe. (I think they got bonus points for creativity and being able to corral such a huge cat!)
Daaaaaaamn. That is one round kitty!
Good thing he’s got those stripes, so you can tell in which direction he’s rolling!
Good luck with the diet. Can I send you a eye-safe laser pointer? Chasing that irresistable dot of light would give him exercise and it’s no work at all for you! Mine cannot resist it!
The Nero Wolfe of cats… I’d say, but from your past stories the detection abilities aren’t quite up to par.
Though I am amazed anew at you being able to wrest him into carriers and carry him to the vet. Wow.
(And also? Pretty kitty.)
I am guessing that Little Joe always manages to step exactly on the most sensitive part of your inner thigh when he is arranging himself on your lap. Am I right? Because that is what my own fat cat does, anyway.
Aww! The little truck driver of the cat world :-) My cat was also quite round (new diet=slimmer cat now). Unfortunately for her, she also has short legs. If I wasn’t careful when I picked her up, her belly weight would sort of shift her forward and she’d bonk her head on the floor!
Faaaaaat.
Awesome. Your floor is extra reinforced, right?
The stripes are NOT slimming and the fur pouf doesn’t help matters. Hobey must be truly bad-ass to hold his own against this behemoth.
Let me just add to those who have commented on THAT FACE! Sweet and so very sleepy! Such love!
Oh Wow
Honest to God thats a standard sized mouse? ‘Cause it doesn’t look it.
Is he really standing in the third picture??!?!?
Kitty needs a treadmill!!!
I have my own horizontally gifted kitty, and I have to make him walk around my apartment. This generally involves me standing above him, bending my legs and jiggling his tummy with my hands–this makes him walk to get away from me. I guess that makes me my kitty’s treatmill.
Hope is not lost! I have a cat who looks exactly like your, female and was 18 pounds also. Now she is a svelt 14 and look fantastic. How did I do this? I switched to wet food only. They (I have 3 cats) get fed 2x daily and only what the vet recomends. It took like a year for her to lose the weight, but hey, good things come to those who wait. Seriously, try it. I had a friend who let their cat stay fat for years, then the cat got diabetes, (no lie) and they had to give her 2x daily injections of expensive insulin. Do not go there. Good luck.
Mulder– His jiggling is…hypnotic.
Scully– Yes. It’s like a lava lamp.
Hee. That is one flabby tabby. Mine has put on some weight as well lately (I definitely hear you on kibble being the cure-all for crazy cats). Hope Little Joe loses some, though.
Wow! My sweet but fat cat seems practically tiny now. We did have to put our furry baby on a diet and it was a pain but seems to be working. However, since he only gets 1/4 cup of dry diet cat food twice a day, his feedings have to be on time. No sleeping in! I can’t descibe the joy of waking up to a cat meowing at the top of his lungs and then jumping on my chest and meowing more. Oh, well. I guess it’s nice to be needed.
Little Joe looks like my kitty, who’s hovering around 18 pounds, despite being on a brutal diet. I can’t tell if Little Joe has the saggy gut that sways when he runs (which is obviously not frequently enough) – that always makes me giggle. However, he had nothing on his brother (who sadly died this summer), who at his zenith was 24 pounds. Not a Maine Coon or anything, just big-boned.
And fat.
Hobey isn’t exactly a frail little spindle himself, but he can always beat Joe, including post-surgery, weighing nine pounds and wearing a cone. I think it’s because 1) Hobey is “taller,” so his legs are longer and he has an advantage when it gets down to hind-leg pedalling, and 2) Hobey is powered by hate. Mostly it’s just chasing each other around and a little hissing, but if it’s a real fight, Joe is playing (or thinks they’re snuggling, because: dumb and needy). Hobey is FIGHTING. So eventually Joe is always like, “Ow, this isn’t fun,” and walks off.
Yay, cat pics! HEE! aww, he’s so cute.
I can’t help staring at the last picture of the chair and thinking “Yeah, Little Joe is fat… he’s the size of MY BUTT!!!” *giggle*
because my butt is… also… large…. hello?
I will now have to stop telling Huck he’s the fattest fat kid in fat kid land, because it is obviously a lie. Although he’s only 2, so he may not be done growing. I am deeply impressed by the girth and adorableness of Little Joe. Who, btw, is almost the same size as my boyfriend, Joe.
Also, Huck doesn’t know it yet but all of these horror stories have convinced me that, while it might be really cute how tiny his head looks, he needs to go on a diet ASAP. Poor boy.
Mary- that’s the feeding portion schedule mine are on and, wow, word to the yowling. My husband started feeding them when he went to work at 7am. Bad, bad move. The yowling now starts at around 6:15am, every morning, even if none of the humans need to be out of bed. The yowling starts at the other end of the house, moving progressively closer, until it is, indeed, on our chest. And then the head bumping starts, and there’s no longer any sleep to be had until you make with the kibble.
You might want to ask the vet about the possibility of hypothyroidism. It is an under active thyroid and can cause weight gain in cats and dogs. I actually have one of each here now and within a week of getting each on medication they where loosing weight like crazy (dog lost 25 lbs in three weeks!) It is very rare in cats, if it was not for dog already having the trouble we might not have even looked for it in cat.
That is not a cat. THAT, my friend, is a COUGAR ON THE LOOSE!
Cute pictures! We have a fat cat too, they’re more snuggly with that extra padding (that is, if they allow you to snuggle them). :-)
Poor Joe. Is he a snorer? My fat cat is.
I bet he’s heavenly to pick up — all that fluff. As long as you don’t have to carry him far, that is.