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Cat Records

Cool Cat Records

April 18, 2018

There is plenty of kitten action and a lot of celebrity cats on YouTube, but not many make the record books. Here’s a select few who are on the road to purr-fection. (This article was first published in YouTube: World Records.)
Cat Records

Fluffy Sweater

Alley, a stray cat, was adopted after she was found looking frail and nervous in a city side street. Taken in by Chicagoan Samantha Martin, Alley had really landed on her feet, because Samantha is a trainer for the traveling cat circus Acro-cats (search for their videos on YouTube—they’re really fun), and she quickly discovered that Alley loved to bounce around the platforms she used to teach her cats to jump. As Samantha began to train her, it became apparent that Alley had a real aptitude for jumping, leaping over 6 feet. Could this street cat really become record-breaking royalty?

Purr-fectly Loud

Everyone loves looking at super cute videos of cats online, but this record-breaking kitty is probably the cutest one of all time. Merlin, a rescue cat from Torquay, England, has been tonally fluttering loud and proud after being confirmed as the loudest-purring kitty in the world! On April 2, 2015, he registered a deafening 67.8 decibels, the same loudness as a busy city street. When it comes to nominative determinism and purring, Merlin is indeed magic!

The Pocket-Size Kitty

Singapura are nicknamed “Velcro Cats” because of their sometimes irritating desire to stay close to their owners. They have been acknowledged as the smallest breed of cat in the world. The full-grown males reach only around 7 pounds, while females can weigh a paltry 4 pounds. Some claim they were originally river or “drain“ cats in Singapore, while others have suggested they were a cross between Abyssinian and Burmese breeds.

Fat Cat

Garfield is one of the great cartoon cats, right up there with Tom, Top Cat, and Sylvester. Now, there is a real-life Garfield, who shared some of his animated namesake’s gargantuan appetite and indolence. Garfield was brought to an animal rescue in Long Island, New York, after his owner passed away, and he shocked the volunteers with his obesity. He tipped the scales at 40 pounds—an average cat weighs around 10 pounds—and earned the distinction of being the fattest cat in the world.

Big Big Cat

There are cats, big cats, and then there are ligers. Ligers are the offspring of a male lion and a tigress—huge animals that do not exist in the wild and are only bred in captivity. Hercules, who usually lives at the Myrtle Beach Safari wildlife preserve in South Carolina, is the biggest of them all. He is 6 feet tall, 12 feet long, and weighs 900 pounds—as big as his parents combined. He may look a handful, but his keepers say he’s a real pussycat.