Although the brand new fats cat wasn’t as chunky as Patches, “he was still plenty big,” Peters mentioned.
So ample, the truth is, that he didn’t slot in any of the cages.
“We put him in our kitten room since we don’t have any kittens right now,” she mentioned.
Staff named him One Frosty Too Many, having enjoyable together with his measurement and imagining that he’d gulped down loads of the frozen treats from Wendy’s. His nickname turned Frosty.
The person who introduced in Frosty on Jan. 2 mentioned he’d discovered the tabby wandering the streets of Richmond, Peters mentioned. Staff addressed his measurement straight away.
“We put him on a strict low-calorie diet, and he wasn’t too happy about that,” she mentioned, estimating that the cat is about 2 years old. “Because he was cranky, we just kept telling him he’ll feel a lot better when he loses weight.”
When no person got here ahead to say the plump tabby, staffers put Frosty up for adoption on Jan. 8 and posted about him on Facebook. He was featured on ABC 8 News.
“You KNOW we love a cat with a belly, and lord almighty this one has the best belly in town,” the shelter’s publish learn. “He’s 28.5 lbs. of pudge with a side of crankiness. As long as you let him do what he wants, when he wants, everything is fine.”
“Other than that — he’s perfect!” the adoption publish concluded, with data on learn how to undertake the shelter’s supersize feline.
Facebook followers instantly pounced with feedback.
“Sounds like you’re describing my teenagers,” one lady commented.
“He sounds like my spirit animal,” wrote one other.
“I think you should change his name to Pudge. He’s adorable,” one other person posted.
Lots of individuals have been involved in adopting the rotund tabby, however one lady beat everybody to it.
Maggie Thompson was on her method home to Stafford, Va., from Williamsburg along with her husband and two young sons when she got here throughout the Facebook publish about Frosty.
“I thought, ‘Oh, I want that cat,’” mentioned Thompson, 38, who runs a pet-sitting business.
She satisfied her husband, Mike Thompson, to take the Richmond exit so they may inquire about adopting Frosty.
Once she met the cat, she knew she couldn’t go home with out him, she mentioned.
“He got on my lap and started purring,” she mentioned. “With animals, they pick you. You just know when it’s right, and they do, too.”
Her boys, Mickey, 5, and Andy, 3, have been thrilled they’d be taking home a fats cat to hitch the household’s different two felines, Rosie and Wolfie, each about age 1, she mentioned.
“They weigh under seven pounds each — less than 14 pounds together,” Thompson mentioned. “But I had a feeling they’d all get along fine and become friends.”
After she’d crammed out an adoption kind, Thompson was advised that her new member of the family would want to comply with a strict food regimen of low-calorie dry cat meals twice a day till he’d dropped half his physique weight, she mentioned. An common grownup cat often weighs between 8 and 12 kilos, typically extra, relying on the breed.
The shelter didn’t have a cat provider giant sufficient to carry Frosty, so the workers gave Thompson a canine crate to make use of for the journey home, she mentioned.
“We put him in the back of the car, and he didn’t protest at all,” she mentioned. “He was a good rider and was pretty quiet the whole trip.”
Once they arrived at home, she put her household’s new addition in a spare bed room for a number of days whereas she regularly launched him to their different two cats.
She additionally gave the cat a brand new title that wouldn’t conjure pictures of fattening frozen desserts.
“We’ve decided to call him Gus,” Thompson mentioned. “That’s what he looks like to me. I now call him Gussie, and he responds well to that.”
Gus now enjoys lounging on the underside degree of a cat tree within the spare room, and Thompson hopes that in time, he’ll work his method up.
She mentioned she plans to start out a weight-loss journey Facebook web page for the cat previously often known as One Frosty Too Many, in the identical spirit as a web page that was began for Patches by Kay Ford, the lady who adopted him.
According to Patches’ web page, he has misplaced 14 kilos since April and now weighs 28 kilos — about the identical weight that Gus is now.
“Gus weighs so much that his stripes disappeared — except on his face, tail and chest — when his skin stretched out,” Thompson mentioned. “We’ll be putting him on the scale every week, but we love him no matter what he looks like.”
“He’s a sweet boy,” she mentioned.
