Meow, 39-Pound Celebrity Cat, Gone At Just 2

I worked at a veterinary hospital for two years. Now and again, we’d see cats that weighed about twenty pounds. Each always looked positively gigantic compared against the rest of the eight or nine pounders, but even the biggest of those beasts would have looked miniscule compared to Meow.

Brought into a New Mexico animal shelter by his elderly owner last month, the cat weighed in at an astounding thirty-nine pounds. Had he been in better shape, Meow likely would have been treated as just another fat cat, but since he was so huge, he turned into something of a celebrity. He appeared on various talk shows, raised awareness about animal obesity and even got to meet Anderson Cooper. You can check out him obscuring most of the Silver Fox's body below...

Unfortunately, the efforts to save him proved too little and too late. He’d shed a few pounds by this weekend. Veterinarians were hopeful, but on Saturday, Meow began suffering from respirator distress and pulimary failure. He was only two.

We struggle as a society to figure out how much to blame obese people for their own problems. Obese cats, while certainly boasting above average appetites, aren’t really responsible for their own weight. So much is controlled by their owners and how much they choose to feed and play. You can’t just leave food out constantly throughout the day, and when an animal starts to look fat, it should be taken to a veterinarian for a recommendation.

We weren’t aware of Meow’s existence for very long, but it was a fun and tasty ride while it lasted.