WATERVILLE VALLEY, N.H. — Guests at a hotel in New Hampshire can be forgiven for thinking a raccoon is lounging out front.
But the huge ball of fur on the sidewalk of the Best Western Silver Fox Inn at the Waterville Valley Resort is actually a fat cat. A really fat cat.
The 8-year-old tabby is named Logan and weighs 31 pounds — about twice the size of a normal cat. Often found wandering through the hotel or stretched out on the sidewalk, the cat has become a huge hit with visitors and is now an internet sensation. Guests have posted photos of the cat sitting in a chair, and one video on Facebook shows it waddling through the hotel parking lot with the shooter saying “You are so big.” That video has been viewed 29 million times and shared 372,000 times.
Susan and Tor Brunvand adopted Logan from a Meridith, New Hampshire, shelter six years ago. At the time, Susan Brunvand said he was “a normal sized cat.” But soon he was gobbling up food from the bowls of the couple’s two other cats and finding a way to sneak into the stash of cat food for a few extra bites.
“He just slowly put the weight on,” Susan Brunvand said, adding that she started to wonder if something was wrong as the cat grew in size.
“I’ve had cats my entire life and I’ve never had one do this,” she added, saying she had a 20-pound cat once, but that cat was big because “there was Maine coon in him.”
As Logan grew in size, the couple brought him to a vet and even had stretches — once after a fight with a feral cat — where he barely ate for several weeks. Still, nothing seemed to reduce the size of the obese feline.
“We’ve tried everything,” she said.
The Brunvands sent the cat to a friend’s house, thinking separation might lead to a change, but he barely lost a pound.
The reaction to the supersized cat has been a mix of “OMG” amazement peppered with concern about its health. After the Facebook video was posted, Susan Brunvand said she got a call from someone who wanted to bring her up on animal abuse charges for allowing the cat to get so big.
“I felt bad for him because he looked very overweight,” Janet Lynn, a hotel guest from Manchester, New Hampshire, said. “He was just too fat. It’s not healthy for that cat to be that fat. …I just wonder why a person would have a pet and let it get that heavy.”
Susan Brunvan insists there is little more she can do — or should do — to help the cat she likes to call her “little chubby boy, my little bear” shed the weight.
She has ruled out any kind of surgery and laughed when it was suggest Logan could be put on a kitty treadmill. Rather, she just lets Logan act like her two other cats. He spends most days outdoors and can pretty much do anything a skinny cat can manage — including jumping onto a hotel sofa, stalking squirrels or purring when a visitor gives him a rub.
Visitors crack a smile whenever they spot the cat.
“This is who he is,” she said. “He’s happy as can be … He is one of the happiest, easiest cats I’ve ever had. He doesn’t think he’s fat. He thinks he’s cute.”
