Last Updated on April 23, 2026 by admin
When Kay Ford first saw Patches on the Richmond Animal Care & Control Facebook page, he was sitting on the floor.
He was sitting on the floor because he couldn’t get off the floor. At 40 pounds — heavier than most four-year-olds — the white and gray domestic shorthair couldn’t climb stairs, couldn’t hop onto a couch, and couldn’t chase anything smaller than a filing cabinet.
His original owner had surrendered him to the Richmond, Virginia shelter. RACC director Christie Chipps-Peters told reporters they needed to find “a responsible pet owner” who understood what Patches needed.
What Patches needed was someone who would say no to him.
The Woman Who Said Yes
Kay Ford saw the post on April 19, 2023. Within hours, she was driving Patches home.
She started a Facebook page for him. She bought him a harness. She sat on the floor with him and measured his food, one careful gram at a time, because his vet — Dr. Meaghan Godwin at Wellesley Animal Hospital — warned that cats who drop weight too fast can develop fatal liver disease. Slow was the only option. Slow was the whole strategy.
Three years later, Patches has 54,000 Facebook followers and weighs under 18 pounds.
He Does Stairs Now
The detail that owners of chonky cats will recognize isn’t the weight chart. It’s this: Patches can climb stairs. For two years of his life, he couldn’t. Kay had to carry him. His back legs would shake and he’d sit down halfway up.
Now he trots up them like any other cat. Unimpressed. Slightly offended that you’re watching.
Dr. Godwin told WTVR that Patches is closing in on a goal weight of 16 pounds — still the heavy end of normal for a large-framed domestic shorthair, but within striking distance. Ford describes him as “a rockstar.” She’s not wrong.
The Setback
Last month, something went wrong. Patches started hissing at people. He refused his lunch. Ford took him to the vet and discovered he’d been quietly living with arthritis, aggravated either by a minor injury or by the long slow work of carrying forty pounds of cat for most of his life. He was prescribed gabapentin and anti-inflammatories and confined to a bedroom to rest.
Chonky cat owners read that paragraph and flinch. Every extra pound a cat carries is a tax the joints eventually collect on.
The Comeback
Two weeks later, Patches was ready for his first public appearance.
On April 12, he met fifteen fans at Books, Beads & More, a bookshop in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Kay brought him in a stroller. He let people pet him. He did not, for the record, pose. He simply existed, in the magnificent way only a formerly-forty-pound cat can — like furniture that occasionally blinks.
Then on April 19, three years to the day after she took him home, Kay posted his adoption anniversary.
What Patches Taught the Internet
Fat cat content usually comes with a joke — the “ohlawdhecomin” voiceover, the shocked reaction videos. Patches’ story comes with a quieter message: chonky isn’t cute when it hurts. But a cat who gets a second chance, a patient owner, and three years of careful feeding can walk up his own stairs.
That’s the whole story.
Is your cat a chonker? Tell us their name and weight in the comments — we want to celebrate them properly. 🐾