Meet Cat Daddy: Jackson Galaxy and His Furry Family

Jackson Galaxy is a very busy man these days. He just finished recording the audio version of his upcoming book, Cat Daddy: What the World’s Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love, and the Need to Confess. He’s preparing for a promotional tour for the book, which will be released on May 10, and he’s currently filming the first of ten new episodes of season three of his hit series Animal Planet. My cat from hell.

I managed to catch up with Jackson last week while he was on the set of My cat from hellWe chatted a bit about his busy life and his book, but what I really wanted to talk to him about was his cats. Who are the felines he finds at his house every night? Do they have behavioral problems, or are Cat Daddy’s little pets no problem at all?

Jackson shares his life with four cats.

Velouria is the grand dame of the family. She is between 18 and 20 years old. Velouria came into Jackson’s life while he was working at a shelter. He had just lost his beloved son Grolsch, who had been rescued from a barn in Iowa in the middle of a snowstorm, to FIP. One day, someone left a box with two kittens outside the shelter door. One of the kittens looked just like Grolsch.

“No way,” Jackson said. “I didn’t want to adopt a kitten. It’s not a good idea when you work in a shelter and there are all these old cats looking for homes.” But Velouria reminded him so much of Grolsch that he knew resistance was futile.

When he adopted her, he thought she was a kitten, but she was between 1 and 3 years old. She was, and still is, tiny, weighing just 6 pounds. Despite her advanced age, she is still full of energy and runs laps around the house.

EEditor’s Note: Velouria passed away in February 2018. Read our tribute here.

Chips, also known as Chippie or Chuppie, is 17 years old. She was part of a litter of kittens thrown out of a car in a trash bag. A friend of Jackson’s saw what happened and rescued the kittens. Chips is a rather solitary cat. She is a little wary and very reactive.

“She’ll kick your ass,” Jackson says, “but she’ll always talk back.” She loves Jackson so much that he almost wishes she didn’t. She has a unique way of showing her love: she wakes him up in the middle of the night by biting his lip. When he opens his mouth, she puts her whole head in it.

Zeke is the only male cat in the group. At 6 years old and weighing nearly 20 pounds, he is not only physically imposing, he is also the bully of the family and must be separated from the other cats.

He grew up with dogs and behaves and plays more like a dog than a cat. “He was my role model for how to work with bullies,” Jackson says.

At 3 years old, Caroline was the youngest of the group. She was part of a litter of kittens taken in by a friend who had sent Jackson photos of Caroline via Facebook. He didn’t want another cat, so he said no. Eventually, all the other kittens in the litter were adopted. His friend sent him one last photo. “Just come and see,” she said. So he did. He picked Caroline up, she purred in his arms, and that was it.

“I love her,” Jackson says. She’s a shy cat, and her first reaction to everything is to retreat. “She’s proof positive that if you give a cat room to grow and breathe, she’ll thrive,” Jackson says. He used his famous challenge line concept with her.

The challenge line is the line between allowing cats to hide where they feel safe and encouraging them to step out of their comfort zone to give them a richer life. Caroline hit rock bottom after Jackson’s recent move to a new home. She was scared and withdrew again. He stepped up his challenge line work with her and eventually she found her balance again.

Jackson’s house is every cat’s dream home. “Catified” by Kate Benjamin of Hauspanther, the home’s main feature is a “cat highway” of multi-level cat shelves with “on and off ramps” to allow cats to access their favorite perches without any traffic jams.

It took 3 months for all the cats to discover and use the shelves. Jackson always tells cat owners to give the cat time to change its environment and not expect immediate acceptance. Once again, his own cats provided the living laboratory, proving that his methods work.

There’s another member of Jackson’s family that might surprise Cat Daddy fans a bit.

Rudy, a female Jack Russell/Beagle, completes Jackson’s furry family. I teased Jackson about his choice of a Jack Russell, of all things (the breed is not known for being cat-friendly). “Oh no,” Jackson said. “I chose.” Rudy was found wandering in the middle of a busy street on Christmas Eve two years ago.

Covered in motor oil, untouched, with ingrown toenails and in terrible condition, this little dog appeared to have reached the end of her life. “I didn’t even want to do my due diligence on her and try to find out if she belonged to anyone,” Jackson says. “I just thought I should let her continue to run from whatever she was running from.”

He agreed to take her in and had no intention of keeping her. Instead of giving her a name, he called her “little dog.” She became a classic case of failed foster homes. “After a month of being tortured by the cats, and the cats torturing her back, everyone calmed down,” Jackson said. Rudy has a very strange relationship with Chips.

They act like herding dogs to each other. Rudy keeps Chips under control, often snapping at her neck and holding her down. Chip hisses and runs, but then comes back and headbutts Rudy. According to Jackson, “they can go on like that for hours.” I asked Jackson to tell me one thing he likes best about each of his five furry children. Here are his answers:

About Velouria: “Her resilience. She showed me how to teach others that a cat can change from being a victim to being an amazing, confident cat.”

About Chips: “I love everything about her that annoys me!”

About Zeke: “The combination of dog and cat that he is.”

About Caroline: “I love that she trusts me 100%, even if it goes against every fiber of her being.”

About Rudy: “Rudy reminds us that dog love is an important thing to have in life. It’s a balance between cat love and dog love.”

Jackson added: “When I’m away from home, I miss my dog ​​so much it hurts. I miss my cats too, but cats represent home. Dogs represent home outside of home.”

Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist and star of Animal Planet’s My Cat From Hell, has been reading, writing, and working with cats for 15 years. For more information, please visit Jackson’s website. Jackson book, Cat Daddy: What the World’s Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love, and Truth is available on Amazon.