Phoenix the cat is only about three years old but has accomplished much in that short time and used up several of her nine lives.
First, she survived being abandoned at a home where there had been a murder, then she fell into a turtle’s tank full of water and then she accidentally became a famous internet cat with her own currency.
Devin Dubois said he found the cat in the West Flat area near Buddy’s Convenience Store several years ago.
“She was found outside of a house down on the west side of the PA here, where a murder had taken place at some house, and she was left to fend for herself. And I was just moving out of the neighborhood, so I scooped her up and took her home,” Dubois explained.
Phoenix, as a true cat, is very curious and was obsessed with a turtle tank Dubois had and one day, she fell in. After she got out and was sitting on the back of the couch and spread her back toes apart to clean and dry them.
Dubois took a photo, which was blurry but showed the cat’s toes, and decided to share it.
Devin Dubois said he took this photo after the cat fell in the turtle tank and then wanted to clean her toes.“I took that picture and I looked at my girlfriend at the time and I said watch the cat get famous. So it was just kind of a joke, posted it to Reddit and it did quite well on there,” he said.
He first posted it to r/cats where it was well-received and then someone said the photo should be on r/blurrycats. That post got over 2,000 likes.
He and his girlfriend broke up and he ended up for the next while working in B.C. on a dam construction project for a while.
All was normal until a friend texted him and asked how the cat was doing and Dubois said she was fine as far as he knew as she was with his children back in Prince Albert.
“He said, well you might want to check on her and he sent me this link that said the cat had died. I phoned home and the cat was fine.”
He still didn’t think too much of the situation until he returned from working in BC and then remembered the incident.
“I started Googling it and I found this huge rabbit hole where she has her own cryptocurrency and she’s got apps on the App Store and merchandise stores and became this big, huge trend on Tik Tok.”
According to knowyourmeme.com the trend started on Instagram in 2021, where Dubois said he can go back and show how he posted the first copy of the photo.
The cat’s toe beans are dabloons and became a Tik Tok currency. (Tik Tok photo)From there it was shared to by the Catz page, their second post featuring a cat paw with toes spread apart. Both photos have the words “Four Dabloons” underneath. That post was liked almost 40,000 times and the photo was taken and put on Tik Tok.
Tik Tok users ran with it, creating a fake currency based on the dabloon and its ability to purchase things.
“There’s been people claiming that they own her, or they have or that she died or that I sold her for $1 million,” said Dubois. “Yeah, none of which is true. We don’t have $1 million and she’s right here. She’s not dead.”
From being a scraggly kitten in bad shape when he found her, Phoenix quickly fluffed up and is now a ball of energy, he said.
“She’s just the sweetest cat I’ve ever had. And when she got famous, she became even sweeter to me.”
Dubois is still flabbergasted by the level of fame his cat achieved. He said merchandise stores are making money selling items with the cat’s photo, there are stuffed dolls and she was featured in an article by the New York Times on the dabloon trend.
While he had not much control over Phoenix’s rise to social media fame, Dubois does point out that cat food is expensive and so far, the cat that is making other people money isn’t earning any for herself.
He’s thinking of ways to get a few dabloons himself and has considered contacting an intellectual property lawyer.
Meanwhile, Phoenix is more than a social media star and is not hung up on her own fame.
“She’s just a really odd little character. Like you can’t look at her without her meowing at you. She’s very talkative. High energy for the most part. Right now, she’s being lazy. But yeah, just look at her and she meows. She’s a normal cat, but she’s very talkative.”
Phoenix is a Korat breed of cat and they are supposed to bring luck, Dubois said.
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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com
