Advertisement - scroll for more content
Jordan Poole is really into cats
If you haven’t figured it out by now, Jordan Poole is a cat guy. More like a cat daddy, as he tends to say. Though Poole’s shooting a career-best mark from the three-point line (40.1 percent) and ranks in the top 10 in the league with 141 triples made, he might be better known as the lead crusader of the Secret Society of NBA Cat Dads, a small but growing contingent to which Poole personally has recruited new members. “I may or may not have convinced Steph to get a cat,” Poole says coyly, referencing former Golden State Warriors teammate Stephen Curry.
Other NBA players are openly pro-cat. Miami Heat rookie Kel’el Ware has one. Indiana Pacers big men Myles Turner (who even styles himself in cat shirts) and James Wiseman do as well. Also, Utah Jazz wing Keyonte George: “Elite, elite basketball player. Extremely skillful,” Poole says. “He’s also a cat dad.” “There are a lot of people in the league, I think, who have pets and have cats. It’s just, you know, I don’t think we go out of our way to express the fact that we have cats,” Poole says. “It’s sort of a cool community. Like a cool cat community. We just kind of keep it in-house. You’ve got to knock a couple times for us to let you in. Secret code.”
And recently, Tristan Vukcevic, his Washington Wizards teammate, adopted a cat at PetSmart. When Dawn Wallace, the executive director of Lost Dog & Cat Rescue Foundation, tells Poole that she heard he inspired Vukcevic to become a cat guy, a Wizards staffer leans over and whispers to me, “More like made him.”
Dennis Grove, the Sixers fan who first lifted Izzy into the air following a rare Sixers victory that year, announced on Twitter that he and his wife, Valerie, will have to put Izzy down on Thursday after a battle with osteosarcoma. She's 14 years old and has lived a long and fulfilling life, but the couple does not want to her to suffer through the progressing stages of her cancer. Just for a refresher, in case anyone needs it, Grove and Izzy kicked off a social media trend that involved Sixers fans raising their cats in the air after victories. The trend has lived on sporadically ever since.
There are few things Brook Lopez cherishes more than his cat Poupin. With the Skirball Fire threatening his Bel Air Crest neighborhood and Lopez needing to leave home for four games on the road this week, he was not about to leave his beloved feline behind. Lopez loaded Poupin, a 10-year-old Maine coon mix with an Instagram account, into his carrier and loaded him into the car, hired through a limousine service. Little did the driver know that his responsibilities would not be limited to delivering Lopez to the Lakers team plane. Poupin needed to go to Fresno, where he could stay with Lopez’s mother and be out of harm’s way. “I had a car service for my cat,” Lopez said.
Advertisement
The man behind NBA Catwatch is extremely serious about his absurd quest. Now, three years after he began asking NBA players for their opinions on cats, Alex’s website has thousands of Twitter followers who alert him anytime it appears possible that an athlete owns a feline. His site is so popular that when Alex started selling $25 shirts with the NBA Catwatch logo—which is the NBA logo with a cat instead of Jerry West—he had hundreds of buyers and raised $3,500 that he donated to animal shelters.
He also goes straight to the source by asking NBA players on Twitter. This week, when he was researching the Oklahoma City Thunder, Alex contacted Russell Westbrook. “I’m sorry to ask you this question but it’s my job,” he said. “Do you like cats at all?” (A team spokesman said neither Westbrook nor Kevin Durant own cats.) Alex doesn’t expect to hear back because he almost never does. More players have responded to say they hate cats than they own cats.
Carmelo Anthony visited Facebook’s headquarters on Monday and answered a set of fan-submitted questions, rapid-fire style. When asked the animal he’s most afraid of, he revealed that he’s afraid of cats.
Advertisement
Like you, I’m a dog lover. On a possibly related note, I feel, in my heart of hearts, that cats are evil. Feel me? Naw, you’re right: You can’t be both a dog lover and a cat lover. I’ve got a crazy phobia about cats. For some reason, I’m always thinking they’re going to scratch me. If a cat walks up, I’m going, “Oh no, this dude about to scratch me -- I know it!” Cats scare the hell out of me. I love animals, but I’m no cat lover. Guys usually aren’t.
A former translator for Osama bin Laden wants a cat as company in Guantanamo Bay and thinks LeBron James should apologize to Cleveland. You can't make this stuff up. Carlos Warner, a lawyer representing Muhammed Rahim, an Afghan who translated for the late al-Qaeda leader, sent a letter to a Washington Post blog detailing his client's complaints and comments from the U.S. prison. Mostly, he wanted to let people know that certain prisoners were given cats.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement