World’s Oldest Cat Celebrates 30th Birthday

A short-haired tortoiseshell cat named Flossie turned 30 years old this week, extending her Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest living cat.

Born on December 29, 1995, Flossie was officially recognized as the world’s oldest feline by Guinness in 2022, just before her 27th birthday. She’s still going strong.

Flossie’s life began in a feral colony in Merseyside, England, where she was rescued as a kitten. Over the decades Flossie outlived a couple of owners before landing with Victoria Green of Orpington, who, with the animal welfare group Cats Protection, helped Guinness verify the cat’s age using veterinary records.

“I adopted her on the sort of basis that this is her retirement home and she gets whatever she wants,” Green told Guiness in 2022. Flossie, though deaf and with limited eyesight (no night vision), still eats well, sleeps a  lot, and enjoys gentle play. “She never turns her nose up at the chance of a good meal.”

Flossie has some living to do to challenge the longest-lived cat ever, a Texas mixed tabby named Creme Puff who lived an incredible 38 years and three days. Creme Puff’s long life, which ended in 2005, might be attributed to an eclectic diet. According to Atlas Obscura: “home-cooked breakfast of eggs, turkey bacon, broccoli, coffee with cream, and — every two days — about an eyedropper full of red wine to ‘circulate the arteries.” Yumm.Triple the wine consumption and many of us would enjoy that breakfast three times a day.

Photo credit: Cats Protection / Guinness World Records