The photos are astonishing. A Medusa cat. They make you look twice and ask how did it happen? This is a calico cat who developed the worst coat matting ever seen. The 82-year-old cat’s owner suffered from dementia and has been rehomed in a residential care facility. You’ll see another cat in the comments section with Medusa matting. For some reason, old matting turns to dreadlocks.
While no one knows exactly how Hidey’s fur got this bad, the vet team thinks her weight had a lot to do with it.
“Hidey was really overweight, so that makes it harder for [cats] to groom themselves, and that’s when you see matting happen,” Lasky explained.
With Hidey unable to groom herself due to her weight, and with her owner not brushing her, the hair she was naturally shedding began to mat together. Left untended for a couple of years, the matting became severe.
Thankfully, Paul Russell, a relative of the cat’s owner, intervened and has adopted the 14-year-old Hidey, along with another 17-year-old Siamese named Siam who was also living with the relative.
Paul says that he originally visited the house to feed Siam while they figured out what to do with his relative’s belongings after he moved into a nursing home. After hearing that his relative might also have a second cat, he started searching.
“All of a sudden, this creature darted and ran across the room and down into the cellar,” he recalls. “At first, I didn’t know what it was — it looked like it might be a cat dragging a blanket on top of it.”