Hollywood's hottest new actor is a cat.
Plus: Ozempic for dogs and feral cats vs. New York City rats.
Good morning. It’s the last real holiday of summer, so ditch your phone (after you read this newsletter, of course), go outside, and touch some grass.
In today’s Tail Mail: The cat taking over Hollywood, a promising development in canine cancer research, an Oura ring for horses, GLP-1 implants for dogs, and a strike team of feral cats vs. New York City rats.
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I’m going to a movie theater for a cat.
This week, I’m catching a screening of Caught Stealing, the new Darren Aronofsky film starring Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz, and Tonic the cat. I wasn’t planning on seeing this movie until red carpet photos from the film’s New York premiere dropped. I mean, just look:
I’m sorry, but no actor will ever be as cool as this cat.
Unlike the Choupettes of the world, Tonic’s journey to Hollywood began on the streets of Ontario, where he was found as a stray kitten some eight years ago. He was adopted by the trainer Melissa Millett, who was scouting rescues for cats to act in the 2019 adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, which involves a family cat dying and coming back to life.
Tonic was an immediate yes. “The second he came out of his crate, he looked like he thought he was the king of the world and he was ready for all the chicken,” she recently told The New York Times. He went on to play the pre-death version of Church the cat, sharing the role with another cat actor named Leo who embodied the zombified version.
In Caught Stealing, Tonic has a leading role in Bud, a cat who gets dragged along in a crime caper involving mistaken identity and a lot of cash, all set against the backdrop of the East Village in the ’90s. He’s the de facto sidekick to Butler’s Hank, a bartender and former baseball player who gets caught up in the drama when he starts cat sitting for his neighbor (The Crown’s Matt Smith, sporting a ridiculous mohawk).
If Superman’s Krypto sparked a surge in dog adoption interest this summer, I hope we see the same love for shelter cats. There’s another Tonic waiting to shine.
In other news…
Horses have their own $600 version of an Oura ring. Garmin released a tail wrap that tracks data like a horse’s skin temperature, stride, gait, heart rate, and recovery rate. We’re going to continue seeing new products in the wearable tech space for companion and sport animals as consumers get more invested in the health and wellbeing of their pets.
An 11-year-old golden retriever is cancer free in the latest success for a clinical trial. Two years ago, Lola began participating in a UC Davis trial that involved inhaling immunotherapy drugs to treat oral melanoma, an aggressive mouth cancer that already spread to her lungs. Today, her tumors are gone. (The study was sponsored by the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, which is facing major funding cuts under the Trump administration that will impact cancer research.)
Would you bring your pet to college? A handful of college campuses are allowing students to have cats and dogs in their dorms in a bid to improve mental health.
Ozempic for dogs is coming. Biotech company Okava is beginning trials on a GLP-1 implant that will help suppress appetite in overweight dogs, similarly to how popular weight-loss injections like Ozempic and Mounjaro work.
New York mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa wants to deploy a team of feral cats to deal with the city’s rat problem. “It would be like they’re on patrol. Consider them like Batman and Robin—Gotham caped crusaders at night, especially.”