A Thanksgiving night TNR run at a feral cat colony in Tucson, Arizona ended with a cream-colored tomcat getting a rescue nobody had planned — and a story that reached millions of people who had never heard of Poets Square Cats.
Courtney Gustafson had been doing this long enough to know how the night was supposed to go. She set her traps at a feral cat colony in Tucson, Arizona on Thanksgiving evening, the same way she had done it scores of times before. Catch the cats, neuter them, vaccinate them, send them back. Routine.
Then she looked more carefully at the large, cream-colored tomcat sitting in one of her cages.
He was not acting like a feral cat.
“I humanely trapped Uncle Potato on Thanksgiving at a feral cat colony in Tucson, Arizona, where I was trapping other community cats for spay, neuter and vaccines,” Gustafson told Newsweek. “I realized that Uncle Potato was friendly, and got permission from the people who had been feeding him outdoors to find an indoor home for him.”
That one call — pulling him from the release list — set off a story that traveled well past Tucson. The image of a jowly, mournful-eyed tomcat in a rescue cage reached hundreds of thousands of people within days. Six months on, the feral cat rescue of Uncle Potato remains one of the most-covered animal stories of 2025, and people are still searching for updates on where he ended up.
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Who Is Uncle Potato?
Uncle Potato is a male domestic cat pulled from a feral colony in Tucson, Arizona on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2025. He is cream-colored, with slightly crossed eyes and a facial expression that sits somewhere between profound sadness and mild contempt.
His most distinctive feature is a pair of dramatically oversized cheeks.
In unneutered male cats, sustained testosterone production causes the jaw and cheek muscles to develop significantly over time, giving adult toms a noticeably jowly, heavy-set appearance. Gustafson explained it directly: “His large head and cheeks are caused by an excess of testosterone from not being neutered — he’s a classic tom cat.”
Before the rescue, Uncle Potato was carrying the physical record of two years on the street. He was dirty, covered in small wounds, and scarred from territorial fights with other males. He had almost certainly fathered a large number of kittens across Tucson’s outdoor cat population.
| Age at rescue | Approx. 2 years |
| Weight | 12 lbs |
| Coat | Cream-colored |
| Found at | Feral cat colony, Tucson, Arizona |
| Date rescued | Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2025 |
| Rescued by | Courtney Gustafson, Poets Square Cats |
| Veterinary care | Humane Society of Southern Arizona |
| Transferred to | Whiskers N Wishes Cat Rescue and Sanctuary |
How the Rescue Actually Happened
Gustafson runs Poets Square Cats and has been doing community cat TNR work across Tucson for years. Trap-Neuter-Return is a program for managing stray and feral cat populations: cats are humanely trapped, taken for spay or neuter surgery and vaccination, then returned to their outdoor colonies when they are not candidates for indoor life. Most cats caught in a TNR operation go back outside.
Uncle Potato was supposed to go back outside.
What changed the plan was his behavior in the trap. He showed none of the defensive reactions a genuinely feral cat produces when confined. No pressing flat, no sustained hissing, no frantic attempts to get out. He was calm. Gustafson got permission from the local residents who had been leaving food out for him, pulled him from the release schedule, and moved him into the rescue process.
He was taken to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, where he was neutered and vaccinated. From there, he was transferred to Whiskers N Wishes Cat Rescue and Sanctuary in the Avra Valley and Marana area near Tucson, where the team gave him further veterinary care and started assessing what kind of home would suit him.
What Happened When He Came Indoors
The adjustment to indoor life happened faster than anyone working with him had reason to expect.
“When we showed him his new bed, he climbed right in, curled up, and started purring,” Gustafson said.
A cat that had spent two years sleeping rough at a feral colony, fighting other males, and surviving on whatever the neighborhood left out walked straight into a warm bed on first introduction. Behind the permanently sad face and crossed eyes, Uncle Potato turned out to be genuinely affectionate. He loves chin scratches and being held, according to Gustafson — a personality that two years of street life had completely concealed beneath the jowls and the scars.
Why 44,000 People Liked a Photo of a Cat
The original post on the Poets Square Cats Instagram account collected over 44,000 likes. That number alone does not fully account for the reaction.
Gustafson’s audience already knew her work closely. The account carries 1 million TikTok followers, 267,000 on Instagram, and 107.3 million total TikTok likes. For that community, Uncle Potato was not simply an interesting-looking rescue cat from Arizona.
He looked almost identical to Sad Boy.
Sad Boy was a large, heavy-faced tom who had lived at the Poets Square colony for years, built a devoted following of his own, and died roughly two years before Uncle Potato appeared. His bonded colony mate, Lola, still lives on Gustafson’s roof. Seeing a cat with that same broad, mournful face show up in a Thanksgiving trap — the same holiday that first made Poets Square Cats famous — carried a weight that standard rescue posts rarely achieve. Dozens of adoption applications arrived at Whiskers N Wishes within weeks.
Who Is Courtney Gustafson?
Gustafson moved into a rental home in Tucson’s Poets Square neighborhood and found, gradually, that around 30 feral cats were living outside. She had no background in animal welfare. She was working in communications at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona with no plans to shift careers.
She started photographing the colony to keep her father updated. The account grew. A Thanksgiving video showing the colony cats receiving small servings of roasted Cornish hen on proper little plates hit number one on Reddit and was covered by Newsweek. Her following grew sharply from that point.
When she was later laid off from her day job, TikTok income kept her financially stable. She used that window to write.
Her memoir, “Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats”, became a New York Times bestseller in 2025 and an NPR and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year. One of her early editors described it as “Trojan cats” — you come for the cat stories and stay for what Gustafson writes underneath about housing, poverty, and the texture of an American neighborhood.
She currently manages around 15 community cats in her own neighborhood while trapping hundreds more across Tucson each year for veterinary care.
The Problem Behind the Story
Gustafson was clear that she wanted Uncle Potato’s moment to function as a door, not a destination.
Data from Shelter Animals Count for the first half of 2025:
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Cats entering U.S. shelters | 1,397,000 |
| Percentage that were strays | 59% |
| Kittens under 5 months as share of non-live outcomes | 65% |
“He wants to remind everyone that there are lots of other cats in need of homes, including many of his new friends at Whiskers N Wishes,” Gustafson said.
More than half the cats that entered American shelters in the first six months of 2025 came off the street. The animals with the lowest survival rates are the youngest — kittens under five months account for nearly two-thirds of all cat deaths and euthanasia in shelter care nationally.
Uncle Potato was fortunate on two specific counts: he was old enough to have survived outdoor life, and he was calm enough in a trap that an experienced trapper noticed something was different about him.
Where Is Uncle Potato Now?
Whiskers N Wishes Cat Rescue and Sanctuary has been operating as a 501(c)(3) since 2020. The facility covers 2,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, including an air-conditioned isolation ward and a senior center completed in late 2024. Its focus is specifically on older cats and those with medical needs — the animals shelters find hardest to place.
The sanctuary received dozens of adoption applications for Uncle Potato in the weeks after his rescue. Staff were working carefully through them as of late 2025, evaluating which home would be the right fit. No confirmed adoption has been publicly announced since.
For current updates:
- Whiskers N Wishes: whiskerssanctuary.com and @wishesrescue on TikTok and Instagram
- Poets Square Cats: @poetssquarecats on TikTok and Instagram
- Uncle Potato merchandise: available through Catscapes, with a portion of proceeds going to Whiskers N Wishes
Uncle Potato came out of that Thanksgiving trap with two years of outdoor life written into his coat and his scars. He had fought for territory he would not remember, fathered kittens he would never meet, and lived off whatever Tucson left out for him. The first time someone showed him a warm bed, he climbed in without hesitation.
That detail — not the 44,000 likes, not the cheeks, not the resemblance to a cat that people had already grieved — is what kept the story circulating. He had every reason not to trust anyone. He did anyway.
The colony he came from is still out there. So is Gustafson, setting traps on weeknight evenings across Tucson while most of the city goes about its business. Uncle Potato’s story ended somewhere warm. Most of the cats she catches do not get that. She goes out anyway, and the cages keep filling.
