One-year-old tabby cat MJ’s bike courier owner considers her an “indoor cat,” but he also considers a mohawk and a handlebar mustache “appropriate head accessories” so he may just be a generally confused person. Because MJ, who rides around Philly on her owner’s shoulder, is clearly at heart an outdoor cat who thrives on feeling the wind in her fur.
MJ’s human, Rudi Saldia, is a little cagey in this interview about whether he deliberately trained the kitty to be a bike fiend, or whether she expressed interest in taking a spin. If he did it on purpose to groom MJ as a conversation starter and YouTube star, we have to admire his savvy, because it worked — MJ and Saldia are now appearing in a commercial for GoPro cameras, which Saldia uses to film himself and his passenger. Saldia claims, though, that he originally made his YouTube videos only to prove to his mom that MJ liked to cruise around on his shoulder.
The town I grew up in had a cat who would ride around on the back of a motorcycle (we called him Motorcat). So this stuff is not new to me. But Motorcat wore a helmet, and I’m a little concerned about MJ. “We’re always safe out there,” Saldia assured the AP, but we think he should look into one of these:
