Bedford YouTuber whose interrupting cat became fur real star begins fundraiser for rescue shelter
A pet lover from Bedford whose interrupting kitty became a YouTube sensation has started a cat rescue fundraiser.
Mike Jeavons got his cat Basil from Stray Cat Rescue between Westoning and Toddington nearly 10 years ago.
But when he started to post food reviews on his YouTube channel, little did he know, the curious cat wanted a piece of the action.
Mike said: “Basil was a huge part of my YouTube channel. He always interrupted shots by meowing and kept popping up in the background. He loved the attention.”
And he joked: “The viewers loved him. They definitely tuned into see him rather than hear what I had to say."
But the popular puss has died at the age of 16 from an aggressive cancer and Mike is keen to give back to the animal shelter as a way to honour Basil.
"They’re only a small charity but they do so much amazing work,” said Mike who came up with the paw-sitively amazing idea of setting set up a GoFundMe page for Stray Cat Rescue.
On his page, he wrote: “It's been an incredibly hard week. But, we've had a decade of loving our sweet little Basil, and we're so grateful that he loved us too. And that wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for Stray Cat Rescue, the charity we adopted him from.”
Basil was clearly the cat’s whiskers during his time on YouTube, the pair were even invited to star on Channel 5’s A Week On Subway where Mike had to eat Subway sandwiches for a week.
“They asked me to film plenty of footage of Basil to include in the show. They knew who the star was,” he said.