Grumpy Cat has earned almost $100 million in 2 years

Tabatha, Grumpy Cat’s owner denies that her cat earns this extraordinary amount of money for her. That should be on record at the beginning but the official version is as follows……

I won’t bang on about cat exploitation as I have made my views known a couple of years ago. Even then I felt Grumy Cat was being exploited. But now we are told that she has made almost $100 million (USD) for her owner, Tabatha Bundesen, (living in Arizona, USA) in just 2 years ($99.5 million to be exact, or about £64 million GBP). This is an astonishing sum of money. It was mentioned on the radio this morning (LBC 97.3 Steven Allen show).

This is earning at a rate which beats pretty well all the top film stars. I think it also beats almost all the top sport stars. For example Grumpy Cat beats perhaps the world’s best footballer, Christiano Ronaldo, who has earned $42.2 million in 2014.

And, for example, Gwyneth Paltrow earned, by comparison, a paltry $18.6 million last year.

The earnings for Grumpy have come from a film, the face of Friskies®, coffee promotions, photo sessions, books and anything else that can be promoted by a cat with a grumpy face.

Tabatha says:

“What she’s achieved in such a short time is unimaginable and absolutely mind-blowing. I was able to quit my job as a waitress within days of her first appearance on social media, and the phone simply hasn’t stopped ringing since.”

What can you say? Amazing commercial success but…this sort of success is only appreciated by people. Grumpy has no use for money. I suppose he gets and extra plate of the finest cat food. I hope so anyway.

From the perspective of Grumpy Cat it must have been a hard year but very few people see this from the cat’s perspective and when I bring up the subject people moan at me and complain. Grumpy Cat needs a voice.

But surely it is fair and reasonable to see what is lauded as an outstanding success from the perspective of the star who’s existence is the reason for the success? I don’t see any difference from this form of animal exploitation to any other.