The Strongest Cat Breed In The World

If the internet's cat-sploitation genre ever jumped the shark, it would keep going strong because a cat can pretty much jump anything and somehow stick the landing purr-fectly. In 2018, mankind's cat-stravaganza looked stronger than ever, thanks to Buff Cat, whose "swole body baffle[d] and enchant[ed] the internet" and "inspire[d] amazing memes," according to People. Sporting Schwarzenegger-esque proportions, the cat had to be a gym rat, raising the pressing question, "How much can it bench?" An even better question is, "How much do you want your cat to bench?"

Cats are notoriously hard to train, so weight training is almost certainly out of the question in most cases. Of course, you could just give your cat steroids; just don't give them catabolic steroids, which, despite their somewhat misleading name, aren't meant to turn kitties into beefcakes. If you worry about the detrimental effects of juicing, a nice compromise might be to give your whiskered companion half an anabolic steroid pill — or as we like to call it, a hemi-roid. Without a doubt, the only thing humanity needs more than cat memes in this dog-eat-dog world are cats with hemi-roids. But if your cat nips that idea in the bud, your last resort is to find a member of the strongest cat breed.

Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to swing by your local Strong Cat competition and grab the pick of the muscular litter, and literature about domestic cats with massive lats — or as the should be called, powerhouse cats — is limited at best. However, speed and agility might suffice as an analog to raw strength because a weak, flabby cat would lack ability to run at a high velocity and nimbly navigate obstacles.

According to The Spruce Pets, the Egyptian Mau is the fastest of domestic cat on the planet. "Heavily muscled and strong," per Hill's Pet Nutrition, this highly athletic breed's top speed is about 30 miles per hour, making it fast enough to get ticketed in a school zone. Domesticated an estimated 4,000 years ago, the feline was worshiped by ancient Egyptians. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the sun god Ra is depicted as "a spotted Tabby cat," and as The Spruce Pets points out, the Egyptian Mau is the "only naturally occurring spotted breed of domestic cat." Even more awesome, Egyptian images depict this sunny deity "slaying the snake demon Apophis with a knife," according to the Egyptian Mau Society.

In other words, the Egyptian Mau lucked out doubly by having the body of a Greek feline god and the status of an Egyptian one. And since it's also a snake-slayer, one can only assume that in the annals of cat mythology, a feline version of Perseus, i.e. Purr-seus, decapitated Medusa.

Per the Egyptian Mau Society, this fit feline arrived in Europe some time prior to WWII and would become one of the conflict's casualties. On the brink of extinction, the breed was rescued by an exiled Russian princess named Nathalie Troubetskoy. Born in Poland, Troubetskoy served in WWI as a nurse before migrating to England. In the lead-up to WWII, she moved to Italy and would work as a nurse again. After the war, she would nurse an entire species of feline back to health.

According to legend, Troubetskoy was residing in Rome in the 1950s when a boy handed her a kitten in a shoebox. The boy received the animal from a diplomat and evidently decided to give it away like an unwanted fruitcake. Troubetskoy became smitten with the kitten. So she made it her mission to rescue as many Egyptian Maus as she could. She contacted diplomats, asking them to import more cats to expand the gene pool. In 1956, Troubetskoy took three of these felines to the United States and founded a cattery called Fatima. Americans fell head over heels but failed to land on their heels because they aren't cats.

The Egyptian Mau enjoys being perched in high places, "[surveying the surrounding area," per Hill's Pet Nutrition. In that sense, they literally live the high life, life was never higher than when they were worshiped like gods in Egypt. But PRI writes that Egypt's mighty Maus came crashing back to Earth from the heavens. They would roam the streets as "garbage dwellers," disregarded and disrespected like so much animate trash. But the Egyptian Mau Rescue Organization has taken it upon itself to set up shelters for the breed and educate the public about the exalted status it once held. So just as a Russian princess revived this resilient breed in Italy, ERMO has dedicated itself to saving the felines' legacy from extinction.