Since 1988, California home builder Peter Cohen has spent over $50,000 converting his Goleta property into a cat haven for his 15 rescue cats. The house now has a series of high walkways, tunnels, ramps and perches designed to make his favorite felines feel comfortable and entirely at home.

When Cohen first purchased the house it came with two cats, but one tragically died after it was hit by a car. Soon after, the second cat Cookie was also hit by a vehicle and she had to go through reconstructive surgery to recover. That’s when Cohen decided that Cookie would be a house cat, and he started changing the interiors to her liking. He also went to the shelter to adopt some more cats, so that Cookie could have new friends. “It sort of went from there,” he explained.

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In a cramped city like Tokyo, where owning a pet is a luxury and most apartments have strict no-pets policies, it’s hard for cat lovers to spend quality time with their favorite animals. In response, cat cafés have cropped up all over the city, where people get to sip delicious beverages while petting a purring kitty. But even that doesn’t come close to having a cat in your own home, because the time spent with the furry creatures is quite limited.

That’s why a Japanese company has come up with a great idea to get its employees to interact with pets more often – a cat-populated workplace! The offices of Ferray Corporation, an internet solutions business, is filled with nine lovable rescued cats that are allowed to roam freely all through the day. The cats are so adorable that employees of Ferray are reporting considerably lowered stress levels.

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A purring feline in the Bulgarian seaside resort town of Varna has been making headlines because of its unusually emerald green fur. Although several theories have tried to explain the radioactive color of the stray animal, the true cause of its coloration remains a mystery.

The ‘green cat of Bulgaria’, as the brightly colored feline has come to be known online, was spotted prowling the streets of Varna a few days ago, and as soon as photos of it appeared on the internet, it became an international news topic. Truth be told, it’s not every day that you get to see a real-life emerald cat, and the inexplicable cause of its bizarre color simply made the topic even more intriguing.

According to some sources, until not too long ago, the stray feline only displayed a hint of green on its fur, but gradually grew greener until attaining the bright emerald color you see below. This makes the original assumption that vandals had dyed its fur green as a cruel joke, unlikely. Before this report from local eye witnesses came to light, Bulgarian animal lovers had even set up a Facebook page entitled “Punishment to the perpetrator of this criminal act!”

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Meet Oscar, a cat with a supernatural ability to feel when people are about to die. In over 50 documented cases, Oscar, who lives in a nursing home , has curled up beside patients in their final hours, seeing them through to the ‘other side’.

His unique story was revealed by Dr. David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, who claims Oscar’s predictions have rarely been wrong in the past six years. In fact, he has even proved medical staff wrong at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island, where he was adopted seven years ago as a kitten.

Dr. Dosa first told the world about Oscar’s rare gift in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007. Since then, the cat has accurately sensed even more deaths, convincing the geriatrician that it wasn’t just a series of coincidences. Dr. Dosa eventually wrote a book about his experiences with Oscar at the nursing home. It’s called ‘Making rounds with Oscar: The extraordinary gift of an ordinary cat’.

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Garfi the cat is all set to dethrone Grumpy Cat from his position as the internet’s most sour-faced feline. One look at Garfi’s picture and you’ll know that he really means business. The orange Persian male from Turkey has such a menacing expression that he actually makes Grumpy Cat look happy.

Garfi was introduced to the online world through a Flickr album created by his owner Hulya Ozkok, with her son’s encouragement. The album, with over 50,000 views, contains pictures of Garfi wearing all sorts of cute accessories – bunny ears, Santa hats, oversized reading glasses, and flowery headbands. But none of the props quite manage to hide that glint of anger in his eyes – this is one furious cat!

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Greg Krueger, from St. James, Minnesota, has spent over 20 years renovating his home – not for his own comfort, but for that of his cats! He’s converted his home into a giant feline playground, with $10,000 worth of elaborate tunnels, platforms, and overhead catwalks.

“I just love trails and paths, and cats, of course,” said 50-year-old Krueger. “And so I’ve just linked those passions together.” His unique home improvement project began years ago, when he made a place for his four pet cats to sit on top of a China cabinet, because they liked to be high up.

Next, he built a kitty-sized staircase to help them get up to the cabinet. And his cats loved it so much that Krueger just decided to keep going. Soon, he had put up over 100 yards of catwalks and bridges through every room in the house, and set it all up so that his cats never have to touch the floor.

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Most people aren’t aware of this, but an alarmingly large number of cats die of leukemia every year. To raise awareness about the plight of these suffering cats, Maria Torero has converted her own two-story, eight-room apartment into a feline hospice. The 45-year-old nurse from Lima, Peru, currently has 175 patients residing with her, and spends over $1,500 a month just to care for them.

Maria has been caring for the diseased cats for the past five years now – she brings unwanted strays into her home and nurses them as they slowly succumb to their deadly illness. The mother-of-three doesn’t distinguish between her own children and her cat-patients. In fact, she says that she considers it her duty as a nurse to take in creatures that no one else wants to care for.

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Tonawanda Island, a small patch of land located just off the city of North Tonawanda, in Niagara County, New York, is currently suffering from a serious case of cats. Hundreds of abandoned felines freely roam the 85-acre island, and they’re multiplying at an alarming rate. Believe it or not, there are already more cats than people on the island!

“This is a small island with a big cat problem,” said islander Danielle Cooligan. Most of these cats are forgotten or unwanted pets who were left to fend for themselves. “They’re just everywhere,” said Wayne Howard of North Tonawanda. “People drop them off. I’ve caught people dumping them on the road; they just unload them on the island.”

While most of the island’s human residents are seasonal, the cats live there all year round. Most of them hide during the day and come out at night. “The messes they make, especially the feces around the island and where people walk, it’s disgusting,” Howard added. “I’ve caught them on my boat a few times and they made messes; they’re just a problem.”

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Tama the cat has been a part of the Japanese workforce for the past seven years. She works as a station master at Kishi station, a remote railway stop in Kinokawa City, Wakayama, Western Japan. Of course, ‘works’ isn’t exactly the right word for what she does there. Her job mostly involves sitting around, posing for pictures and looking rather stern (which reminds me of my ex-boss, actually). But Tama has been rewarded handsomely for her efforts – she has a large window office, a hat with a gold lining, a badge, and her annual compensation is one years’ worth of cat food.

Station Master Tama is special because she attracts tens of thousands of tourists each year. Her presence at Kishi station has helped revitalize tourism in a rural area that was struggling to stay afloat. At one point, the train line that passed through Kishi station saw a 15 percent annual decline in ridership. But when Tama stepped into the role of station master, in 2007, there was a sudden 10 percent jump in the first year.

Tourists continue to pour in from Hong Kong and Taiwan; Wakayama Electric Railway (the company that runs the line) said that at least 20,000 tourists visit the small town annually. The estimated combined revenue from the ticket sales and memorabilia like photobooks and commercial appearances has bumped up the local economy by a whopping 1.1 billion yen ($10.8 million). The company operates just the one line, with about 2.2 million passengers annually.

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Tennessee-based breeders have created a new breed of cat with a touch of the supernatural. The ‘Lykoi’ has the looks of a werewolf, but apparently behaves more like a dog. Due to a genetic mutation in a domestic shorthair cat, the Lykoi has no hair around its eyes, nose, ears and muzzle, giving it a werewolfish appearance.

The name ‘Lykoi’ loosely translates as ‘wolf cat’ in Greek. It has patchy hair on the rest of its body and a ‘hound dog personality’. According to the official website for the breed, “They like to hunt around the house for whatever they can find. They show caution to strangers but warm up quickly and become very friendly.”

“There was no human intervention to create the cat,” said breeder Johnny Gobble. “The gene is a natural mutation that appeared in the domestic cat population. We are simply using the genetics of natural processes.”

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Do you think mastering social media is hard? Apparently, it’s so easy even a cat can do it. Snoopybabe is China’s new internet sensation with 275,000 followers on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter and 190,000 fans on Instagram.  Hailing from the Sichuan Province, Snoopybabe, an American short-hair and Persian crossbreed, has taken the Chinese interwebs by storm with his cute short snout, innocent brown eyes and charming outfits.

His owner, Miss Ning started posting pictures of Snoopybabe a while back to show him off to her friends. She did not expect the huge attention the two-year old cat attracted. As she posted more videos and pictures of him in different poses and dressed in colorful clothing accessorized with elegant neck pieces, his popularity grew exponentially. He soon reached the same popularity level as already well-established felines such as Tardar Sauce aka Grumpy Cat or Maru. These adorable kitties have become irresistible even to big cat food companies such as Friskies which named Grumpy as their spokescat this month.

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Do you wish that your cat was just as fashionable as you? Now you can both wear couture designs courtesy of United Bamboo’s kitty clothing line. United Bamboo, a well-known fashion brand has been making calendars for three years now featuring cats dressed up in miniature versions of their most valued designs.

Wearing exact copies of runway clothing, the felines featured in the first issue belonged to friends and family. But soon the brand felt the need to start an Instagram campaign in order to find the most fashion forward cat lovers whose companions not only looked stylish in designer clothes but also looked good on camera. A number of kitties have been selected so far but the competition is tough and not all of them are going to make it in the 2014 issue. Some cats are already popular models such as Jasper, a part Maine coon, part domestic longhair cat who wears a red duffle parka on top of a striped shirt and is featured on the first month of the calendar. Another favorite, Huxtable, a hairless gentle-tomcat who loves “to hang out on people’s shoulders and will walk on a leash!” is wearing a simple yet stylish blouse and a black wool jumper. There is also sociaholic Prince Snowflake dressed in the brand’s colored binding coat, and toothpaste-phobic Gertrude wearing a sparkly dress. All the stars of the calendar are photographed by cat enthusiast Noah Sheldon, while the calendar itself is designed by Studio Lin.

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This is the story of how a few dozen cats managed to save an entire community just by purring and looking pretty. Houtong was just another dilapidated mining town in the mountains of eastern New Taipei City, but everything changed when the felines came and livened up the place.

Houtong used to be one of Taiwan’s most important coal extraction sites, up until the 1970s. Then, oil and electricity took the place of coal, and the town suffered a steady decline. At one point it was reduced to a train stop along the Yilan line, one that most travelers ignored, and that forced many of its younger residents search for better opportunities elsewhere. The population of this defunct mining town dwindled from around six thousand inhabitants to a couple  of hundred, who struggled to survive. But their fortunes changed in 2008, when a cat lover who goes by the name “Palin88” organized a series of cat photography events in the mountain town. He and his friends posted the photos online, and got an overwhelming response from fellow feline enthusiasts. As they shared the photos on forums and social media sites, Houtong welcomed more and more tourists eager to photograph the cats themselves, or simply watch them roaming through the town. Nowadays, Houtong is known as the Cat Village, or Taiwan’s Cat Mecca.

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Grandma Bai, a 64-year-old animal lover from Chongqing, China, has spent the last 15 years taking care of stray dogs and cats, and has exhausted all her life savings in the process.

American humorists Josh Billings once said “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself”, and we’ve featured a few heartbreaking stories that prove this to be right. Remember Capitan, the German Shepherd who refused to leave his owner’s grave six years after he died, or Ciccio, the faithful dog who attends the daily Mass at the church where his master used to go? I’ve written a lot of impressive stories about dogs’ loyalty and love even beyond the grave, so it’s always nice to see some humans showing them some kindness in return. Case in point, Grandma Bai, a native of Leshan, China, who has spent all her savings and the last 15 years of her life taking care of over 100 stray dogs and 30 cats. Her love for these abandoned creatures and the sacrifices she has had to make have melted the hearts of millions, since the story broke out in China.

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If you’ve ever dreamed of living in New York, here’s one more reason for you to move there – Jordana Serebrenik. The name of her business explains it all. She is the founder, owner and sole worker of Catch Your Cat, which pretty much sums up what she does. This 45-year-old resident of Murray Hill will come to your home, catch your cat and will do with it anything you want her to.

Let’s face it. Although cats are very adorable creatures, they are fierce when it comes to personal space. Even a hint of threat to their independence and some of them they will even snarl at their own masters. So imagine trying to get a pet cat into a carrier to go to the vet. It could be quite a daunting task. More so, for the elderly or the physically impaired. That’s where Jordana and Catch Your Cat step in. For about $80, she will make sure the cat is in the box in no time at all.

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