Any time my wife and I take our furry little feline, Tony, on a stroller ride through our downtown square, we’re mobbed with smiling children and laughing old ladies and confused college dudes rolling their eyes. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be James Eastham: proud guardian of Gary, the 10-year-old domestic longhair who’s become Internet-famous for his adorable outdoor adventures. Together, they’ve amassed over 600,000 loyal Instagram followers, who flock to their catalog-worthy photos of hiking, skiing, and paddling excursions around the Canadian Rockies.
In a time of extreme political divisiveness and social-media toxicity, cute-cat profiles are one of our few remaining sanctuaries. And it’s impossible not to fall in love with the handsome and gung-ho Gary, whether he’s looking all zen on the water or resting on his dad’s shoulders while zooming down a snowy hill, decked out in badass goggles. But the account, greatgramsofgary, is more than just feel-good fluff—he’s also inspired people to be more active and mindful with cats, rethinking preconceived notions of how to enrich their lives and ours.
Eastham adopted Gary from the Calgary Humane Society when he was four months old. (At the time, he had an injury that required removing the head of his femur: “His leg is now attached only by muscle and tendon,” Eastham wrote on Instagram, “but he doesn’t let it slow him down.” Certainly not!) It was a slow build to hitting the slopes and charming thousands of people, and no one’s more surprised than than the guy who started the account.
“I don’t think anyone would have expected that I would have a famous Internet cat if you’d told them 10 years ago,” says Eastham, who splits time between Edmonton and Canmore, Alberta. “I didn’t grow up with cats. I moved in with my partner, and at the time she had Gary and another cat, Carl, who passed away in the spring. Gary was the first cat I’d lived with, so I went a little bit hard on the ‘crazy cat man’ thing.”
Eastham spoke to GOOD about the amusing weirdness of living with a famous cat, the common reactions he sees online, and how Gary’s free spirit first showed itself.
When did you first notice that Gary had a proclivity for the outdoors? Was he trying to dart out the door at home?
Yeah! We were living in an apartment at the time. Our front door opened into a courtyard area, and the door didn’t latch very well, so if you didn’t lock it, it would just blow open sometimes. Occasionally we would find the door open and Gary out in the courtyard eating the plants in the planters. We decided if he wanted to go outside, he was going to have to walk on a leash. The apartment was close to major roads and a big urban park where there’s lots of coyotes, so we were like, “Not sure it’s great to have you roaming around free.” We started taking him out in the courtyard on a leash, and shortly after that is when we moved to Canmore full time. My partner had gotten a job in the mountains, and I was looking for work. As a break from doing job applications, we’d just sit on the front porch together and have coffee, and that was about when I started Gary’s Instagram account. I work in communications, so it was a bit of a jokey way to say I was “keeping up on social media trends” by posting photos of my cat on the Internet. It turned into something more than I was expected it was going to.
I don’t think there’s anything more universally beloved than cats on the Internet.
Well, exactly! [Laughs.]
I’m curious about the training piece of this. How organic was it? Would you go on a short hike and then gradually increase the distance?
I’m not sure there was ever a deliberate process. We started sitting on the front step together, and he’d look at the birds and sniff at the breeze while I’d drink my coffee. As he got confident sitting on the step, he started to explore the front yard. At the time we were across the street from this natural wooded area with some walking trails, so I was like, “We’re exploring the yard—why not walk through some of these trails?” We worked up from there. Getting Gary comfortable in the car was a big part of it as well. Gary didn’t like the car—that was almost the biggest hurdle. He was fine inside. We would drive to the end of our street, maybe 300 meters, get out and go for a walk in this wooded area, drive back, and that was how we got him introduced to the car. As he got more comfortable being outside, we thought we could introduce things slowly. We got him a little backpack carrier and got him used to that, and we tried a short hike with him. Whenever we introduce something new to Gary, we try to do it in a low-commitment way so that if he’s not having a good time, we can leave. We find a short hike kind of close to us and gave that a go, and it went OK, so we started bringing him on more hikes that summer.
Has he always been comfortable with water?
Gary’s always liked water—he’ll jump in the shower, and he’s OK if you have to give him a bath. We decided to try paddling with him. There’s a little lake about a two-minute drive from home, so we put him on the paddle board, and he was floating along in the water and enjoying the sun. Skiing was actually an accident, which sounds funny to say—how do you actually go skiing with your cat? [Laughs.] We’d been kind of snowed into the house one year around Christmas, and it was a nice day. Gary was sitting at the door, screaming because he wanted to go outside. I figured the easiest way for us to get around is if I were on skis. We were going for a little walk, enjoying the fresh snow, and as we were coming home, there was a little hill, and I thought, “When am I ever going to get the opportunity to ski with my cat again?” At that point he was very comfortable riding on my shoulders, so I ripped the skins off the skis and did two short little laps with Gary on this tiny hill and confused the heck out of some guy who was walking past at the time. [Laughs.]
I figured that would kinda be the end of it, but there’s a cat skiing place by where we lived. They invited us to go out, which was kind of amazing. I used to work as a ski patroller, and the resort I worked at was lookin for social media partners, so I sent some of the people I used to work with an email, like, “Hey, I have this cat. Why don’t you let me bring my cat to the ski hill?” [Laughs.] We had a chat, like, “What? What do you want to do?” We figured out how to make it work. That’s how that all started.
Gary seems to be having the time of his life, but you’re in this unique situation of toting around an Internet celebrity all the time. Has it been mostly fun? Is it ever annoying? Are you ever surprised at the reactions?
Yeah, I think it’s mostly fun—that’s why I keep doing it. It’s at times quite surreal. One of our longer-term partnerships is with the local [Alberta Jeep Dealers], who gave Gary a Jeep for two years. Signing a lease for my cat…for a car…was definitely a top 10 most surreal moment of my life. [Laughs.] It’s great. I love the photos. It’s a great partnership, and it fits super well with the content we have, and we’ve been able to go to a bunch of new places because of it. But it’s also like, “What?” It’s nice that people enjoy our content. So much of social media these days is polarizing and rage-bait and whatever else, so it’s nice to just have something fun to bring some smiles to people and enjoy social media rather than just getting angry when you read it.
Do you get that kind of feedback a lot?
Yeah, we get a lot of nice messages from people, telling us how they’ve enjoyed our content—it was something they [could use to] bond with their parent during health challenges or maybe their own health challenges or depression, that it was nice to have something lighthearted that they can escape with a little bit. It’s also super lovely to hear how we’ve inspired people to take their own cats out or think differently about what you can do with a cat. I don’t think all cats or all people should go skiing, but you can still take your cat out for a short walk as a way to bond with your cat or give them a bit of enrichment.
What’s your long-term vision for the account?
I feel like I’ve achieved everything I set out to. [Laughs.] We’re having fun with it, so I think we’re just gonna keep trucking along the way we have been. Part of why I’ve kept my job and not gone full-time into social media is that it allows us to be pickier about what partnerships we do choose so that it’s brands we do support or things we want to actually do. There was one opportunity that I would have loved to take but couldn’t figure out a way to do it in a way that was reasonable for Gary—we got invited to go skiing in Turkey. I’ve wanted to go to Turkey for a long time. But Gary’s never flown before, so it didn’t seem entirely reasonable that we’d just toss him on a plane for…I don’t even know how long that would be. We did decline that one, unfortunately, but I would have loved to have made it work. We’ll see what comes along. I wasn’t expecting that we’d have a partnership with Jeep, and you never know what the future holds.
One final burning question: Does Gary have a favorite treat? My little Tony loves his Temptations.
Gary loves Temptations. The treat he gets the most is Greenies, but probably his favorite thing in the world is bacon and ham. He likes beef and fish. He quite likes lobster and crab. Chicken is like, “Eh, take it or leave it.” Some days, you give him chicken and he’s like, “Do better. Not good enough.”
