Feline fine! Sunderland TikToker raises awareness for animal shelter after cat stroking goes viral

  • Gregg Easteal has been to Newcastle Cat and Dog Shelter to meet the animals getting some love thanks to the social media star.

Homeless animals are getting some much-needed love thanks to a viral social media star.

Arthur Jurzanovs from Sunderland, visited the Newcastle Cat and Dog Shelter on Thursday 22 February to raise awareness of all the animals needing to be loved and awaiting their forever homes.

It all started after Arthur started an account on the social media platform TikTok which has videos of him petting his beloved cat.

Every day Arthur makes a video - for every follower he gets he will give his 11-week-old kitten Nadia a stroke.

The homeless cats have received some much needed TLC. Credit: ITV Tyne Tees

To mark reaching 300,000 followers in less than 10 days, Arthur visited the Tyneside animal shelter to show their cats some love too.

Whilst at the shelter Arthur spent time petting five cats for five minutes. Once that time was up five more cats were taken into the room for Arthur to stroke which continued until all the cats had been petted.

Arthur told ITV News Tyne Tees: "I'm absolutely buzzing, I didn't think it would be this high, starting from a few thousand up to a third of a million - it's just crazy how high it's gotten."

Arthur's videos have racked up millions of views with day three alone been watching 8.3m times.

Arthur has gained over 300,000 followers in less than 10 days. Credit: Arthur.j89

He said: "I never expected it to be that high, I just thought from there on it would be nice to spread out the love and spread out the strokes to different cats."

If Arthur continues growing at the same rate on TikTok as he has done so far he could be bigger than Taylor Swift in two weeks.

Iain Riddell from Newcastle Cat and Dog Shelter said: "It's absolutely amazing and it really shows the power of the online cat community, that Arthur could grow so fast and so quickly.

"On a more serious note, it's a helpful reminder that there's a lot of cats out there that need their fair share of strokes and they also need a good home too."

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