Welcome Boston’s Weird New Celebrity: "Stroller Cat"
A disagreement between a woman who brought her cat onto the T in a baby stroller and some disgruntled riders found its way from the real world to the internet Tuesday (as most cat-related things do.) And from this little public transit spat a Boston internet star was born: Stroller Cat.
As BostInno’s Steve Annear ably recounts, a few T riders took to Twitter to complain that they’d seen a woman with a very large stroller on the T during peak hours.
Lady with a cat in full-sized/meant for children stroller preventing me and 8 other saps from going on T. #wtf #catbitch #mbta
— AH (@whineandboos) October 30, 2012
Meanwhile, the cat owner herself, who tweets as @abyaday, took to Twitter to complain, probably unaware of the conversation going on about her cat, that she’d encountered some snippy T riders.
Wow… FYI snippy woman on the Red Line: cats (& dogs) ARE allowed on #mbta as long as they’re properly contained!!! twitter.com/abyaday/status…
— Coco Koh & Aby-a-Day (@abyaday) October 30, 2012
Actually, those in the know quickly recognized the cat as one whose owner regularly documents her cat adventures throughout the city on a blog (which we screenshotted above) called The Daily Abyssinian. A sample entry:
I love riding the T with Jacoby. It’s fun to watch other people watching him, and it’s fun to watch him on the train. At times, he just seems so jaded. ‘Ho hum, here we are on the train. Yawn.’
Boston’s webizens are apparently a very, very bored group of people because the hashtag of one disgruntled rider, #strollercat, quickly became a place where the rest of the internet chimed in on the debate over etiquette. Finally, and somewhat inevitably, someone created a parody Twitter account for @StrollerCat, and thus does Boston have a new internet celebrity.
They see me strollin’ they hatin’ #strollercat — Stroller Cat (@StrollerCat) October 31, 2012
This is a very strange city. We think The Globe’s Michael Morisy probably says it best:
It’s stuff like #StrollerCat that keeps me simultaneously in love with & terrified of this amazing city j.mp/SjQzGy
— Michael Morisy (@morisy) October 31, 2012
