deadmau5 on How His Cats Have Helped Him — Even If One Also Destroyed His Rare Art: ‘That’s the Price of a Cat’
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Billboard’s Power Pets is a new feature focusing on musicians’ best friends — no, not the humans — but the furry (and some scaly and feathery!) ones who bring extra joy and companionship to artists. Celebrities will be sharing sweet details about their beloved pets and how their furbabies enrich their lives. For the third story in the series, we talked to producer deadmau5 for Adopt a Cat Month, which is celebrated each June.
deadmau5 may wear a giant mouse-head helmet when he performs, but the artist born Joel Zimmerman has cats in his heart. And he recognizes that it’s his feline companions who help keep him in a healthier mental state.
“Oh, like, bar none … I would have, I wouldn’t say I’d be institutionalized, but very close to, just because they’re the most non-judgmental conduits of grief or stress or just all-around chaos when you just need a minute,” the Grammy-nominated artist – who has previously spoken about his depression — tells Billboard about how his cats have helped with his mental health.
He notes that a therapist once told him to sit down and pet a cat, and it’s been good advice. “As benign as it sounds, what a stress reliever they can be,” deadmau5 – who is currently Cat Dad to Peanut, Dizzy and Dolly – shares. “You know, whereas you feel like the world is just ready to f—king tear you apart, and they’re like, ‘We don’t know s—t, but whatever. We like pets.’”
That’s not to say that cat ownership doesn’t come with some stressful moments, which the Canadian producer can attest to. Take that time last year one of his cats – he suspects it was Dolly because Peanut “knows better” — destroyed a rare piece of art.
“I had a one-of-one Greg Mike skull that was made out of hands,” the musician shared of the piece that artist with whom he’s collaborated gave him. “I had it up on a piano or something, and a cat got up there and brushed it off, and it just shattered into a million pieces. It wasn’t the amount that it was worth – it was just the rarity of it and how much I really loved that piece. And I was like, ‘Oh my god, cat … you have no idea how many cats like you I could buy with something like this. I don’t want to say it, but this was way more than you!’ … So I’m like, you know, at the end of the day, I just say things like that are on me. Because, I mean, that’s the price of a cat!”
While cats may sometimes be destructive, deadmau5 is a fan of having feline pals around. “They’re just super low maintenance and easy to please. They kind of do their own thing,” he says. “They don’t require the constant stream of attention a dog needs.”
The producer, who does a lot of work with the Toronto Humane Society, notes that all of his cats have all been adopted, and his two most recent additions – Dizzy and Dolly – joined his family in September 2023 from Animal Adoptions of Flamborough in Ontario, after the death of his beloved Meowingtons earlier that year. “There’s just such an influx of [cats] that end up getting removed from the home or whatever, and then they’re off in the streets eating whatever and being cats, and then you have these litters of kittens and no one can look after them. They don’t all make it, and that’s a bummer,” he points out. “I make it a point to adopt versus getting that handcrafted rare cat as a showpiece, because I think rescues are … somewhere in their little, tiny brains, they know [you saved them].”
Keep reading to learn more about deadmau5’s cats, from the various ways he’s honored Meowingtons’ memory (including displaying his skeleton!), to how he spoils his kitties, the best lesson they’ve taught him and much more.
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All About Peanut
Image Credit: Courtesy of deadmau5 Peanut, whose “government name,” as deadmau5 calls it, is Nyan, is also known as “the other cat.” And according to the producer, the cat — who is 12 or 13 years old — is extra special in that he believes she has a condition called Twitchy Cat Syndrome.
Officially known as Hyperesthesia Syndrome, Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine describes it as “an extreme sensitivity in an area of a cat’s skin, almost always on the back, and often in the area right in front of the tail,” and cats may intensely scratch the area or suddenly bite.
“I don’t know, she has like, kitty schizophrenia or something,” deadmau5 says of his gray cat, sharing how it sometimes looks like Peanut – who is otherwise “pretty chill,” though “a bit needy” — is chasing demons. “She has, like, wicked separation anxiety – you can’t leave her in a room by herself. … She has a very specific spot in the house where she’ll go and just start like, furiously lick herself for a second. Then she’ll see a demon, and then lick herself again.”
Though Peanut may be a little different, deadmau5 says she doesn’t require any special care, though it wouldn’t be his first time with a special-needs kitty. “We had a cat named Noob who passed away young because she had [an issue with her esophagus] where she could not eat,” he reveals. “We had to tube feed her for like a year, and then it was kind of decided upon by the vets and everybody that you should euthanize this cat because this is going to be miserable for the rest of the cat’s life.”
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We Are (Feline) Family
Image Credit: Courtesy of deadmau5 Peanut was adopted from the Toronto Humane Society about two to three years after deadmau5 brought Meowingtons home. “I thought, ‘Man, it must suck being the only cat,’” he explains about getting a pal for Meowingtons. But, he shares, the two didn’t quite click as companions in the way he had expected. “Meowingtons was kind of more the protector, and it was daddy-daughter kind of stuff,” he shares of the cats’ relationship. “He didn’t chase her around, she didn’t chase him around. They just kind of coexisted.”
“He had a good upbringing,” he laughs at one point. “He had an amazing cat dad.”
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Cats for a Cat
Image Credit: Courtesy of deadmau5 Just like he adopted Peanut for Meowingtons, deadmau5 wanted a companion for “the other cat” about six months after Meowingtons’ passing in 2023. Enter Dizzy (black) and Dolly (tuxedo).
“My assistant showed me me a picture of a cat – it kind of had Meowingtons’ patterns, but it was a girl, and I’m like, ‘OK, you know what? I can stomach that,’” he recalls of considering a kitty who looked similar to but didn’t have the exact same markings as his beloved late cat. And off to the shelter he went to check out the potential new feline family member. “I went and saw the one, and they were like, ‘Oh, and this is her sister,’ and they were like, ‘You couldn’t separate them without a fight or a vocalization of sorts from either cat … they’re a bonded pair.’ All right, here we go! I guess we’re getting two cats!”
Like many pets — including Peanut — Dizzy and Dolly have loving pet names as well. “I call them Stupid and Stinky,” laughs deadmau5. “Stupid is Dolly because she’s just stupid, and Stinky is the black one because for like, the first two weeks when she was a kitten, oh god, she stank so bad. She’s cleaned it up now.”
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‘I’m Not Mad …’
Image Credit: Courtesy of Deadmau5 All was apparently not great when Dolly and Dizzy came home and met Peanut. “Oh man, I’ve got a picture of the exact moment. It’s hilarious. I have never seen such a death look!” deadmau5 laughs of his older cat. “She’s just lumping on the couch and just doing that like, ‘I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed’ look at you the whole time.”
“She’s forever tortured, this cat,” he jokes of Peanut. “But she’s blissfully ignorant to it all. That was always the running joke … that [Peanut was] not the famous cat, like the underachieving sibling cat, and we would purposefully kind of suppress her from the media because it was all about Meowingtons. … She probably has some kind of complex over being the unknown cat.”
Peanut was so in the shadow of his late kitty – who was even featured on the cover of > Album Title Goes Here < – deadmau5 says, “People were like, ‘I didn’t even know you had another cat!’”
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The No Cat Zone
Image Credit: Leah Sems Though deadmau5 loves his cats, he’s deemed his home studio a No Cat Zone, despite Meowingtons sneaking his way in there from time to time. “It’s just not an ideal place for cats,” the producer notes emphatically. “They love it, but it’s this one room in the house where it’s just basically a cat-free zone. But every time I go in and out, they’re waiting at the door, like, ‘Oh my god, are they gonna let us into Disneyland today?’ … There’s a lot of things in there that they could really f—k up if they wanted to, so I don’t typically let them in there.”
Despite his best efforts to keep his feline companions out of his workspace, deadmau5 admits they sometimes get by him. “I’ll just hear scraping under my feet, and I’m like, ‘One of the cats got in this stupid thing,’ and you gotta coax them out – it’s like a 20-minute process,” he explains. “When you’re kind of in a zone creating, but then all of a sudden you have to spend five minutes trying to find a cat in the studio, you lose it!”
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Cats in the Museum
Image Credit: Leah Sems Deadmau5 shares that he’s a huge fan of taxidermy, and has a significant collection in his home that his cats — especially the younger ones — have enjoyed a little too much. “I have a museum in my living room,” he tells Billboard, emphasizing that he’s tried to keep breakables out of his cats’ reach. “When they were kittens, oh my god, they would jump on a f–king taxidermy tiger, and then onto a giraffe, and then onto a 13-foot-tall windowsill,” he recalls. “And you’re like, ‘This has disaster written all over it.’”
In addition to the rare one-of-one Greg Mike skull they’ve destroyed, the musician says the cats have also wrecked other pieces in his extensive collection. “They don’t mean to, but they brush by certain things and knock them off shelves, knock over skulls, a glass case with something in it, and that’s gone,” he shares. “They love to knock over skulls. I had a lot of skulls, so a lot of that s–t gets ruined. But I think we’re past that kitten crazy phase, so nothing’s really been broken in the last year, which is nice.”
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The Centerpiece
Image Credit: Courtesy of deadmau5 At the heart of his collection is none other than deadmau5’s soul cat, Meowingtons. The producer had the beloved feline articulated – a process in which the flesh is removed from the bones, which are then cleaned and joined together in a lifelike pose – after his 2023 death.
“He’s in a glass case. He’s the centerpiece of the entire collection now,” deadmau5 shares of Meowingtons’ remains. He had briefly considered getting his cat taxidermied, but decided against it since even having the tiniest thing off by a fraction of an inch could ruin what had been his cherished companion.
As for why he chose articulation versus the more traditional cremation or burial? “The zombie apocalypse – that’s the last thing I want coming at me, so this kind of ensures that that won’t happen,” he jokes of burial. “And cremation just seems too final for me.”
Plus, he adds, “I feel … Meowingtons would have wanted it that way.”
The late cat’s skeleton now resides in deadmau5’ taxidermy room. “Meowingtons spent a lot of time in that room, just sitting on the couch and being Meowingtons – it was pretty much his spot.”
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‘Meowingtons Simulator’
Image Credit: Courtesy of deadmau5 While Meowingtons will forever have a place of honor in deadmau5’s home, he also lives on in the producer’s new video game, Meowingtons Simulator, which launched in May. The game allows players to select a cat — it could be Meowingtons himself, though deadmau5 notes that Dizzy, Dolly and Peanut are also in the game in that you can select a cat that looks like one of them — and using the controls, get the kitty to hilariously groove to the beat as you see fit.
“We had a super, super highly accurate fur model for Meowingtons, but we ran into a really big problem where it was just like, simulating fur in a video game and the refraction of eyeballs and making this hyper-realistic was a hit to the game’s performance,” he shares, explaining that while there were some challenges, he’s proud of how some of the things in the game – especially with the audio – were groundbreaking and became a bit of a case study. “That was a really cool inventive process, and to include the cat in that was just kind of like a bonus.”
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Lambpurrghinis & Private Jets
Image Credit: Leah Sems Besides being big into taxidermy, deadmau5 is also a car collector — and had extended his collection to include a ride for Meowingtons. The producer recalls that one time, he had just purchased a Lamborghini and was walking around with his assistant when they came upon a smaller version of the luxury vehicle. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, we should get Meowingtons a Lambo!’” he shares of the “$90 or something goofy” model he purchased for his cat. “We took the steering wheel off, then put a cat bed in there and kept that in the office.”
As for the most “absurd” expense he’s lavished upon his cats? “Private flights,” deadmau5 reveals, and it was during a time that he said finances were “kind of tight – and I still did it.” He explains that he was going to live in L.A. for a year and didn’t want to leave his cats alone or have his mom take them. “So yeah, they got a private flight because I just couldn’t think of crating them and putting them in [cargo],” he says. “I think they would be too spracked out to be in cat carriers and then actually be in the cabin with me too, so I was just like, ‘Yo, let’s just do this private.’” They returned home the same way.
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Words of Advice
Image Credit: Courtesy of deadmau5 Deadmau5 has had seven cats so far, and says he’s learned some important lessons from them over the years. “Any cat will teach anyone that it just pays to f—king zone out and do nothing for a certain amount every day. Stare at a wall,” he says. Take a five-minute breather.”
As for words of advice he’d impart upon people new to cat ownership? “You need to really exercise patience,” he laughs. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a psycho cat that’s going to be psycho its whole life, but you can’t yell at them, they don’t understand the concept of punishment. … Let it be a cat.”
