Cat from Toulouse {France}

Most cats are couch potatoes that love to watch Netflix with their humans. But some felines are such cinephiles that they prefer to spend all of their time at the film archives.

This is the case of Mr. Glouton, the cat of the Cinémathèque of Toulouse in France.

Glouton (his name is the French word for "voracious") doesn't belong to the Cinémathèque of Toulouse, though.

The first time he showed up, a little over a year ago now, the employees of the Cinémathèque noticed he had a collar containing the message, "Hi, my name is Mr. Glouton, and I live at 7 rue des Lois. If I happen to be too far away from this address, you can call 06....."

The cat loves to visit all sorts of different restaurants and bars in the neighborhood, but the Cinémathèque is his favorite place of all.

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"Glouton usually arrives when we open the doors at 9 am, and he stays there until it closes," says Frederic Thibaut from the Cinémathèque of Toulouse. "No need to look for him, by the way, because he knows when we're closing. We're sensing that he would love to stay, but we can't agree to that as he would otherwise set off the alarm."

His habit is starting each "working day" with a visit to the kitchen to check if his food and water bowls have been filled. He then tours the offices (to say hello?) and looks for a place to sleep. "If it's cold, he goes to the library and settles into a chair. If it's warmer, he goes down into the hallway and curls up on one of the red upholstered benches. The visitors of the Cinemathèque are used to Glouton, and no-one will bother him," says Frederic Thibaut.

Every employee of the Cinémathèque of Toulouse is obsessed with Glouton. It's surprising how every conversation, no matter what it's about, eventually leads to a story about this cat.

And there are more than enough stories to tell...

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Earlier this year, he surprised everyone by bringing a giant mouse inside the Cinémathèque. "It was right before a screening," remembers Frederic Thibaut. "He had put the mouse right near the entrance, where everyone passes to buy tickets. He then 'played' a little with it in the yard before it fell through a drain. He was so disappointed. But not a single visitor flinched or said something bad about Glouton."

Glouton was also the main attraction during the open-air screenings, and several filmmakers and actors who have visited the Cinémathèque have posed for pictures together with their new favorite feline.

He might even be responsible for some of the Cinémathèque's programming. The latest edition of the film festival Extrême Cinéma, which took place at the Cinémathèque of Toulouse in February of 2020, opened with a cinematic concert to the 1927 movie The Cat and the Canary. We suspect that Glouton had something to do with the choice of that title.

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Now that the Cinemathèque of Toulouse is temporarily closed due to the Corona crisis, Glouton is back home. «We met his owner right before the confinement, and she couldn't believe all the stories we had to tell about her cat,» says Frederic Thibaut. «And I have to admit that we all miss him very much.»

What do you think about Mr. Glouton? Feel free to let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and don't forget to share this post with your friends, especially cat lovers!

Photos 1-4 by Vanessa Morgan / Photo 5 by Frederic Thibaut / Photos 6-9 by Damian Galli