{"id":670479,"date":"2026-07-02T21:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T21:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/670479\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T21:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T21:03:09","slug":"why-is-your-cat-blue-wilbur-the-pet-who-changed-colour-puzzles-owners-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/670479\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Why is your cat blue?\u2019: Wilbur, the pet who changed colour, puzzles owners | UK news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wilbur the cat is usually a rather elegant grey, black and white creature, so her human family were a little taken aback, to say the least, when she came home bright blue.<\/p>\n

Concern that Wilbur might have been the target of an unkind paint attack turned to relief when it turned out she had gatecrashed a neighbour\u2019s gender-reveal party and rolled around in blue dye.<\/p>\n

Sophie Jenkin, a GP admin worker, said the family, who live in a Cornish village, had just finished watching an England<\/a> World Cup game when Wilbur (female despite her name) appeared.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were all cheering and celebrating and then my brother said: \u2018Sophie, why is your cat blue?\u2019 I thought: \u2018Oh my god, someone\u2019s thrown paint at her.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI took a picture and put it on the Heamoor Facebook page because someone must have known what\u2019s happened. It was tongue-in-cheek \u2013 \u2018Does anyone know what\u2019s happened to my cat?\u2019. Some people were laughing but some were commenting that it could be toxic and I got a bit worried.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happily, a neighbour, Hollie Jenkinson, revealed that she had held a gender-reveal party and used cornstarch with blue dye in it. Jenkin thinks Wilbur didn\u2019t get it on her face because she likes to roll around on her back.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd she does a weird thing with her head when she\u2019s rolling so it must have missed her face. We have not stopped laughing since. It\u2019s so funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Removing the dye turned out to be a bit of a chore. \u201cI had to keep washing and washing her. The blue wouldn\u2019t come out. She\u2019s still got a tiny stain but she\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkinson, who held the gender-reveal party, said: \u201cWe thought it would be a great idea to do a gender reveal for our children in our garden. It consisted of the children kicking footballs containing blue cornstarch. It all went really well and my children were really excited to find out what we\u2019re having.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few hours later, I received a message from a family member with a screenshot from the Heamoor page where a woman was asking why her cat was blue. I realised that her cat must have been rolling around in the leftover cornstarch in my garden.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems to have entertained so many people and this has definitely brought the neighbours on the street closer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Izzy Hocking, the senior veterinary engagement manager at the charity Cats Protection<\/a>, said: \u201cWhile it must have been quite alarming for Wilbur\u2019s owners to see him come home bright blue, cornstarch coloured with standard food dye is unlikely to cause significant harm in most cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cImportantly, they did exactly the right thing by identifying what the substance was and washing it off straight away to prevent [her] from grooming [her]self and potentially ingesting it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf pet owners ever find themselves in a similar situation, the best approach is to identify what product or dye has been used if possible, wrap their pet in a towel to prevent licking and contact their vet for advice. It\u2019s always worth seeking veterinary guidance whenever a pet has been exposed to an unfamiliar substance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wilbur the cat is usually a rather elegant grey, black and white creature, so her human family were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-670479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}