Bilbo is a ginger tabby whose owner Ellen began to share him with the world on Twitter in 2017.
She loved ‘“Cat Twitter”; the community on the social media site that posts about wholesome cat content, and decided to start spreading the joy he gave her by simply existing every day. Ellen explains:
“He’s improved my life enormously over his 5 years of being here, and in many ways I wouldn’t be the same person I am today without him. It felt natural to share him with the world.”
What she didn’t expect was how popular he would be!
Good boy
The appeal of Bilbo is his big fluffy cheeks, his sweet personality, and the cute ‘Bilbo speak’ that Ellen adds to his posts.
Bilbo’s posts are always a mixture of funny and wholesome and they regularly get over a thousand likes and retweets.
Bilbo is now a well-established member of ‘Cat Twitter’ with over 120,000 followers.
His presence brings such comfort to people on their timelines that comments like “I kissed my screen” and “Such a good boy!” are often found in replies to his posts.
In fact, people find Bilbo a source of strength when suffering from anxiety and other mental health problems.
One Twitter user replied to the above post;
“Bilbo and Ellen…. thank you for this sentence. I’ve been using it when I’ve been having issues with my anxiety, and it really, really helps. <3”
‘Bilbcast’
Seeing how helpful Bilbo’s posts had been to Twitter users, Ellen decided to record Bilbo’s purr and upload it for the world to take comfort in.
The first episode of Bilbcast is a 44-minute and 48-second audio recording of his sweet purr, ranging from light and airy to low and rumbling. Speaking of the podcast Ellen said:
“Bilbcast is a simple podcast, just half an hour of the good cat boy Bilbo purring to set your anxiety at ease or to send you off to sleep.”
Repsonses to the podcast have been touching, it has helped people sleep during hard times, study, and even seems to offer something to Bilbo’s feline listeners!
One commenter messaged Ellen telling her that the cat they were fostering was struggling to calm down until they put on the Bilbcast, after which she went to sleep on their lap.
From the replies to Bilbo’s podcast and Twitter posts, it’s clear that cats can have a healing effect on people, and sometimes, their fellow felines.
