For the first two years of the project, Derek posted only on Instagram, but then he started posting on TikTok, and within a week he had gotten more views, follows, and likes than he had gotten over two years on Instagram. Now Gonzo (@gonzoisacat) has more than 600,000 followers across both social media platforms, with tens of millions of views and likes. Fame, though, is not always as sweet as it sounds, and Derek started receiving criticisms from people who believe that cats shouldn’t be let outside. “There are nut jobs who will make threatening comments about Gonzo or talk about how, in their neighborhoods, kids torture cats and stuff like that. But overall, I think the positives outweigh the negatives,” Derek tells us. “There are a lot of super fans that really love this, and we get a lot of comments from folks that tell us, ’I’ve been depressed lately, and this cat is the only thing keeping me from going off the deep end.’”
