Stylish Pets: Benny Castle's Cat Hippolyte

Viva
Hippolyte the cat. Picture / Supplied.

This week at Viva we’re celebrating animals - the influential, the kind that keep you company, and the ones in need. To raise money for the SPCA we’ve launched The Pet Project, asking local designers and artists to donate and create special items to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. We’ll donate all of the proceeds to the SPCA, so get bidding!

Benny Castle's pet Hippolyte is a rescue cat with "loose morals and a twisted sense of reality". If he could talk, the World Man designer's cat would have this to say:

My favourite food is crunchy pellets that echo through the house in the wee hours, served on a porcelain dish that I'm able to rattle on the cold tiles also in the wee hours.

I like to annoy my owners by making a kerfuffle with the blinds anywhere between 1am and 4am so I can be let out the front window, as I'm not fond of using the cat flap seems too ordinary. I then of course like to come back through the same window 45 minutes later, but this time I throw myself at the window making a racket and then meekly whispering my parents name, like a creep, through the cold glass until they wake up... again.

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is climb on the roof of the shower which is transparent, so the nudists can see my nudity also.

When visitors come over I look disparagingly from a distance, quietly judging until I have chosen the weakest of them, who I will then flaunt my sass to and proceed to malt in their lap until their outfit is a white fur coat.

My favourite place to sleep is the dashboard of the car, especially as it's backing out of the drive.

I hate it when my owner tries to roll over in my bed and forget that the best place for me to sleep is directly where their feet would otherwise be, assholes.

When I'm feeling naughty I hide behind the door and spring out at my big brother Peeps he's a brutal tabby with no sense of humour, who walks with a swag and says he was in 'nam, but I heard he actually survived being hit by a car.

My favourite item of clothing is a navy blue Hawaiian shirt I only wore twice, and then grew out of. I can still get it on and do up two buttons, but my gut prevents me from doing the others. I still look hot though.

The secret to my shiny coat is motor oil. Nothing better than smarting up my white suit with gorgeous grease stains behind my ears and down my back makes me look tough.

My favourite sounds are when humans purr at me, and when that behaviour becomes so normalised they begin purring at each other to communicate.

My best friend is Ignatius a.k.a Fatty. He's a small lion and a wanderer, but he'll give me a good clean when I need it and we spend our days arm wrestling and pretending to be hovercrafts.

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