

Video by Jessica Leibowitz/Gothamist

The first thing you need to know about Samson is that Samson isn't fat. Samson is a naturally large cat with a lot of fur and a lot of length (he's four feet long!). The purebred Maine coon is four years old and weighs around 28 pounds, according to his owner Jonathan Zurbel, who claims he is the "largest cat in the city." (Do you have a larger cat? Email us!)

Zurbel says he adopted the cat from his brother, and the two now live in Williamsburg, where we recently visited them. Samson (whose Instagram handle is @catstradamus) has spent the last week or two getting frequent visits from the press, which is a-okay with his owner, who earlier this week posted the following on his own Instagram page:

"Finally my cat went viral! It took a lot of work because the pet scene on IG is very competitive, everyone thinks they have the cutest pet. All the cat blogs were ignoring me until the story broke, then everyone got onboard. It's important to always stay the course when you are pushing something on the Internet. It takes time, hard work and consistency with some clever strategies."

Oh dear. Samson is in good hands, however, and his human loves him very much. While we were scheduling a time to meet him, both his vet (whom he gets frequent checks from) and Zurbel were careful to make sure they weren't stressing the cat out, and had us come to his home instead of sending Samson out for a shoot.

Samson is also well-fed, getting six cans of wet food a day, and dry food on top of that! In the two-and-a-half years since Zurbel has had him, Samson has gained over 10 pounds, and he's probably going to grow a little more (Maine coons grow until age five).

Currently Zurbel is hoping to put together a calendar that features Samson being held by different models.

#CatTips : Humans make great pillows A photo posted by SAMSON AKA CATSTRADAMUS (@catstradamus) on Aug 13, 2016 at 9:27pm PDT

And here's Samson with his vet at Off The Leash:

@offleashvet tryna hold me, I'm a lotta cat #more2love A photo posted by SAMSON AKA CATSTRADAMUS (@catstradamus) on Aug 18, 2016 at 12:22pm PDT

N.B.: While this doesn't appear to be the case with Samson, please don't adopt animals for the sake of virality.