Red Oak cat Gatsby is a viral sensation

Red Oak’s Jean Noyes and her cat, Gatsby, are spreading joy while being viral sensations.
Gatsby, a unique tuxedo kitty, has amassed more than 141,000 followers on his Instagram account run by Noyes, and videos through Instagram and Tik Tok have garnered millions of views. Noyes said she came into the possession of Gatsby and his sister, Daisy, in unfortunate circumstances.
“I had a neighbor whose son had a substance use disorder and he lost that battle and passed away. She couldn’t have cats and so she asked me if I would take these two kittens in. At the time I was a traveling therapist and I love pets but traveling all around it was hard, but I adopted them. I already had a pet rat named Oliver at the time. Gatsby was just a tuxie, a cute little tuxie. No evidence of the condition that would come to define him. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite novels and so he was this kind of perfectly dapper little tuxie and she was just this feisty femme fatale type and so Daisy and Gatsby just seemed like a perfect names for them,” Noyes said.
The arrival of Gatsby and Daisy in 2019 came at a difficult time in Noyes life, as she said she was going through some substance issues of her own, which culminated in an arrest and brief jail time in 2020.
“I grew up in the restaurant business, I just did a lot of restaurant work so it was always like drinking and drugs here and there but I tried methamphetamine and it just slowly over the course of about five years just took me down. I was at very low point. I got out after a couple weeks, I immediately went and met counselors at Zion.
I was working with a very good therapist out of Waubonsie and I have been sober since,” advised Noyes. “I so heavily relied on the cats, as early recovery is a pretty lonely, isolating time, especially because some of the people I knew in this town at that part of my life, I couldn’t continue to associate with. But those that I could keep in contact with were very supportive of me as I started to build on the sobriety.”
It was during this time that Noyes noticed a white spot on Gatsby’s face. Initially, she thought he’d gotten into something but the spot didn’t come out. In fact, it multiplied.
“Just over the months, they just started to spread through his fur, just this beautiful, unbelievable transformation. I always have drawn a correlation between the change in beauty in his coat and the change in beauty in my life. It’s been almost five years now and they both have been such a special part of my life. And now then I got more along the way, you know, but Gatsby has always had this special place for me.
“He’s been the snuggliest one of my kitties. He always seemed to know when I was struggling and, you know, feeling really low and lonely. He just was always there.”
It was during a trip to the vet that Noyes learned Gatsby had vitiligo. She also had the idea planted about getting Gatsby on social media. Noyes put him on a tuxedo cat group on Facebook. There’s a couple famous cats, one in particular called Scrappy who had vitiligo, who everybody knew.
“It’s very rare, it’s only found in around 1% of humans, and even less for animals. You see it in Burmese cats or Siamese cats more. It’s not in one big spot or stripe on him, it’s speckles all through it and they look like stars to me, and so the name Gatsby Galaxy Kitty just kind of came into being,” commented Noyes.
Noyes started a Facebook and an Instagram under Gatsby, Galaxy Kitty and then went over to Tik Tok as well, where Gatsby repeatedly went viral.
“A couple of the first reels, a couple of them have five to seven million views and even after that it was hundreds of thousands of views on almost every single reel I did. The numbers have dropped on some but I still get high numbers on others. In addition to the Instagram followers he has around 40,000 followers on Tik Tok,” Noyes stated.
Also, Noyes made it clear that Gatsby’s condition is absolutely cosmetic only, and he is a happy and healthy kitty.
“He doesn’t suffer any ill effects from it at all. It’s very gratifying when people with vitiligo contact or they reach out and they say thank you for showing that the differences are what makes us beautiful. I’m talking about messages from literally all over the world: Japan, Brazil, the Ukraine, Russia. It’s all languages.”
For Gatsby’s content, Noyes said every day she tries to send a positive message and Gatsby’s entire page has always been full of positivity and light and grace.
“I have messages and I pull a song that reminds me of where I’ve been and I’ll say, it’s okay to feel overwhelmed. It’s okay to feel like you’re not okay, but there are people out there that, that are in your corner, so to speak. There’s an animal photographer out of Cleveland who is going to do a shoot for Gatsby in June. I’m driving out there with him and we’re doing a 2026 Gatsby Galaxy Kitty calendar, and 33% of the proceeds of that will go to animal shelters. So my 16 and a half percent I will use to subsidize our animal shelter and also the vet clinics that they have to spay and neuter cats,” Noyes explained.
As for the Gatsby content, Noyes admits it involves a lot of just taking random videos of him.
“I’ll see him doing something and film that, but sometimes I film when he’s just laying there. Then when l hear a song, I think how well it would fit the video. If I don’t hear one I also have a pretty extensive music knowledge that will fit with whatever’s going on in my life, and then I’ll just find like this perfect part of, of these songs, and then I just post a nice message. I always end it with happy Tuesday friends, happy Wednesday friends, whatever day it is.”
While she’s had suggestions to monetize the account, Noyes said she’s mainly interested in sharing messages and videos of Gatsby for fun.
“I get gifts of cat toys from people through Tik Tok and one time somebody made a pillow of Gatsby and sent it to me and I took a picture of the packaging and posted it on video and my address was on it. People were like, ‘You should have blocked out your address,’ and I was like, ‘Well, welcome to rural Iowa.’ I mean, I live in a town where people ask you where you live, and you just tell them, and then  them where you live and your address. And they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s next to the old Carter place,’ or ‘Oh, your place was a church.’”
Noyes moved to Red Oak in 2018, but said she really started to live her life here at the end of 2021.
“Ron Kloewer, Phyllis Drake, and Kim Robinson, they were among the people that advocated for me at the hospital. I am part of this Iowa impaired practitioner program. I check in every day to drug test and I have for years and they gave me a second chance. I’m in a field that I love and a field that I excel at. I’m the lead therapist up there now,” Noyes commented. “It’s such a turnaround from where I was, and I’ve has the opportunity to find my peace and my love of this community, which I absolutely do. This is my home now. I have no interest in being anywhere else. I love Red Oak and I love that my little cat is touching people’s lives all over the world. It’s an astonishing thing.”
Noyes added when she posted the first time with video of Gatsby, she had no idea he would become as popular as he has.
“It’s about 14 months that I’ve been posting every day. At first it was always songs, but the messaging was different. Then I just kind of settled into this idea of positive thoughts or, helpful messages, like reminding people to bring their pets in when it’s really cold. My sister’s husband just took his life a couple of weeks ago. It was terrible. For several days I used Gatsby’s platform to try to raise awareness that people are suffering and they struggle. The responses have all been like nearly a hundred percent positive,” said Noyes.
In addition to Gatsby and Daisy, Noyes also has Stitch, Motley, Boo Radley, and Goblin.
You can follow Gatsby at instagram.com/gatsbygalaxykitty/?hl=en, or on Tik Tok at tiktok.com/@gatsbygalaxykitty.