Otterbein feline Squeegee Boy hopes to claw his way to the top of America’s Favorite Pet contest

If this Baltimore Squeegee Boy becomes famous, the magazine cover on which he’ll appear might surprise you.

Squeegee Boy is ready for his closeup, and if he wins the 2024 America’s Favorite Pet contest, he will appear on the cover of Modern Cat magazine. The magazine partners with PAWS.org to run the contest. As of publication time, he is ranked 1st. (Of course there is a Modern Dog magazine and corresponding dog contest as well.)

NOTE: The Squeegee from Baltimore is the gray and white male cat with the tipped ear, not the black and white female cat that shares the same name.

Baltimore resident Emma O’Donnell has been chosen by Squeegee Boy to tend to his every need, though the process was indeed gradual.

Squeegee used to be a neighborhood cat in the Federal Hill/Otterbein area, and O’Donnell told Fishbowl that he was not universally beloved. She chalks that up to Squeegee being discerning in his choice of humans on which to bestow his favor, saving his valuable affection for the neighborhood residents who would set out breakfast for him, and two women in particular who’d also serve him dinner.

Who mew?

“For some reason, he really, really took a liking to me and my house, and he would come to my front door and my windows, and he would just plow his entire head into the window and just squeegee back and forth and back and forth,” O’Donnell said. “It was about seven to nine months of him just squeegeeing my windows. He would slam his little head into it, and with his forehead he would just kind of squeegee back and forth.”

That’s how Squeegee Boy announced his name to O’Donnell. The way in which he began claiming her territory/home as his own involved a minor catastrophe: he fell off someone’s deck! O’Donnell’s career is in the veterinary medical world, so while his paw needed to heal, she and some of the others in the neighborhood agreed she should keep him inside for a few days.

She kept him in the basement and slept on the floor with him for a few nights, soaking his paw, cleaning the wound, and generally taking round-the-clock care of him when she could, completely unaware that his plot was taking hold. “I think he knew exactly what he was doing because the rest is history,” O’Donnell confessed.

Once healed, Squeegee would appear upstairs for dinner. “He’s only in the living room. It’s really no big deal,” O’Donnell thought, oblivious to the cat’s power. Then when temperatures outside dropped, she brought him inside overnight, thinking, “I’m just gonna let him stay the night like a couple nights a week. He’s not gonna STAY. It’s not my cat. It’s not my cat,” O’Donnell recalled of her succumbing to Squeegee’s spell.

Eventually it was a nightly routine. Squeegee popped out of the bushes when she came home from work, squeegeed her windows until she let him in, stayed the night, and according to O’Donnell, when she left for work, Squeegee left for work, too.

Squeegee’s job involved patrolling the neighborhood, making sure his peers weren’t littering, and hanging out with his (sadly, late) best friend Miss Raven. The all-black cat was a mother figure to Squeegee and taught him how to interact with humans.

During COVID-19, Squeegee executed the final phase of his plan and moved in with O’Donnell full-time. She was moving to an apartment in 2021 just two blocks from her house, and she said, “Oh, Squeegee’s coming with me.” Check, and mate.

The cat has raised O’Donnell and her boyfriend of three years, Jake, using jiujitsu psychology on them to make them think they are raising him. O’Donnell says Jake is a father figure to Squeegee. “Arguably, I think he loves Squeegee more than he loves me, which is understandable,” O’Donnell admits.

She describes Squeegee now as semi-retired, but always working and vigilant. “Aware of his surroundings, but he’s not going to do anything about them.” He is, after all, around 6 years old. He does spend lots of time on Instagram, though, which O’Donnell encourages. “It helps him stay in touch with some of his city folk a couple blocks away,” she said.

The outdoor cats in the Federal Hill/Otterbein area are part of Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter (BARCS) Trap, Neuter, and Release program. They’re all vaccinated, spayed or neutered, and their ears are “tipped” so rescuers can tell on sight if they’re healthy and part of the program.

The voting for this round (Top 15 in each group) of America’s Favorite Pet ends Thursday, Feb. 15 at 10 p.m. EST. Squeegee is currently in 1st place as of publication. Voting once per day is free, a $10 donation buys 10 votes, $25 buys 25 votes, and more. On Wednesday, Feb. 14, however, vote totals are doubled, so voters get two votes for every dollar donated. So, $10 buys 20 votes and so on. This promotion ends at midnight EST.

All donations to PAWS.org support their mission to help sick, injured, and orphaned animals, and are tax-deductible.

In addition to being featured on the cover of Modern Cat/Modern Dog magazine, the winning feline and canine will each receive $10,000. If Squeegee wins the cat competition, O’Donnell has committed to donating half of the winnings to BARCS, which helped care for Squeegee during his recovery.