Instagram-famous Gary the cat still turning heads on the trails and slopes

Gary and his owner, James Eastham, in Canmore on Tuesday (July 29). (RMO/Leah Pelletier)

CANMORE — Gracing the pages of TIME magazine in 2020 and 2024 wasn’t an international affairs story or the latest health discovery, it was Canmore’s own Gary the cat.

Fondly known as the “poster cat” in the outdoor community, most days Gary can be found feeling the wind in his fur on a packraft, enjoying the views from yet another Rockies summit or shredding the pow on his owner’s shoulders.

“ I mean people bring their dogs everywhere. Why not bring your cat?” said Gary’s owner, James Eastham.

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Rising to Instagram fame in 2018, Eastham documents Gary’s adventurous life through the account “Great grams of Gary” which has now garnered close to 600,000 followers — over 200,000 more than the Banff and Lake Louise Tourism account.

He’s been featured in more than seven publications and media outlets including the Calgary Herald, CNN, CBC and in outlets as far away as Australia and Germany — most recently featured on his first cover in the summer edition of Explore magazine.

Gary’s first foray into the great outdoors began when he would escape out of Eastham’s Edmonton apartment into the front yard.

“Our front door opened onto a courtyard but it also didn’t latch very well and so sometimes the door would blow open and I’d come out and Gary would be gone. He’d just be in the courtyard eating grass usually,” Eastham said with a laugh.

“ We decided if he wanted to go outside, he’d have to learn how to walk on a leash because we were right near some busy streets near the river valley.”

Eventually relocating to Canmore for his partner’s job, what started as mornings on the front step progressed into short walks on the trails near Rundleview and eventually Gary levelled up to more adventurous pursuits in his new mountain town home.

“ Training a cat is not quite the same as training a dog, so a lot of it was we started really slowly just introducing Gary to being outside,” said Eastham.

Now having dipped his paws into the world of kayaking, packrafting, skiing, skating and mountaineering, Gary has been adventuring in the mountains for seven years.

“Skiing was almost an accident, which sounds kind of weird,” said Eastham.

After a really big snowstorm in Canmore one year, Eastham used his skis to get around town on the unplowed roads.

“Gary was crying at the door wanting to go out so I put on the touring skis to take him out and just go for a little walk,” he said.

“We were coming back home and I took a look [at a hill] and I was like, ‘Well, when am I going to get the chance to ski with my cat again?’ So I pulled off the skins from the skis and did two very, very mellow, very short little laps with Gary.”

Perched on his shoulders, Eastham’s feline adventure buddy is now quite used to tagging along on runs at the ski hill.

“ He sort of taught himself [to] crawl up and around onto my shoulders, and for skiing it’s useful because I can feel if he is kind of solidly on my shoulders, if he’s feeling tense or unhappy. There’s sort of that instant feedback. You can either stop and readjust or … call it a day if he’s had enough,” said Eastham.

After hitting the slopes in the winter, summers brings hiking and paddling adventures, some of Gary’s favourite activities.

“ I’ve got a packraft and he loves to just kind of sit on the front of the boat and soak up the sun and get rocked to sleep by the waves,” said Eastham.

“ He did fall off our boat one time, but he’s got a life jacket that he wears so he was fine. He was just, I think, more offended about getting completely wet than anything else.”

Now almost 11 years old, Gary has humble beginnings as a rescue kitten from the Calgary Humane Society.

Eastham’s partner adopted Gary at four months old after Gary was found by animal control in Calgary with a broken hip.

“Part of the reason that my partner adopted him was that her dog at the time had the same procedure at the same age as Gary,” said Eastham.

“The biggest thing you notice is that he can’t jump as high as other cats and his back end wiggles a little bit when he walks.”

Gary was originally named Bruce by the shelter after Bruce Wayne, but shortly after his adoption, Eastham’s partner renamed him Gary after Calgary.

Feline fame

Eastham said a social media account for Gary started as “a bit of a joke.”

“ I work in communications and … when we moved to Canmore, I was looking for work and so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll post photos of my cat and find that I’m still keeping up to date on social media trends,’” he said.

“[I] didn’t really expect it to go anywhere.”

Eastham recalls the first time the account really blew up when he posted a photo of Gary to Reddit and suddenly gained 1,500 followers in one day.

“1,500 followers seemed like an amazing amount of people at the time … It’s just kind of grown from there. It’s become sort of its own thing," he said.

Turning heads on the trail and the ski hill, Eastham says they can’t go far without people flocking to say ‘hi’ to Gary.

“People definitely recognize Gary when we’re out and even if they don’t recognize that it’s Gary and that he’s on social media, there’s not a lot of people who hike with their cats, so we get stopped from just kind of that perspective too. People want to stop and say ‘hi’ and he’s cute and fluffy,” said Eastham.

After posting about Gary’s appearance in TIME magazine’s special cats edition, a follower posted a comment on Reddit:

“When I’m old and alone in my nursing home, one of the memories that will never leave me will be meeting Gary on a trail. My friends still talk about how excited I was,” wrote user Fedorek68.

While there have been many memorable interactions in the mountains with Gary over the years, Eastham remembers one wintry day in Lake Louise when they walked past a wedding.

“The bride was like, ‘Oh my God, is that a cat?’”

“ She actually got a wedding photo of her and the groom … holding Gary that I ended up coming across [when] she posted it to Reddit, just a photo of Gary completely crashing someone’s wedding. It was very funny to me,” said Eastham.

In contrast to the often negative space that social media can be, Eastham says it’s nice to bring a smile to people’s faces whether through interactions on the trail or through posting light-hearted, “fluffy” content.

“It’s been really nice to be able to build this community and sometimes we get messages from people who talk about how Gary’s been a shared experience with them and someone else in their life. Lots of people [will say] it’s helped me and my partner get through this difficult time, being able to just share something nice and happy or maybe they’re going through a period of depression.”

“ It’s just nice to get some of those messages and see the impact that you can have on someone’s life, even for people who just scroll by and smile.”

By Leah Pelletier, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Rocky Mountain Outlook