The Cats Movie Cat-astrophe Led Andrew Lloyd Webber to Get a Therapy Dog

Cast your mind back, if you will, to pre-Covid days when things were still weird, but certainly not as weird as they are now. When something weird happened back then, people took notice and one of the weirdest things that happened in 2019 was the live action film version of the musical Cats. It was so weird, in fact, that it led the musical’s original creator, Andrew Lloyd Webber, to get a therapy dog.

For those of you who have forgotten about Cats the movie, it was a big budget adaptation of the phenomenally successful West End and Broadway show of the same name. Directed by Academy Award winner Tom Hooper, it starred literally everyone from Taylor Swift to Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench to Ian McKellen, Jason Derulo to Rebel Wilson. It was however, weird. Creepy costumes were just the start. The Guardian said the film will “ haunt viewers for generations”, whilst the Los Angeles Times referred to it as “ Les Meowsérables”.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, for his part, is glad he took a back seat. Speaking to The Times this weekend, he said of the film: “It was terrible. Thank God I was not closely involved. Most people who were found it the most unhappy experience. Taylor Swift, Judi Dench…” He continued: “All of them called me and said, ‘What are we going to do?’”

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Despite the movie’s failure (Deadline Hollywood reckons the film had a net loss of $113.6 million), at least one good thing came out of it: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s dog. After seeing how upset Lloyd Webber was about the film, his friend Glenn Close – herself the proud pet parent to Havanese Sir Pippin of Beanfield (Pip to his friends) – suggested a dog might be just the ticket. And so, Lloyd Webber acquired his own Havanese, a black pup that he named Mojito.

He even requested that Mojito become an emotional support animal so he could fly with him. Due to the circumstances, he found the process surprisingly easy.

“I applied for Mojito to be my therapy dog so I could take him on American Airlines,” Lloyd Webber told The Times. “I said the reason for taking him on the plane was trauma due to the Cats movie, and they came back saying: ‘no doctor’s certificate required.’”

For those of you wondering about registering your own pooch as a therapy dog, it usually requires a little more explanation than the cat-astrophic failure of Cats, the musical, the movie.

In the United Kingdom, we have assistance dogs (think: specially trained seeing and hearing dogs, and dogs who can help their human parents with a number of conditions from epilepsy to PTSD). These dogs are impeccably trained and hugely expensive and usually come from one of a number of registered charities. These dogs are allowed to fly with their human, providing the airline is registered.

In the United States, the lines are a little more blurry as technically, both service dogs and emotional support animals (ESAs) can fly. ESAs are distinct from service animals, the latter of which are trained to assist with conditions like visual impairment, seizures and autism; and to also lie at their parent’s feet without pooing, peeing, barking or nipping at people or other animals on the flight.

ESAs are not required to be trained and are not recognised by the Americans with Disabilities Act but provide their parent with comfort and support through companionship. However, after an era of ESA travel getting a little out of hand (peacocks, pigs and ponies were spotted at 30,000ft), it is now up to the individual airline to decide and a medical note is usually required.

So, there you have it. The story of how Cats, the movie, led to a happy new home for one very lucky Havanese pup named Mojito. Hopefully the upcoming film version of Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat fares better than Cats, otherwise Mojito might find himself with a little brother.