Windsor’s feline phenomenon Dexter the cat ‘living the life he wants to live’

A social media star cat from Windsor is making the most of every day, his owner says, after the popular puss was diagnosed with a life-limiting heart disease.

Dexter, a 12-year-old Persian-Bengal cross, has attracted thousands of online fans, earned his own Top Trumps card, and even features in the Windsor edition of Monopoly.

“He seems very happy – he’s very ‘purry’ – but you can tell he’s an old boy now,” owner Kirsty Jarvis said.

Hundreds of messages of support for Dexter poured in when Ms Jarvis posted a social media update advising of his hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) diagnosis.

Dexter and Kirsty

Discussing the message, Ms Jarvis, 39, said: “I posted that because I don’t think he’ll make it past 2025, if I’m being honest.”

HCM reduces the heart’s ability to pump blood around the body. Ms Jarvis said vets had given Dexter ‘weeks, maybe months to live’.

'Now what’s important to me, and this is why I’ve gotten a GPS collar for him' she said, was so that he 'can continue to let him live the life he wants to lead for as long as possible.'

The GPS collar tracks Dexter’s journeys across his wide patch of Windsor – and beyond.

Windsor’s whiskered wanderer once ended up at the Greenford Royal Mail sorting station in London, having hopped aboard a post van.

He has ‘gate-crashed’ weddings and boarded River Thames cruises.

“I’m actually surprised he hasn’t ended up in Germany because he’s hopped on one of the tourist coaches in the [Windsor] coach park,” Ms Jarvis added.

A four-month old Dexter explores his garden for the first time

Many of his adventures are documented through images and videos, often snapped by his own fans, on social media accounts run by Ms Jarvis.

Dexter’s social media stardom was not a deliberate effort, she said, but rather it was an effort to keep tabs on Dexter by encouraging people to post pictures of him.

She said: “It’s been amazing because the community of Windsor – the people that live here and also the people that visit and have got to know about him – they’ve helped me keep him safe.

“Whenever he’s got into his occasional scrapes and he’s needed to go to the vets or he hasn’t been very well, I’m alerted about it and then I can come in and scoop him up.”

Ms Jarvis said she had ‘never tried to put Dexter in the limelight for my own gain’ and she had even received abuse from people ‘of the opinion he should be kept indoors’.

But the ‘heartwarming stories’ she hears from Dexter's thousands of fans, ‘helps me ignore them’.

Two year-old Dexter curled up with his sister Tilly who passed away in January

Asked why she thought Dexter had proved so popular, Ms Jarvis said: “On the face of things, he just has a lovely temperament.

But I think [it’s also] just the confidence he has, to sort of wander around Windsor like it’s his own - like he’s the Mayor.

“He’s not usually shy about visiting new places, exploring or saying hello to people.

"And I guess, as well, he is very handsome.”