Billboard’s Power Pets is a new feature focusing on musicians’ best friends — no, not the humans — but the furry (and some scaly and feathery!) ones who bring extra joy and companionship to artists. Celebrities will be sharing sweet details about their beloved pets and how their furbabies enrich their lives. For the third story in the series, we talked to producer deadmau5 for Adopt a Cat Month, which is celebrated each June.
deadmau5 may wear a giant mouse-head helmet when he performs, but the artist born Joel Zimmerman has cats in his heart. And he recognizes that it’s his feline companions who help keep him in a healthier mental state.
“Oh, like, bar none … I would have, I wouldn’t say I’d be institutionalized, but very close to, just because they’re the most non-judgmental conduits of grief or stress or just all-around chaos when you just need a minute,” the Grammy-nominated artist – who has previously spoken about his depression — tells Billboard about how his cats have helped with his mental health.
He notes that a therapist once told him to sit down and pet a cat, and it’s been good advice. “As benign as it sounds, what a stress reliever they can be,” deadmau5 – who is currently Cat Dad to Peanut, Dizzy and Dolly – shares. “You know, whereas you feel like the world is just ready to f—king tear you apart, and they’re like, ‘We don’t know s—t, but whatever. We like pets.’”
That’s not to say that cat ownership doesn’t come with some stressful moments, which the Canadian producer can attest to. Take that time last year one of his cats – he suspects it was Dolly because Peanut “knows better” — destroyed a rare piece of art.
“I had a one-of-one Greg Mike skull that was made out of hands,” the musician shared of the piece that artist with whom he’s collaborated gave him. “I had it up on a piano or something, and a cat got up there and brushed it off, and it just shattered into a million pieces. It wasn’t the amount that it was worth – it was just the rarity of it and how much I really loved that piece. And I was like, ‘Oh my god, cat … you have no idea how many cats like you I could buy with something like this. I don’t want to say it, but this was way more than you!’ … So I’m like, you know, at the end of the day, I just say things like that are on me. Because, I mean, that’s the price of a cat!”
While cats may sometimes be destructive, deadmau5 is a fan of having feline pals around. “They’re just super low maintenance and easy to please. They kind of do their own thing,” he says. “They don’t require the constant stream of attention a dog needs.”
The producer, who does a lot of work with the Toronto Humane Society, notes that all of his cats have all been adopted, and his two most recent additions – Dizzy and Dolly – joined his family in September 2023 from Animal Adoptions of Flamborough in Ontario, after the death of his beloved Meowingtons earlier that year. “There’s just such an influx of [cats] that end up getting removed from the home or whatever, and then they’re off in the streets eating whatever and being cats, and then you have these litters of kittens and no one can look after them. They don’t all make it, and that’s a bummer,” he points out. “I make it a point to adopt versus getting that handcrafted rare cat as a showpiece, because I think rescues are … somewhere in their little, tiny brains, they know [you saved them].”
Keep reading to learn more about deadmau5’s cats, from the various ways he’s honored Meowington’s memory (including displaying his skeleton!), to how he spoils his kitties, the best lesson they’ve taught him and much more.
