Meet Pinky: The "PetSmart Special" Nobody Else Wanted

Aug 12, 2026

Every family has one member whose story explains a lot about everyone else, and in ours, that's Pinky. Pinky — full names Mr. Pink, Pinky Pookatikis, or just Lurch depending on the day — was "rescued" from a PetSmart. We put that in quotes because technically, money changed hands. He was purchased, at a steep discount, with some supplies thrown in to sweeten the deal. But the reason he was on clearance at all is the part that gets us: Pinky had been sitting in that store for months. Nobody wanted him. He was about to be sent back to the breeder — what we've taken to calling "the cat factory" — because he simply hadn't sold. Twelve years later, Pinky's one of our four OGs, the cats who were there before Bug and Lady Bug turned four cats into twenty-one. He's not the flashiest personality in the house, but he's the reminder of where this whole thing actually started: not with a plan to build a cat empire, but with one overlooked animal nobody else would take a chance on. We'll be sharing more of Pinky's full backstory soon — there's more to how a store-clearance cat becomes a 12-year veteran of a 21-cat household.