September 30, 2026

Good Furrends of September 2026

10 animal stories that defined September 2026.

September gave us a very large bear named Backpack, the world's tallest horse, a six-year cat reunion, a tiny new wild cat species, and a gull with a salary of four prawns a day.

Here are 10 animal stories from September 2026 worth remembering.

1. Backpack got very, very big

Backpack, aka Bear 89, beat Bear 910 in the Fat Bear Week final after spending another summer eating his way toward hibernation at Alaska's Katmai National Park. He got his name as a cub because he liked riding around on his mother Holly's back. Holly won Fat Bear Week in 2019, so it runs in the family. Congrats, Backpack!

2. Park Slope got Jabal back

Three-month-old bodega cat Jabal disappeared from the Eighth Street Mini Market in Brooklyn after two people were seen taking him from outside the store. The neighborhood responded with flyers, social posts and a search that spread well beyond Park Slope. Five days later, Jabal was back behind the counter with his owner Jimmy Innab.

3. Hugo is officially the tallest horse in the world

Hugo is a Shire horse from Northamptonshire who stands 6 feet 6 inches at the shoulder, weighs roughly 1,960 pounds, and he's still growing. Guinness World Records has now recognized him as the world's tallest living horse. His owner describes him as an oversized dog, and he likes bananas.

4. Meet Tigrino

For years, nobody was quite sure what Tigrino was. The tiny wild cat from Bolivia was initially mistaken for an unusual house cat before ending up at a wildlife sanctuary, where his appearance caught the attention of a biologist. Nearly a decade later, researchers had an answer: Tigrino belongs to Leopardus tilcayo, the first new living cat species formally described by scientists in more than a century.

Meet Tigrino

5. Pandora came home after six years

Pandora disappeared in 2020 after her family's vehicle rolled during a move to Scotland, throwing her carrier from the car and opening its door. Six years later, a woman near Perth noticed a scruffy stray repeatedly trying to get inside her house and called Cats Protection. They checked her microchip, and it led to her owner. A very happy reunion.

6. Tsunami got a statue

Tsunami helped search for survivors after an earthquake struck Venezuela in June. Three months later, the rescue dog returned to Maracaibo for a different reason: the city unveiled a bronze statue in his honor. The statue has his vest and everything. He also received the city's Honor of Merit and a Medal of Valor from the Maracaibo Fire Department.

7. The seal had somewhere to be

Traffic in central Wellington briefly stopped for a very small and very determined seal. Police officers tried using road cones to persuade the pup to turn around. The seal had other ideas and continued making its way across the road. Officers eventually got their tiny pedestrian safely back to the water.

8. The raccoons went to boot camp

Young raccoons arriving at Woodside Wildlife Rescue in Mississippi often don't have their mothers around to teach them how to be raccoons. So the rescue runs what it calls “raccoon boot camp.” The orphaned kits learn the skills they'll need outside, including climbing, foraging, and becoming independent enough to eventually return to the wild. Graduation means leaving, but that's the point.

9. Birdie got her wheels back

Birdie was found paralyzed after being hit by a car in Baja, Mexico. When rescuers Nick Reilly and Alli Jaeger realized her spinal injury couldn't be repaired, they introduced her to a wheelchair, and Birdie quickly figured out how to move again. She later needed both back legs amputated and faced complications after surgery. Now she's back home, back in her wheels, and looking for a permanent family.

10. Roger got a job

Roger spends his days around Clifton Place in the seaside town of Salcombe, England. After shop owner Mark Khoury helped him when he was young, the gull stuck around and eventually acquired an unofficial job: chasing other gulls away from the local shops and their customers' lunches. He gets paid four prawns a day.

Meet Roger

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