Community cat · Sweden
Luffar-Lasse is an orange cat from Trollhättan, Sweden, who became locally famous for taking himself on long walks around the city, often ending up at the Överby shopping area to spend time with people before finding someone to give him a ride home.
Lasse has raised millions of Swedish kronor for charity, starred in hours of slow television, and inspired his own roundabout. At 15, he’s still going out to see what’s happening.
Lasse starts wandering. He develops a habit of heading out from his home in Trollhättan and exploring the city on his own. One of his favorite destinations becomes the Överby shopping area, several kilometers from home, where he spends time around the parking lot meeting people. When he decides he’s finished for the day, he sometimes hops into a stranger’s car for a ride home. His family creates a Facebook group so people who encounter Lasse know that he isn’t lost and can keep track of where he turns up.
Trollhättan gets to know Lasse. By 2023, his trips to Överby have made him a familiar face around the city. Photos and updates about his whereabouts are shared by a growing community online. The wandering neighborhood cat is becoming a local celebrity.
Nearly two million kronor for charity. A fundraising campaign in Lasse’s name takes off during Musikhjälpen, Sweden’s annual charity event. By the end of the campaign, Luffar-Lasse’s fundraiser has collected around 1.8 million Swedish kronor to help fight hunger, making it the most successful fundraiser of that year’s event.
Lasse gets his own roundabout. Trollhättan gives one of its best-known residents a rather unusual landmark: a traffic roundabout decorated in Lasse’s honor. By now, his walks have become such a familiar part of local life that signs around the area also remind drivers to watch out for him.
14 hours of Lasse. Swedish public broadcaster SVT turns Lasse’s everyday life into slow television. Camera crews follow him around Trollhättan, while Lasse himself wears a small camera that lets viewers see the city from his perspective. The result is En helg med Luffar-Lasse: two seven-hour broadcasts in which viewers watch Lasse walk, explore, meet people, encounter other cats, and generally decide for himself what happens next. Both broadcasts become some of the most watched programs on SVT Play that weekend.
Another Musikhjälpen. Lasse returns to Musikhjälpen, and once again his community raises more than one million kronor. By this point, a cat whose daily routine once consisted mostly of walking to a shopping center has helped raise millions for charity.
Lasse returns to television. En helg med Luffar-Lasse comes back for another season. This time, Lasse shares some of the attention with the other cats around him, including Hasse, Zelda, and Nisse. There are more walks, some hunting, and even a little romance. Another 14 hours of Lasse air across the weekend.
Lasse goes missing. When 15-year-old Lasse doesn’t come home, his family asks the public for help. The response is enormous. The post is shared more than 1,600 times and receives nearly 8,000 reactions, while volunteers begin searching the places Lasse usually visits. Some people are even on their way to Trollhättan specifically to help look for him. Later that day, Lasse is found safe. His family plans to get his GPS tracker back on him.
Another day with Luffar-Lasse. Lasse returns to Swedish television for another slow-TV adventure. For eight hours, viewers follow him through his day as he wanders, hunts, meets animals and people, and once again ignores the usual requirement that a television star follow a script. Read more from SVT.
Lasse has a home, but he also likes going out.
His best-known route takes him several kilometers through Trollhättan to the Överby shopping area, where he has become a familiar sight around the parking lot.
He goes there for people. Visitors stop to say hi, take photos, and spend time with him. Eventually Lasse decides when the outing is over, and sometimes chooses a stranger who can give him a lift back home. Otherwise, his family comes to collect him.
Funny thing is, the Facebook group was originally created by his owner, Elin Karlsson, for people who encountered an orange cat several kilometers from home and assumed he was lost.
Over time, keeping track of Lasse became something people around Trollhättan did together.
His Facebook community grew from a way of reassuring concerned strangers into a place where thousands of people followed his everyday adventures. By 2026, Lasse had more than 100,000 followers across social media.
That relationship became particularly obvious when he disappeared in June 2026. Within hours, thousands of people had reacted to his family’s appeal. Volunteers joined the search, and others were preparing to travel to Trollhättan to help. For one afternoon, a city went looking for its cat.
In 2023, Lasse’s community turned all that attention toward Musikhjälpen, an annual Swedish fundraising campaign.
A fundraiser bearing Luffar-Lasse’s name collected around 1.8 million Swedish kronor, the highest total of any fundraiser in that year’s campaign. Donations continued arriving even after the event had officially ended.
A year later, they did it again. Lasse’s 2024 fundraiser passed one million kronor, turning a local cat and the community around him into a surprisingly effective fundraising team.
There isn’t much of a plot to En helg med Luffar-Lasse, and that’s the point.
SVT’s slow-TV series follows Lasse as he goes about his day around Trollhättan. Camera crews keep their distance while Lasse decides where to walk, what to investigate, and who is worth stopping to see.
For the original 2024 broadcasts, three camera teams followed him over five days. Lasse even wore his own camera, giving viewers a cat-height look at his life around the city.
The footage was turned into 14 hours of television across one weekend. Both seven-hour broadcasts topped SVT Play’s most-watched list that weekend, and Lasse has been invited back ever since.
Video about Luffar-Lasse on YouTube.
Lasse has a roundabout.
In 2024, a traffic circle in Trollhättan was decorated with a large mosaic inspired by the city’s wandering ginger cat.
It’s an unusually permanent tribute to an animal whose fame came from doing something extremely ordinary: leaving the house, walking around town, and meeting people.
Outside Eko at Överby, where Lasse has become a familiar face, and has a little house of his own.
Photos: Karin Engqvist / TTELA.
Eight hours is a perfectly reasonable amount of Lasse.
Luffar-Lasse is an orange cat from Trollhättan, Sweden, known for taking long walks around the city, particularly to the Överby shopping area. His adventures have made him a local celebrity, a charity fundraiser, and a slow-TV star.
He goes for the people. Lasse walks several kilometers from home to the shopping area and spends time around the parking lot greeting visitors. He decides when it’s time to head back and sometimes he'd hitch a ride with a stranger.
No. Lasse has a home and a family in Trollhättan. He just likes going out. The Facebook group was created partly so people who found him far from home would know he wasn’t lost.
During Musikhjälpen 2023, a fundraiser in his name collected around 1.8 million Swedish kronor. In 2024, his fundraiser passed one million kronor again.
It’s an SVT slow-television series that follows Lasse around Trollhättan for hours at a stretch, with little plot beyond whatever Lasse decides to do next. The first season aired 14 hours across one weekend in 2024; later seasons brought him back for more.
Yes. In 2024, a traffic circle in Trollhättan was decorated with a Lasse-inspired mosaic, and nearby signs remind drivers to watch out for him.
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