Rich animals: a cat worth 97 million dollars, and the dog that became a sensation

Most pets do not need luxury cars, big houses and designer clothes – simple toys and tasty food are all that is needed to satisfy them. This is not the case for Olivia Benson, who is also known as “Dibles” – Benson is a Scottish Fold cat that Taylor Swift adopted about a decade ago.

Swift has two other cats, but Benson is the most prominent – she has starred in commercials and also participated in music videos for Swift’s songs, including “Karma” and “Blank Space”. The market value of the cat is 97 million dollars, as of January of this year. That’s more than Swift’s partner, football player Travis Kelce, who is worth an estimated $90 million as of last month. Swift herself, by the way, is worth about a billion dollars.

 

Olivia Benson is indeed a famous and very rich cat, but there is one cat a little more famous and a little richer than her: Nela, a cat from California who has 4.5 million followers on Instagram. According to The Pet Zealot, who looked at data such as followers, likes, engagement rates and more, Nela’s net worth is $100 million. She “released” a book, has a pet food brand and a bunch of other merchandise.

Social networks have led to the enrichment of other pets (and especially to the enrichment of their owners), among them Jiffpom, a Pomeranian who was declared by Guinness World Records as the most popular dog on Instagram in 2019. Jiffpom was born in Chicago, and became an online sensation in 2014 .He currently has about 9.1 million followers on Instagram, and 20.2 million on TikTok. His estimated worth is $25 million – but this may not be accurate, as no new content has been uploaded to his profiles since March 2023. Hopefully, he has retired.

Oprah Winfrey’s dogs also enjoy high value. Sadie (a cocker spaniel), Sunny and Lauren (a springer spaniel) are worth $30 million each – that may sound like a lot, but their owner is worth $2.5 billion. Winfrey loves her dogs, saying in the past “For me, a house without dogs would be like a library without books.” So it’s no surprise that she wants to secure the future of her dogs – she deposited $30 million into a trust fund for each of them.

The rich dog turned out to be just a German shepherd

And there is also Gunther the Sixth – supposedly the richest dog in the world, worth 400 million dollars. In practice, Gunther VI is the face of Maurizio Mian, an Italian entrepreneur, heir to a family pharmaceutical company and CEO of the multimedia company “The Gunther Corporation”. Gunther VI does appear on rich pet lists, but his wealth is an urban legend that Mian invented to promote real estate sales and other projects. Among other things, Gunther VI “sold” about two years ago Madonna’s old mansion in Miami for 29 million dollars.

According to the made-up story, a wealthy German countess named Carlotta Liebenstein bequeathed Gunther VI’s grandfather, Gunther III, tens of millions of dollars upon her death in 1992, and the money is in a trust for Mian’s family. In practice, there is no evidence of Liebenstein’s existence. In November 2021, the AP news agency called the story of the Gunther dynasty “a publicity stunt to mislead reporters.” In 2023, a documentary series was released on Netflix about the dog (“Gunther’s Millions”), in which Mian admitted that a large part of the story about him was made up for tax purposes.