TRUTH.
In 1997, the residents of Talkeetna, Alaska — population 900, give or take — held a mayoral election and found themselves unimpressed by the human candidates on offer. So they wrote in a different one: a tailless orange kitten named Stubbs, who had recently been adopted by the manager of the local general store. Stubbs won. He held office until his death in 2017. He was 20 years old.
Technically, Stubbs's title was honorary — Talkeetna is an unincorporated historic district and has no official mayor. But the distinction did not appear to slow him down. Atlas Obscura reports that at the height of his popularity, Stubbs attracted 30 to 40 tourists per day who made the trip specifically to meet the mayor. He received fan mail from around the world. CNN, the BBC, and Time magazine all covered his administration. His office was the counter of Nagley's General Store, where he could be found most afternoons drinking water mixed with catnip from a margarita glass.
His tenure was not without incident. Stubbs survived being shot by teenagers with a BB gun. He fell into a restaurant fryer — thankfully unheated and off at the time. He once hitched an accidental ride on a garbage truck to the outskirts of town before being discovered and returned. His death was prematurely reported in 2016, prompting his unofficial Twitter account to post: "I read a press release describing my own death."
In 2014, during Alaska's U.S. Senate race, some residents pushed a write-in campaign to promote him for the seat. He did not win, but the suggestion said something about both the cat and the candidates.
Stubbs served longer than most human mayors, was more universally beloved than any of them, and never once raised taxes. His record stands.
