The Unbearable Weight of Massive Cuteness

If you were to just get the IMDB highlights, you’d see that Pedro Pascal is an actor who has starred in The Mandalorian, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and The Last of Us. But if you were to get TikTok’s take on him, you’d come to learn that he is, above all else, “daddy.” Pedro Pspspscal, not to be confused with the human actor, is a cat whose face has been Photoshopped into all of those films and TV shows I just mentioned, and who is also “daddy” according to the Kansas Humane Society’s (KHS) recent tweet about him. 

“Pedro Pspspscal is daddy and we all love this famous boi,” KHS’s tweet read. “Here’s some of his most famous scenes with costars Bella Ramsey, Grogu, and Nicolas Cage.”

The tweet, which KHS posted on March 20th, quickly went viral.

“THESE ARE SO FUNNY,” one user tweeted. “I’m so dead,” wrote another. 

Later that same day, Twitter user Kalon Fullerton posted a screenshot of Pedro Pspspscal’s adoption page and wrote: “Been laughing about this for 5 consecutive minutes.” Their tweet also garnered over 270,000 likes, and 42,000 retweets, and Pedro got plenty of attention on pet adoption sites, such as Adopt a Pet.

Pedro (the cat) was so popular that he was adopted the day after the tweet went up. KHS told Newsweek that his new parents love his name — and won’t be changing it.

“We named him after Pedro Pascal, just to capitalize on all the memes and the success of The Mandalorian and The Last of Us,” Jordan Bani-Younes from KHS told Newsweek. “We have a names chat with most of our staff, and I believe our social media manager saw the name on Facebook and suggested it.”

Indeed, the value of Pedro Pascal’s stock has been skyrocketing for a while. Besides appearing in what feels like every major TV show of the past few years, the 47-year-old Chilean-American actor has harnessed the internet’s collective thirst for him with wild success, specifically in regards to his status as “daddy.” 

“I am your cool slutty daddy,” he said at the premiere of The Last of Us. 

“Daddy is a state of mind, you know what I’m saying?” he said during a Vanity Fair interview. “I’m your daddy.”

When he hosted SNL on February 4, Pascal even played up the “daddy” moniker in a sketch with his good pal Sarah Paulson, who obviously went by “mommy.” In case you are now incredibly interested, Vox has a great breakdown of why Pascal’s version of daddy works so well, but for our purposes: back to the cat. 

According to Bani-Younes, Pedro the cat was a stray who was first discovered by the Wichita Animal Shelter. And while the human Pascal may have gained his daddy status because of his gruff, caring roles, the cat Pspspscal seems to have a softer, more approachable personality.

“Pedro is a very cuddle boy that loves head rubs,” Bani-Younes told Newsweek. “Every time I walk into the cat condo, he jumped up to the third shelf to get head rubs and pets.”

Pedro Pascal (the human) hasn’t commented yet on his animal doppelgänger. Nor, it seems, did he go so far as to adopt his namesake cat, like actor Dennis Quaid did back in 2020. Quaid (the actor) adopted Dennis Quaid (the cat) from the Lynchburg Humane Society in Virginia.

“It was really off the wall, but I couldn’t resist. I had to,” the human Quaid said in an interview later. “I’m out to save all the Dennis Quaids of the world.”

While KHS was delighted with the attention when Pedro the cat got rehomed, Bani-Younes emphasized to Newsweek that they have many more animals available for adoption. Some of the cats you could take home? Body Slam, a seven-year-old male, or Mrs. Danvers, a three-year-old female.

“We really need fosters to help expand our shelter walls and people to adopt, and spay/neuter the pets they already have,” Bani-Younes said.