Meet Gacek, the fat cat that became a Polish city’s top tourist attraction

3 min read

With a nearly perfect 4.9/5.0 stars out of thousands of Google reviews, Gacek, a fat black-and-white street cat, is the top-rated tourist attraction in Szczecin.

Szczecin is a medieval city in northwestern Poland, close to the border with Germany, that boasts lot of attractions to offer visitors, including Pomeranian Duke’s Castle and Kasprowicza Park, but when it comes to online reviews, both pale in comparison with the city’s top-rated attraction.
The cute cat rose to fame in 2020, after local news site wSzczecinie featured the beloved feline in a video that subsequently went viral on social media, and people have been showering him with positive reviews ever since.
According to a local woman, he first appeared on Kaszubska Street in downtown Szczecin about 10 years ago.
He stuck around and people started taking a liking to him. Many of them also started feeding him, so from a skinny cat, he soon turned into a chunky boy, which only made him more adorable.

Gacek, whose name literally means “long-eared bat” in Polish, has nearly 2,600 reviews on Google, more than any other local attraction in Szczecin, and most of those who posted a review awarded the purring feline the maximum 5 stars, making him the top-rated tourist attraction in the city.
The few one-star reviews are mostly from people who express worry about his weight, but overall, the cat’s reviews are really fantastic.
And he even has his own section on Google Maps, where he has a long list of glowing five-star reviews from people who have traveled from near and far to see him. “I flew from Oslo with transit in Gdańsk to see Gacek,” one reviewer wrote. “As expected, he didn’t pay any attention to me which made the experience fully wholesome. If I could have a dinner with anyone in the world, I would fly again in an instant to feed him. Can recommend!”

Also known as the “King of Kaszubska Street”, Gacek lives in a roofed wooden box outside a shop on Kaszubska Street and, even though he doesn’t technically have an owner, the people who run the shop act as “his humans”. There is a sign outside his house that acts passers-by to leave whatever treats they have for the cat in a sealed container and to refrain from petting him when he’s sleeping.

Either way, most of those who have interacted with Gacek claim that he is a “fantastically handsome and superb fellow,” but there are also a few who complained that he stole a sausage.
But probably the latter are just jealous of his popularity!