Cat

TWO years ago, Cat Deeley was in a very different place to where she is now.

The TV presenter, 49, who had replaced Holly Willoughby on This Morning in March, was grappling with a punishing work schedule, the pressure to save the ITV show from its tarnished reputation and a marriage faltering under the pressure of two “tricky” work schedules.

In the three month period she became tearful three times on screen, and appeared at times “visibly overwhelmed.”

And speaking five months after stepping into her new hosting role, she admitted the scrutiny she was under had “shocked her.”

However, the popular star has rebuilt her life after her divorce from Patrick Kielty, 55, with a second National Television Award under her belt with This Morning, a series of lucrative commercial deals and new man Charlie Coleman, who she hopes to spend Christmas with.

And friends of the star this week told how ex Patrick’s new relationship with businesswoman Michelle McManus – the pair were seen cosying up at a North London boozer – is the icing on the cake – saying she told them: “She seems nice, and she is doing me a favour, he’s a better person when he’s happy.”

One said: “Cat’s attitude is: ‘Good luck to them. At the end of the day, that’s the whole point of separating in the first place.’

“She is genuinely happy for him, and knows it’s good for them that he’s happy and positive.

“Cat herself is in a great place and that’s where she wants to stay.

“She and Charlie are getting on really well and are already talking about spending this Christmas together, though they will have to work out the practicalities as she and Paddy share the childcare arrangements 50/50.”

Former So You Think You Can Dance? host Cat – who swapped her $5 million family home in Beverly Hills for a £4.9 million five-bedroom house in Hampstead in 2020 – joined This Morning during a period of extreme turbulence.

Former host Phillip Schofield had quit ITV in May after an “unwise but not illegal” affair with a younger co-worker was revealed.

Holly, who appeared on This Morning for 14 years prior to her exit, stepped back from the spotlight in October, following stalker Gavin Plumb’s terrifying plot to kidnap, rape and murder the TV star being uncovered.

Plumb was jailed for life in July following an eight-day trial.

Against this challenging backdrop, Cat and Ben Shephard, 51, took the reins of the popular daytime show.

Sources told how the pair appealed to bosses as a “safe pair of hands” who could steer them out of a crisis.

But even her early interviews showed signs she feared wading in too deep, as she said: “If it gets too much for me, I’m going to quit. I don’t need to do it – I could be a mum for most of the year and go and do the shows in America.”

And in one interview she opened up about juggling work and motherhood: “I do the juggle – the juggle is real, the struggle is real. You know, we know, we’re all just trying to make everything work. It’s all a juggle.”

Cat shares two sons, Milo and James, with ex husband Patrick – who she was married to for almost 13 years before they announced their split in July 2025.

But sources say the fault lines had appeared in late 2023, when the pair were struggling to balance their schedules.

Patrick – the host of RTE‘s The Late Late Show in Ireland – commuted to film the show in Dublin, while Cat’s So You Think You Can Dance? schedule had also created issues, requiring her to jet back to the US for long stretches.

Her move back to UK television was supposed to lessen the pressure on the duo – one of TV’s power couples.

But fans noticed that the star appeared increasingly emotional on the This Morning set.

In March 2024, just days after she joined as host, Cat burst into tears backstage upon meeting Buddy, an autism assistant puppy introduced to the studio.

She explained to viewers that meeting Buddy triggered her grief over losing her family dog, Lilly, the previous summer.

Weeks later in April, while introducing guest Kerry Irving – whose late springer spaniel Max had helped him overcome depression – Cat broke down in tears and had to ask co-host Ben to take over reading her lines.

And two months later Cat fought back tears during an interview with the family of William Reckless, eight, who had to have both of his legs and nine fingers amputated due to a severe battle with sepsis and scarlet fever.

Her 48th birthday broadcast in October also caused the presenter to break down in tears, after she was surprised by a recorded message from British poet Pam Ayres – who she said had inspired her as a child.

But 2025 seemed to bring a more positive standpoint – and a bombshell, as Cat and Patrick announced their divorce in July.

Both were keen to insist that they remained amicable, and stressed that no third parties were involved in their decision to split.

They also made clear their intention to share the parenting of their children, Milo, 10, and James, eight.

A few months later, September brought an incredible boost for the star – when This Morning won the National TV Award for Daytime, after the repeated scandals engulfing the programme had seen it lose the title in 2023 and 2024.

After the cast and crew were seen going wild in the audience, Cat said on stage: “We are so lucky to get to do this show, we all love it.

“Every single person who comes on, we love this show and it’s like having a family.”

Sources told how the award was “a shot in the arm” for the entire team behind the show – appearing to signal they were back on track.

And in the months to follow, Cat was to build up a relationship with Amazon MGM exec Charlie Coleman – who she was spotted with at a Hyde Park Lewis Capaldi gig in July.

Two months later, she spoke out about how she was thriving as a single mum – saying it was about being “as organised as you can be.”

She also admitted she had an “amazing nanny” to keep their lives on track around her busy schedule.

And she added: “Everybody is doing their best.”

In the same month Paddy – who has signed a new deal with The Late Late Show which will see him host until 2028 – said he was “pretty good” adding that the divorce was “part of the tapestry of life.”

And now, with him also moved on with new love Michelle, it seems another piece of the tapestry is complete.

Leopardus tilcayo is the first new living cat species named and described in more than a century.

A tiny wild cat that lives in Bolivia’s lush cloud forests has been identified as a previously unknown species, marking the first time in more than a century that a new living feline species has been formally named and described.

Called “tilcayo” by local communities, the cat is part of a group called tiger cats, which are found across much of South America.

It was discovered in the Yungas forest, a mountainous region where forests are often covered by clouds and surrounded by high humidity, according to the researchers.

Given the scientific name Leopardus tilcayo, the cat measures 46cm (18 inches) long and weighs about 1.4kg (3 pounds), making it smaller than an average domestic cat.

“Its fur is light brown … with irregularly shaped rosettes across its body,” according to Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz, a National Geographic Explorer and one of the authors of the study describing the newly identified species published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

Little is known about the cat’s biology and lifestyle. Remains of small rodents in scat samples suggest they may form part of its diet, while camera-trap evidence indicates it could be more active at night, Nogales-Ascarrunz said.

Tiger cats are so-called cryptic species, meaning they cannot easily be distinguished merely by appearance, evolutionary biologist and study co-lead author Jonas Lescroart of the University of Antwerp in Belgium said.

Observing the Bolivian cat drew interest because “its characteristics did not match the descriptions, most of them based on Brazilian cats”, Nogales-Ascarrunz said. “This made us wonder, what tiger cat do we actually have in Bolivia?”

The team analysed DNA from 38 cats sampled across several South American countries, including eight museum specimens. The study found that tiger cats are in fact five genetically distinct species.

“We never expected this Bolivian tiger cat to be a separate species, and no one had ever proposed it as a different animal, subspecies or otherwise,” Jonas Lescroart said.

Genetic analysis suggested that the tilcayo lineage separated from other tiger cats about 1.4 million years ago.

The research team also described a new tiger cat subspecies in Peru’s Yungas, naming it Leopardus tigrinus antisuyo, after Antisuyu, the region of the old Inca Empire that included the area it inhabits.

For decades scientists and researchers have been vexed by a sound emanating from cats. Not a call of the wild, a roar or a hiss. No, multiple academics have attempted to decipher the meaning behind the mightily adorable meow of the domestic house cat.

Cats, it turns out, are conversationalists. And good news for cat parents: Studies suggest they’re often attempting to talk to us.

“One of the biggest takeaways from scientific research is that meowing seems in many ways to be specialized for communication with humans,” says Jay Schwartz, an associate professor of psychological science at Western Oregon University. “In that sense, the meow holds the legacy of thousands of years of evolutionary change in cats to adapt to life with humans.”

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Adult cats, specifically, rarely meow to one another, instead preferring other vocal intonations or facial signifiers. The meow, in short, is meant for us.

“The exception is communication between kittens and mothers,” Schwartz says, “which is also the main context where we see meows in wild feline species. One hypothesis is that cats have this instinct to meow towards their mother, and humans in many cases sort of take on that mother role.”

But now that we know that cats are attempting to communicate with us, is there a way for pet caregivers to better understand what a cat is attempting to say? Research is ongoing, but many papers have sought to analyze not only the different pitches and tones of the meow, but also how good we — humans, that is — are at understanding them. There’s evidence at least that we’re listening. One European study indicated that cat owners often meow back at their pets. This is different than, say, dog providers, who were reported to rarely return a canine’s bark.

An informal polling of the researchers interviewed for this article found that, yes, cat parents are likely to return the meows of their feline. And I know from personal experience with my own cat that I am an avid meower.

Asked, for instance, if he meows to his cats, Jonathan B. Losos, an evolutionary biologist and author of the book, “The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved From the Savanna to Your Sofa,” wouldn’t deny it. “I’m sure they are deeply offended by my attempts, but yes, yes I do,” Losos says.

But there’s no need to mimic a cat’s meow, especially if one is hoping to train a cat or have them associate certain words with particular rewards — treats, playtime and affection work well for that. And besides, there’s a theory that, with the meow, the cats were evolving to imitate us.

“Our cats’ ancestors were already meowing when they began living alongside humans,” Schwartz says. “We know this because cats’ closest evolutionary relatives, African wild cats, meow.”

Yet there are key differences in the meows. Schwartz says the meow of a domestic cat is “cuter and less harsh” than those of a wild cat. The cats likely knew what they were doing.

“One hypothesis is the meow happened to share some acoustic similarities with the sounds of human infants,” Schwartz says, “and so nearby humans were responsive to it. This set the stage for a co-evolutionary relationship where, over generations, cats began to produce meows that are more fine-tuned for human communication. It’s a case of evolution taking a tool that already exists and modifying it for a new purpose as a species adapts to a different environment.”

And while meows, of course, vary from cat to cat, Kristyn Vitale, a certified applied animal behaviorist and founder of the Michigan-based Maueyes Cat Science and Education center, says there are ways to decode them. Vitale points to research out of a Swedish university that looked at the melody and tone of the meow.

“So when it dips down at the end,” Vitale says of the meow, “that’s often correlated with negative affective states. So, feeling stressed or fearful. You hear that if you’re trying to get your cat into the carrier or messing around with them, like at the vet. Then they’ll often have a downward pitch. And then for happy, more content states, there is an an uptick at the end. They found that to be pretty consistent in their vocalizing. Whether it goes up or down is indicating the cat’s mood.”

And yet the key to understanding a cat’s meow will often rest specifically with that cat’s caretaker. Losos in his book cites a number of papers on cat vocalizations, and one of his favorites is the work of Nicholas Nicastro and the series of studies that followed up on Nicastro’s research. Nicastro made recordings of a number of cat meows when the pets were in different states — being fed, for instance, or brushed. Nicastro also placed cats in unfamiliar environments, hoping to get meows of dissatisfaction.

Nicastro wanted to see whether humans could identify the emotional state of the cat based solely on the sound. “The people did no better than guessing,” Losos says. “They had no clue.” It was an indication, Losos argues, that cats have no uniform language.

But don’t despair, those who want to understand their cats better. Other research has advanced Nicastro’s work, including studies that paired a cat’s meows directly with their caretaker instead of random participants. When those who lived with the cat were involved, the results differed drastically. I joke that I like to think I can understand when my cat’s meow is asking me to open the bedroom window blinds, which is where her desired bird-watching perch is. Losos says I may be right — or at least not entirely wrong.

“The people who lived with the cat were quite good at saying, ‘Chester is unhappy with you,’ or ‘Oliver is very content right now,’ ” Losos says. “What that suggests is that there is a private language that develops between cats and the people they live with in order for cats to communicate what they want or what their mood is. That’s fascinating. You and your cat have worked out how to understand when she’s hungry, for instance.”

Research is continuing to better understand the communication between a cat and the cat’s owner. Schwartz and Vitale, for instance, are hoping to finalize a study soon that looks at how cats may greet their caretakers — or express a form of sadness or confusion when they leave.

“We looked specifically at meows in two contexts: separation from their human in an unfamiliar environment, and then the human’s return,” Schwartz says. “We found some subtle but consistent differences in the pitch and length of meows between those two contexts, suggesting maybe cats have different meows for ‘Where did you go?’ and ‘You’re back!’ ”

Yet there’s one thing that Schwartz wants to make clear. The meow, as cute and attuned as it may be to get a human’s attention, is not in his mind a tool for manipulation, as some have proffered.

“This idea that cats are trying to manipulate us is a big pet peeve of mine,” he says. “I don’t think cats are intentionally manipulating us in the sense of understanding the effects that their meows have on our psychology. However, they probably understand the link between their behavior and ours. If they have learned that meowing is a way to achieve a desired outcome, they’ll do it.”

In other words, cats just want to be heard.