Mike Wilson and Megan Hanneman didn’t anticipate finding a new pet when they went to visit the Humane Society of West Michigan one day in April.

The couple had been thinking about adding a kitten to their family, but when they saw Bronson, a huge orange cat who was three years old and weighed a staggering 33 pounds, it was love at first sight.

The pair couldn’t help but be captivated by Bronson’s towering figure amid the other felines at the shelter.

“When we first saw him, we were shocked at how big he was,” Wilson told The Dodo. “Neither of us had seen a cat that size before and we thought he was so cute and cuddly, likе a large stuffed animal! We immediately went over to gaze at him from outside his room.”

Wilson and Hanneman waited in line to be questioned so they could meet Bronson, but they were unable to sit down with the shelter worker before they had to leave for work.

But they couldn’t stop staring at the picture of the huge cat they had taken before they departed. Wilson recalled, “We were chatting about him incessantly on the way to work and started regretting not hanging around for him.

The couple’s worry that Bronson might be adơрted intensified as the day went on, so they hurried back to the shelter as quickly as they could.

We were connected to him so immediately that we began to think he might be adơрted right away, Wilson said.

After the dеаth of his elderly owner, Bronson had been brought to the humane society. He was known as “Fat Kat,” and while he had lived in a home with other pets, the staff at the shelter were told that he was a bit of a loner who preferred to keep to himself.

How such a young cat had put on so much weight was a mystery to everyone.

The staff changed his name once they admitted him, but Wilson said that his original name revealed how seriously they were treating his obesity. Their best hypothesis was that he was either being given excessive amounts of kibble or table leftovers.