JACKSON GALAXY, aka “the Cat Daddy”, is back to save the day with the seventh season of Animal Planet’s hit show, “My Cat From Hell”.

Armed with more than 20 years’ experience and proven training techniques honed from his work with more than 25,000 animals, the New York native cat behaviourist travels across the US to assist cat owners in need of some intervention in dealing with their furry – and sometimes feisty – companions. The aim is to prevent owners from giving up their cats and contributing to already overcrowded shelters.

Galaxy took time out from a busy schedule during his recent promotion visit to Bangkok to sit down and chat with us.

HOW DID YOU START WORKING WITH CATS?

I didn’t have a lot of experiences with cats before I started working in animal shelter in 1993 to make ends meet besides playing rock music, and basically the cats and I got along. Back then we were putting down a lot of cats in that shelter and most of the time that was for very simple reasons. I found that I could help change that and saved a lot of cats. I did that for about 10 years and started going to people’s homes while I was also working in the shelter, and it just progressed from there.

HOW DID THE SHOW START? HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE NAME “MY CAT FROM HELL”?

That wasn’t me! I think the original name of the show was “Cat Daddy”, and they went with “Hell Cat” for a minute. The fear was that nobody was going watch the show about cats, so they felt they had to make it a little more dramatic, which worked. When they first came up with the name “My Cat From Hell”, I freaked because I come from an animal rescue world, and I thought all my friends would disown me. But everyone got it. It doesn’t take long to realise that it’s not the cat that is from hell; it’s either the people or the circumstances and that’s only thing I care about. Animal Planet has always been sensitive about my approach to cats, and they’re very supportive.

Weeks after I moved to Los Angeles in 2007, my friend who works in TV took me to an adoption event. And I was standing around with a bunch of cats. One person talked to another and the show was created just like that. Luckily I never had to shop for the show, it came to me and it happened very quickly.

HOW LONG DOES A CASE NORMALLY TAKE YOU?

About six weeks. I to a house, talk to the humans, try to spend some time with the cat, which is tough when you got a camera crew, try to get a handle on what’s going on, then I give them homework. That’s the most important. When I tell you to do something with your cat, it’s going to take you a few weeks to implement it for the cat to respond, and to know from that point where we’d go. I don’t think I can do it in three weeks, because cats don’t care about pleasing humans at all and you really have to get that work in to gain trust before you can get results.

HOW DO YOU CHOOSE THE CATS FOR THE SHOW?

There’s a combination of things that come into play, because I can’t go see them all. I tend to pick the ones that are challenging to me, or with circumstances that are really dire. My producers will tend to pick ones that are more humorous. And now for season seven, I want to show people who have cats solutions to things that we never addressed before.

A LOT OF THEM ARE SERIOUSLY AGGRESSIVE.

It always worries me that people will watch my show and assume that all cats are aggressive. Cats stay alive in the wild for thousands of years because they know how not to pick a fight. They know when to run and hide. They only attack when they feel threatened. The aggression you see on the show is a very small part of the cat population. A lot of the cats I work with have this sort of complex where they feel the sky is falling down, and they’re being attacked all the time, and so they act out. But I promise you that there is not a cat that I know that would just walk up to us in a strange room and lash out. They have to feel threatened to attack.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR MOST CHALLENGING CASE SO FAR?

There is one case in the fifth season where a couple in Portland had to call the police because the cat had trapped them in their bedroom. That cat by far is the most challenging, and he is also mentally sick. I met him and it was like a soul mate moment where I loved him from the beginning. But he was the most impossible cat. Every time we thought we had a happy ending, I would get a phone call that he had mauled somebody and fly back. After we’d finished filming the show, we found him a new home. A week later I received a phone call telling me that Lux had sent someone the hospital again. I still work with him and he taught me so much. Lux is much happier than he was, but he’s still troubled.

DO YOU THINK PEOPLE UNDERSTAND CATS MORE AND BECOME CAT OWNERS BECAUSE OF YOUR SHOW?

The whole cat culture has grown or at least come out into the open. I mean, now you can put a video of your cat on YouTube and get 75 million views. There are a lot of cat lovers out there, and there are more cats in homes now than there are dogs. For so long, people, and especially men, were very quiet about their cats, but that’s not true anymore. I’ve told people to Instagram themselves and their cats, and get the message out that the felines are not the sole preserve of “crazy cat ladies” who live alone in the basement, covered in cat hair and never leave the house. You’d be surprised how hip and young cat people are now. We cast the show that way, too, to include young people and make sure that the stereotypes are gone. I’m very proud that we helped bring cats into the light a little bit, and opened up a perception of what a cat person is really like.

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM THE SEVENTH SEASON?

We’ll have a lot of new angles. We have a new segment of the show called “My Cat From Heaven” where we highlight cats who perform functions or have survived certain odds. And you’ll get to see more of animal rescue and animal advocacy, which is pretty what I do all my life, other than going to people’s homes.

CAT VIDEOS

Season 7 of “My Cat From Hell” premieres at 8pm on April 20 on Animal Planet, TrueVisions channel 567.

Find out more at JacksonGalaxy.com.