Ilia Malinin has a world title, a pair of Olympic medals and a nickname that says plenty about his skating. But the 21-year-old said his two cats, Mysti and Miu miu, have shown little interest in any of it. “They just treat me like trash a lot of times!” Malinin said in an exclusive interview while discussing his partnership with Sheba. “They ignore me all the time.”
The figure skater, known as the “Quad God,” said the cats do more than bruise his ego. They help steady him, and he said he planned to document his effort to win them over on social media. “They make me feel better and they make me skate better,” he said, adding that leaving them at home while he is on the road for competition makes the distance harder.
The comments come as Malinin turns one of the most successful stretches of his career into a more personal story. On March 28, he won his third consecutive men’s title at the 2026 ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czech Republic, a result he described as more like the close of a long season than the kind of high-pressure test he faced at the 2026 Milan Olympics. He won team gold for Team USA a few days before a disappointing final skate on Feb. 13.
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That backdrop gives his cat campaign a sharper edge. Malinin said Sheba’s new “Ignored to Adored” program is already changing things at home, and he has noticed the difference. “Giving them [Sheba food] is really helping,” he said. “I’m starting to notice a lot of differences!” He added that the cats are “really coming up to me for more attention and trying to be more intimate,” though he said the progress is slow.
For Malinin, the world-title win brought relief more than triumph. He said it felt good to become a three-time world champion, but also left him with a lesson that runs against the logic of medals and standings. “It felt good. It felt really relieving,” he said. “But at the same time, it taught me that sometimes medals aren’t everything.” Even then, he said, the cats were unimpressed: “Well, clearly, my cats still ignore me when I won the medal!”
Malinin said the World Championships felt different from the Olympics because they came after the pressure of Milan and let him focus again on why he loves the sport. He called the event a last push of the season rather than a test with everything on the line. For now, though, the race for approval at home appears harder than the one on the ice.
