Barivel

A Lombardy Maine Coon

Barivel, a brown-tabby Maine Coon born in May 2016, was certified by Guinness World Records on 22 May 2018 as the longest domestic cat living. The official measurement, conducted at a veterinary clinic in Vigevano, Lombardy, was 120 centimetres (47.2 inches) from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. He has lived since kittenhood with his owners Cinzia Tinnirello and Edgar Scandurra at their home in the city of Vigevano, approximately thirty-five kilometres south-west of Milan. The name Barivel is Lombard dialect for "rascal."

The succession from Ludo

Barivel's record passed from Ludo, the West Yorkshire Maine Coon measured at 118.33 centimetres in October 2015 who had held the title for two and a half years. The Maine Coon breed, originally a working farm cat of the north-east United States, has dominated the longest-cat category since Guinness began certifying it as a separate record from longest-cat-ever in the 1990s; the all-time record remains 123 centimetres set by Stewie of Reno, Nevada in 2010. Barivel's measurement was supervised by a Guinness adjudicator and a licensed Italian veterinary surgeon according to the standard protocol, with the cat sedated only as much as necessary to permit accurate measurement along the spinal axis.

Press coverage and breed advocacy

Italian regional press, including La Provincia Pavese, covered the certification in May 2018 and again on the cat's birthday in 2019 and 2020. Reuters distributed a wire photograph of Barivel in the Vigevano apartment in June 2018 that ran in newspapers in approximately twenty countries. Tinnirello and Scandurra have used the publicity to advocate for the Maine Coon breed and for the Italian National Cat Association; they have publicly declined commercial endorsements offered to Barivel, citing the cat's preference for a quiet household. As of 2024 Barivel remained the active Guinness title holder, with no successor record claim certified.