Two Farmington Hills felines make the record books

Farmington Hills — Two frisky felines from Farmington Hills have made the official 2018 Guinness World Record book as well as the 2018 Guinness Amazing Animals book. Remarkably, they both live in the same home.

Owners Will and Lauren Powers are proud of Arcturus Aldebaran and Cygnus Regulus, who both set records at merely a year old.

According to the website guinnessworldrecords.com, Arcturus, an F2B Savannah cat, is the tallest living domestic cat, at 19.05 inches. Cygnus, a silver Maine Coon cat, has the longest tail of any living domestic feline, at 17.58 inches.

“What’s crazy is those photos from Guinness were taken a year ago and now they are vastly beyond their original records,” Will Powers said. “They still aren’t even full-grown now. If the records ever get challenged, we will re-measure them and take them back.”

Powers said they got the cats almost two years ago. They have always had cats and decided to get a Savannah, a hybrid that’s a cross between African Serval and domestic breeds. So Arcturus was purchased from Stacee Dallas of Starfell Savannahs, a breeder in Traverse City, and joined their family of two cats first.

They bought Cygnus from Katherine Greenman of Wildchild Maine Coons in Jackson, after one of the previous cats died.

“Arcturus is incredibly strong. His nails are double the size of a normal cats and he’s got an 8-foot vertical leap to the top of a door,” Powers said. “He’s the size of a medium-sized dog that scared a repair guy right out of our living room thinking he was going to get attacked by a leopard.”

The Powers are both practicing osteopathic doctors. They live in Farmington Hills but Will Powers has a practice in Berkeley and specializes in family and HIV medicine. He’s also known for his specialty in transgender medicine, with over 1,400 patients in Michigan.

Powers said he and his wife’s romance started over cats and they also have another cat named Sirius Altair, a marble Bengal rescue cat, they have had for almost a decade.

“All of our cats are named after stars,” Powers said. “They are so much fun and are their own little celebrities. People will often want to take photos with them so we will charge and donate them to the Ferndale Cat Shelter.”

The probability of one family having two record-setting cats is astronomically small; however, Powers said it was no accident.

“The tail is just a freak of nature, but I’m not surprised at all. When I first got them, we hashed out what I thought would be the perfect diet and not this organic, raw, all-natural diet. Our boys were raised on GMO-ridden, synthetic, chemical-based diets.”

srahal@detroitnews.com