9Lives is a brand of cat food launched in 1959. Better known today by its mascot, Morris, it has four varieties of dry food (Daily Essentials, Plus Care, Indoor Complete and Long Life Formula), and five lines of wet food in various flavors. On April 28, 2023,

Post Holdings Post Holdings, Inc. is an American Fast-moving consumer goods, consumer packaged goods holding company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri with businesses operating in the center-of-the-store, refrigerated, foodservice, and food ingredient categ ...

completed the acquisition of multiple pet food brands from The J.M. Smucker Company for 1.2 billion dollars. 9Lives was one of the brands involved in the deal and is now marketed by

Post Consumer Brands Post Consumer Brands, LLC (previously Post Cereals and Postum Cereals; also known simply as Post) is an American consumer packaged goods food manufacturer headquartered in Lakeville, Minnesota. The company, founded in 1895 by C. W. Post, own ...

Overview

Introduced to the market by tuna processor StarKist Foods in 1959, the brand also promotes adoption of cats from

animal shelter An animal shelter or pound is a place where stray, lost, abandoned or surrendered animals – mostly dogs and cats – are housed. The word "pound" has its origins in the animal pounds of the agricultural communities, where stray livestock w ...

s. In 2006, 9Lives kicked off the inaugural tour of Morris' Million Cat Rescue, a nationwide bus tour to encourage local cat adoption. 9Lives has recently added a new cat to their advertising, Li'l Mo, an orange kitten who has been adopted from a Los Angeles animal shelter putatively by Morris himself.

History

9Lives was StarKist's flagship pet food brand. In 1963, Heinz acquired StarKist, and by 1969, the first Morris TV commercials aired. Heinz sold StarKist and 9Lives to Del Monte in 2002. Del Monte spun off the pet foods division as Big Heart in 2014. Big Heart Pet Brands was later acquired by The J.M. Smucker Company in 2015. For a period of time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, 9Lives used

Sylvester the Cat Sylvester J. Pussycat Sr. is a fictional character, an anthropomorphic Bicolor cat, cat in the ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of cartoons. Most of his appearances have him often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hop ...

from

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...

' ''

Looney Tunes ''Looney Tunes'' is an American media franchise produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The franchise began as a series of animated short films that originally ran from 1930 to 1969, alongside its spin-off series ''Merrie Melodies'', during t ...

'' and ''

Merrie Melodies ''Merrie Melodies'' is an American animated comedy short film series distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was part of the ''Looney Tunes'' franchise and featured many of the same characters. Originally running from August 2, 1931, to Septem ...

'' cartoons on the packages and in advertising as the mascot for its newly introduced dry cat food. The animated television commercials were directed by Duane Crowther at Duck Soup Productions and animated by Bob Carlson, Amby Paliwoda, Jeff Howard and Mark Kausler, and usually consisted of Sylvester trying to get to his box of 9Lives, while avoiding Hector the Bulldog. Sylvester would always succeed in luring the dog away so he could get his food, but he would find himself a target again by the end of the commercial, when Sylvester would always proclaim 9Lives dry food as "worth riskin' your life for!" Sylvester never appeared in commercials for 9Lives canned cat food and by 1986, he would be replaced by Morris for the dry

food packaging Food packaging is a packaging system specifically designed for food and represents one of the most important aspects among the processes involved in the food industry, as it provides protection from chemical, biological and physical alterations ...

and advertising. In February 2023, 9lives, along with many other pet food brands such as Gravy Train, and Kibbles 'n Bits, was sold to

for approximately 1.2 billion dollars.

References

External links

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cat food supplieshow to train maltipoofood review
Products introduced in 1959 Cat food brands 1959 establishments in the United States 2023 mergers and acquisitions {{food-product-stub