Minnesota's toughest food critic: Milo the Gagging Cat

Jennifer Brooks, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Apr 27, 2026

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MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota’s toughest food critic is a fluffy orange cat named Milo.

Milo sees what you’re eating and he is (urp) appalled.

Pizza slice? Chicken nugget? Potato? Milo greets them all with a suspicious sniff, a look of slowly dawning horror, followed by cartoonishly exaggerated gagging — tongue out, eyes wide, hope lost.

As Milo’s frank food reviews (zero stars, would not sniff again) raked up millions of views and more than 336,000 followers as @milothecritic on TikTok, his adoring human, Tammy Smith, wrote detailed answers to the Minnesota Star Tribune’s burning questions about St. Paul Park’s favorite ginger. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Q: This is an orange cat who doesn’t like lasagna. What does Milo eat?

A: What does he eat? Lots — just look at him! Him gagging is actually not a knock to my cooking, and he will often grab my bowl or try to swipe something off my plate, even after he’s gagged at it. While he is oddly picky in some cases — it’s hard to find a cat treat that he likes, and he isn’t interested in a lot of human food — it’s hard to keep him out of my face if I’m eating certain things he does like. He loves most fish and poultry — chicken is his favorite!

Q: You often reassure Milo’s fans that he’s healthy. What does his vet say about his powerful gag reflex?

A: Gagging wasn’t always his go-to reaction. Looking back in videos, it looks like it likely started in 2022. It just started out of nowhere. It was concerning for a time, but I got it checked out and it turns out that it is just a way of helping him process smells.

Cats have a scent organ on the roof of their mouths called the Jacobson’s organ. You know when you see a cat smell something and then just kinda sit there with their mouths agape, looking goofy? That’s a more common form of them using that organ. But gagging is also another form. When cats use that organ, it’s called a flehmen response. So while the vet wouldn’t mind him losing a few pounds, he’s perfectly healthy otherwise!

Q: How did you and Milo meet? Tell us his heroic origin story.

A: Before Milo, I had another ginger boy named Sebastian. He was my best friend and when he passed away, I was heartbroken. I wasn’t planning to get another cat because it hurt so bad to lose him, and we already had another cat — Penelope.

But when a friend reached out to me [in 2018] about a litter of kittens her cat had recently had, and a ginger boy that was supposed to go to another family but they backed out, she reached out to me to see if I was interested. I said “yes,” and when I went to pick him up, it was love at first sight.

Q: What are some of your favorite Milo memories?

A: Milo is a pretty calm, quiet guy unless he’s hungry. So most of my favorite memories of him are just sweet; him loving to cuddle, especially if I’m sad or sick. One of my favorite memories involving Milo was having him featured at the Cat Video Festival at CHS Field in 2023. They played a bunch of his videos. It was really cool to see him on the big screen and hear the live reactions and laughter from people.

Q: All together, how many pets live with you, your husband Shan and Milo?

A: We have two other animals — Penelope the calico and Lily the cowboy corgi. “The girls.” Penelope is really the one that should probably be ‘famous’ — she’s a very quirky girl. Her biggest oddity is ‘hunting’ socks and leaving them all around the house, much to my husband’s and my chagrin. Even when we pick them all up and have them put away, she will dig them out of hampers or find them in a hiding spot I swear she must have. The dryer doesn’t steal our socks, our cat does!

And Lily is just a smiley, happy girl that loves to mess with her siblings. Penelope isn’t a big fan of it, but Milo will begrudgingly tolerate it, sometimes even instigating it. Them playing is a fun thing to watch.