“He was living by himself in the jungle…He was hunting. He had two giant holes in his side. He was fighting for his life every night,” Damon began.
Damon and his family fed this tough jungle kitty every night, and by the time came for them to head home, they decided to take their new furry friend with them.
"We decided we gotta take the cat, he's gonna die, now he's relying on us,” Daman joked with Colbert.
Once Damon got the cat home, he figured it would prefer staying out in their backyard. Nope.
"He never went outside, ever again."
Now, this is where the story takes a slightly darker turn. Eventually the cat developed a brain tumor. However, Damon became determined to not “let a brain tumor take this cat out.” After all, this is the toughest jungle cat!
Eventually the Damon family and Jungle Cat moved to New York City. And by this time, the cat had lost a lot of weight and was only walking around in circles (a common symptom of cat brain tumors).
Hoping to find a cure, Damon took his feline friend to a cat neurologist named Chad (which cracks Damon up to share), and Dr. Chad at first tells him to prepare his children and teach them that part of a pet owner’s responsibility is giving them the “dignity” of a humane death when quality of life is too far compromised.
But just when things seem at their worst, this story does a 180 into hilarity.
“Chad said, ‘I could load him up on steroids. And I go, ‘What do you mean?’ He goes, ‘I mean, I could give him like a BUNCH of steroids.’”
At this point, Damon, Colbert and the audience are all laughing.
Damon apparently asked “are there long term issues?” to juicing his cat, which got an emphatic “YEAH! Massive long term issues with that but we can just see what happens,” from Dr. Chad.
This was apparently two-and-a-half years ago. And not only is Jungle Cat still around, but “jacked like Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Damon joked.
Down in the comments, viewers were begging to see photos of Jacked Jungle Cat.
"MATT WE GOTTA SEE THE CAT!!!" one person demanded.
"WHERE CAN I DEMAND A PICTURE OF ARNOLD SWAGGERCAT?" echoed another.
Others were just enamored by Damon’s storytelling skills.
"Matt Damon always delivers the funniest stories," one person wrote, while another said that he “needed a podcast.”
And perhaps the best comment goes to the person who said, "At no point in this story did I have any idea what would happen next."
While Dr. Chad might have seemed a little out there in his methods, it’s fairly common for pet oncologists to try incorporating steroids like
Prednisolone to treat the inflammation associated with brain tumors. However, that’s normally low doses, not using a bunch and seeing what happens. But hey, it seemed to work! And Damon got a really great story out of it. Not to mention more time with a pretty awesome jungle cat.
