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Team Cat or Team Pug? | How Two Guys Got a Pug and a Cat to Pay for Their Dream 1500km Hiking Trip Across Spain

"Some days we were just sat in the tent, looking out over the mountains with our pug and our cat..."

All photos: @pugandcat

Not many people can claim to have their adventure dreams funded for them by a pug and a cat. But for British traveller Sebastian Smetham and Norwegian Finn Paus, that farfetched first sentence is an actual reality.

Seb and Finn recently hiked 1500km across Spain with Luigi the cat and Bandito the pug right beside them, camping as they went, living the nomad life and taking in some of the most beautiful scenery the Mediterranean has to offer. And they have the cat and the pug to thank for footing the bill. Well, that and their social media skills.

The two friends run the adorable, imaginatively named Pug and Cat Instagram account. They have well over 100,000 followers online and have gone viral on numerous occasions thanks to the cute pictures and hilarious videos they post out to their followers.

“Pug isn’t an early riser so the mornings were challenging for him,” Seb joked. “We found it easier to carry him for the first part of the day! Some of our most memorable moments from the walk were just sat in the tent together, looking over mountains and beautiful scenery, and thinking are we really doing this? With our Pug and Cat from home?

“Convincing Luigi he didn’t have to explore every single mouse hole he found was perhaps one of the more challenging parts. We also did an awful lot of tree climbing, led by Luigi, as he was still a kitten so he found a lot of new skills along the journey.”

The duo used Newsflare to license their videos and photographs to brands and news sites, and not only managed to pay for that trip around Spain with the proceeds, but now have a children’s book on the way to boot.

They have actually managed to turn hiking and travelling around Spain with a cat and a pug into a legitimate career. Interestingly though, the feel-good story actually started from a dark place.

“The idea to do something life changing came shortly after the death of Finn’s parents,” said Seb. “Luigi the cat was a gift for Finn to help with the healing process. We took a step back from our lives working in bars in a busy resort and decided to see if we could give ourselves and the pug and cat better lives.

“Pretty early on we decided to make a Facebook page for the animals. Facebook wouldn’t allow a profile called ‘’Bandito and Luigi’, so Pug and Cat was born! From that we made a PugandCat Instagram account and that grew even faster than Facebook – they now have a following of over 160k altogether.”

Now the walk is over, the duo have decided not to return home but to stick around in Spain a while longer and continue to live the dream with their animals.

“We actually never ended up going home,” Seb told us. “We came to the South of Spain and started living on a small vegetable patch, in the hills near Marbella. Pug and Cat love it here because they’ve got space to play under the avocado trees.

“We’re moving on again soon to a more remote mountain near Granada so that we can continue our adventures. We’re really grateful to Pug and Cat for bringing us to all these amazing places.”

Take a moment to re-read and comprehend that final sentence.

A pug and a cat have paid for their owners to travel the world. And those owners get to travel with a pug and a cat the entire time.

We can’t be the only people wishing we’d thought of this first?

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