Coby the Cat

Coby is a white British Shorthair whose extraordinarily vivid, ice-blue eyes — rimmed with dark markings that look uncannily like carefully applied eyeliner — turned him into one of Instagram's most recognisable cats. Photographed against clean, minimalist backdrops that let his striking face take centre stage, he built an audience of well over a million followers, drawn in by portraits that seem almost too perfect to be real.

His owner, Rebecca Schedler, adopted Coby as a kitten and began sharing photographs of his remarkable looks, and the account quickly grew into a genuine social-media phenomenon. Part of Coby's appeal is that his beauty is entirely natural: the dramatic dark lining around his eyes and mouth is his own colouring, not an effect, and it gives every photograph an air of dignified, slightly haughty elegance.

Beyond the striking images, Coby has become an ambassador of sorts for the British Shorthair breed and for the simple joy of cat photography, showing how an ordinary house cat, well loved and well photographed, can captivate people all over the world.