My co-anchor is pawing at the door: Back to you in the studio

Scott Connell, a Missouri weatherman, was trying to record a tease last month, but Maple, his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, had other plans.

“Three, two, one: More cold air —,” Connell, chief meteorologist for KSDK in St. Louis, manages to say on the video before the dog’s barks interrupt him.

“Cold air continues across the area tonight; potential for some frost and freeze for some of us,” he starts again, and Maple barks again.

Connell claps his hands and calls the dog over. He is finally able to complete the tease, but not before Maple gets a few more barks in.

Like many people forced to work from home because of the coronavirus pandemic, TV reporters and meteorologists have had to adapt to unfamiliar professional settings. So have their pets, who sometimes join them, crashing their reports and mugging for the cameras.

On at least two TV stations, pet cameos have turned into regular appearances.

On WTVT in Tampa, Florida, Brody, a golden retriever, has become a fun distraction during Paul Dellegatto’s home forecasts for the Fox station.

“Up, up,” Dellegatto told

Brody during a report on April 16 as the dog leapt on his lap, disrupting the weather graphics on his laptop. “The maps aren’t going to move because he just whacked the computer with his head, so let me just verbalize the forecast.”

As he continued his report, the dog yawned in his face.

“Didn’t mean to keep you up,” Dellegatto deadpanned to the dog.

It’s not only dogs who are disrupting broadcasts. Betty, an 11-year-old cat, has become a sort of co-anchor for Jeff Lyons, chief meteorologist at WFIE in Evansville, Indiana.

In mid-April, Lyons brought a green screen home and began setting up in the dining room when his white and gray cat came in.

“I picked her up, and the guys in the control room saw it and said, ‘Put her on TV,’” Lyons said. “I fluffed her tail and flew her around. The rest is history.”

Since then, the cat has become a prominent part of his forecasts from home and an immediate favorite of viewers.

“More Betty!!” one person demanded on Facebook.

During the opening of a weather report last month, Lyons cradled the fluffy cat in front of a map of Indiana.

“The outpouring for this silly cat has been crazy,” he said. “This is Betty, my cat — she’s gone viral, my nieces and nephews tell me.”

The station recently created a “Betty the Weather Cat” graphic for the lower portion of the screen — an acknowledgment of what “an essential fixture” she had become, Lyons said during the report.

‘I picked her up, and the guys in the control room saw it and said, “Put her on TV.” I fluffed her tail and flew her around. The rest is history.’

Jeff Lyons, chief meteorologist at WFIE in Evansville, Indiana

CONTRIBUTED BY NATALIE LYONS Jeff Lyons, a meteorologist in Evansville, Indiana, does a forecast with his cat, Betty, from his dining room recently. The station even created a “Betty the Weather Cat” graphic.