What would get today’s crowds off the couch and into theaters—a new blockbuster, or seventy-three minutes of viral cats? For decades, the phrase “going to the movies” conjured up predictable images: popcorn buckets, dimmed lights, previews that go on just a little too long. Seldom did it involve watching cats in all their fuzzy chaos—leaping, plotting sandwich theft, or giving the kind of knowing stares that only those well-acquainted with existential despair can muster. Yet, as detailed in a recent Associated Press report, this is the reality offered by the annual Cat Video Fest, now a global phenomenon with screenings from Portland to Paris.
Curating the Cat Canon
Cat Video Fest is not your typical night at the movies—unless your idea of cinema has always involved internet-famous felines. As the AP documents, the program features a carefully curated 73-minute selection of all things feline: silly, cuddly, sentimental, slapstick, and unapologetically eclectic.
Will Braden, the Seattle-based creator of “Henri, le Chat Noir” (the only French existentialist cat most people know outside a meme), sifts through roughly 13,000 videos annually to put the fest together. Reviewing cat videos isn’t just his reputation; according to the AP, his business card literally reads: “I watch cat videos.” For once, it’s not a joke.
Braden explains, “I want to show how broad the idea of a cat video can be so there’s animated things, music videos, little mini documentaries. It isn’t all just, what I call, ‘America’s Funniest Home Cat Videos.’ It’s not all cats falling into a bathtub. That would get exhausting.”
As someone with archival tendencies myself, I can almost appreciate the process—having once spent weeks in library basements sifting through agricultural almanacs just to find a single obscure editorial cartoon. Braden’s task is more adorable, but equally relentless.
Importantly, the Cat Video Fest is more than a collection of internet fluff. The AP notes that since 2019, a portion of ticket sales has raised over $1 million for local cat charities and animal shelters—a philanthropic outcome that’s both transparent and, for cat enthusiasts, deeply satisfying.
All Together Now: The Democratic Appeal of Cat Videos
It’s tempting to see the Cat Video Fest as another sign of the digital age’s attention span—or meme culture—run amok. But if internet culture has a lingua franca, it’s cats, and Cat Video Fest appears to confirm this. As Braden shared with the AP, the screenings attract everyone: “kids and cat ladies to hipsters and grandparents and everyone in between.”
The AP highlights that indie theaters, once hesitant, have become annual partners. Names like Alamo Drafthouse and IFC Center now regularly host the event. Clearly, whatever doubts lingered about whether people would pay to collectively watch YouTube’s greatest hits faded after the first screening. Imagine an auditorium where laughter at a cat’s failed leap unites young and old—the sort of cross-generational alignment Pixar and the occasional Taylor Swift concert aspire to achieve.
One can’t help but wonder, is there really no danger of cat content fatigue? Braden, ever pragmatic, told the AP, “We’re not going to run out of cat videos and we’re not going to run out of people who want to see it. All I have to do is make sure that it’s really funny and entertaining every year.” If years of organizing the world’s weirder treasures have taught me anything, it’s that the appetite for the delightfully odd is inexhaustible.
Gathering for Whiskers and Wonder
In an era that sometimes feels relentlessly serious, Cat Video Fest is a communal reset—a palette cleanser, if you will. As described in the AP’s account, last year’s festival earned over $1 million at the box office. The show’s global footprint continues to expand, reaching the UK, Denmark, France, Spain, Japan, and Brazil. Somewhere across continents, strangers are likely laughing together at the same orange tabby’s failed curtain jump.
The event is perhaps the purest form of crowdsourced fun: a room of people united for seventy-three minutes by nothing more or less than the unpredictable antics of cats—those inscrutable, compelling creatures who have, for reasons lost to history, chosen to coexist (and occasionally tolerate) us.
Is Cat Video Fest high art? Probably not. But does it showcase the weird, communal, and utterly unnecessary joy that makes life worth archiving? Absolutely. Sometimes, coming together to marvel at collective absurdity is enough.
