I did not attend the Cat Video Festival because I wanted to watch cat videos.  I mean, I like cat videos just as much as anyone who has ever been on the internet.  I spend an inordinate amount of “studying” time watching cat videos.  I have seen all the famous cat videos.

I went to this event because I heard that it was sponsored by the Tompkins county SPCA and the Cornell Feline Health Center.  My entire childhood, my family and I were very involved in our local humane society — we did all the fundraisers, we fostered kittens over the summer, we volunteered at the kennels.  I’ve cleaned all the litterboxes, gotten all the scratches, and seen all the happy human and feline faces when a kitty goes to a new home.  Sometime in high school, though, that all ground to a halt.  We moved into a smaller house with only room for our own cat.  I was in band and NHS and IB/AP classes and all the crap that kids do to get into Cornell, so I couldn’t make it to the shelter every week.  Etcetera.

So, recently I’ve been wondering how I could go about getting involved again.  I don’t know if I would have the time and I don’t know how I would get all the way out to the SPCA regularly (the annex is in the mall, but the main building is apparently out by the Ornithology Lab).  I don’t even know if they accept volunteers, but regardless it’s something I’ve been thinking about.  The Tompkins County SPCA website is currently under construction, and has none of the relevant information.  So, I attended this event hoping to learn more about the organization, get information about how to get involved, and maybe even make contact with any staff members present.

Unfortunately, that’s not what the event turned out to be at all.  There was no SPCA representation.  Instead, I got to suffer through 20 minutes of small children being told to perform things like a “sexy meow”.  We learned some useless trivia such as how many toes cats have.  Then we literally just watched an 1.5 hour-long, mediocre compilation of cat videos.  (The videos themselves were fine, I just thought they were edited together somewhat haphazardly.  I thought the division of the videos into “genres” like action/adventure was peculiar, some videos were shown without proper context, some had repetitive content, and some inclusions I thought were just odd.  “Boots and cats” beatboxing, while mildly entertaining the first time you see it, is not a video about cats.)  Aaaand then we stood up and left.  That was it.

Now seeing as the average age of the audience was about 8, I understand that some of the topics that I expected to hear about may not have been appropriate to cover.  For instance, it might be frowned upon to tell a bunch of five year olds that 1.5 millions shelter animals are euthanized per year, because then you would have to explain euthanization and, you know, death.  The importance of spaying/neutering might have been left out because then you might have to explain where babies come from.  A moving video with graphic depictions of animal cruelty would probably have been out of place.

However, there were so many other important things that could have been talked about!  This event had (at least for the first 5 minutes or so) an entirely captive audience of largely children, and they didn’t think it valuable to actually teach those children ANYTHING about animal adoption?  Or the local shelter?  Or even cat ownership in general?  There was one singular video in which an owner advised getting an animal from a shelter and not a breeder, and that was the most useful part of the entire event.

How many animals enter shelters in the US per year?  How many are adopted?  What do you do if you find a stray animal?  Make sure to get your pets microchipped and vaccinated.  Don’t feed your cats milk, and use break-away collars.  Most shelters take donations of food and supplies as well as money.  Many shelters take volunteers, including children with parents.  It would have been wonderful if at least a minute or two was used to show pictures and videos of the cats currently available for adoption at the SPCA.  For god’s sake, pretty much the only thing on the local SPCA’s website at the moment is a bulletin about a camp specifically for kids 9-12 about learning how to take care of animals!  But no, no mention of that either.

10% of the proceeds from the event went to the SPCA, which is nice.  I do have to wonder where the other 90% went, but then, I’ve never run a charity event so maybe 10% is a realistic goal.  In any case, it seems like they could have raised far more money with any amount of additional effort put into the actual fundraising.  What about selling cat toys/bowls/collars?  Selling t-shirts and stuffed animals from that store they were partnered with?  Cat face painting?  Bake sale?  Maybe none of those things could have been profitable, I don’t know.  But for god’s sake, they didn’t even take approximately 3 seconds to ASK THE AUDIENCE FOR DONATIONS!

This event could have been a wonderful platform to teach an audience of largely children all about how they can take care of their animals and get involved in their community.  Instead, it was a mindnumbing 2 hours of squealing over how cute cats are, with absolutely no regard for how we can make their lives better or care for them properly.  The organizers of the Cat Video Fest seem to have put absolutely no effort into make this event in any way informative or valuable to the community.  In fact, is it possible to put NEGATIVE effort into making an event meaningful?  Because it seems like it would had to have been a deliberate choice to hold an SPCA benefit that doesn’t even once MENTION the role of the SPCA.  To conclude: have I learned something from this event?  Absolutely.  If you can get ~600 people to attend a charity event, then you have a wonderful opportunity to give those people helpful information about your cause and get them excited about your organization.  Do not squander that potential.