There were good moments. There were bad moments. There were moments were I thought my eyes were bleeding. And then there were really strange moments, like when the MC asked young kids to come up to the stage and do their sexiest meow.

It was uncomfortable to say the least.

But even that was nothing compared the never-ending compilation of cat videos. It seemed never ending. It seemed it eternal. It was a meowntain I could not climb.

There were 100 videos. Let’s sit here and do the math together.

Let’s say the average cat video is about a minute and half long with a standard deviation of 1 minute (taken from a random sample that I made up), and there were 100 videos, if my cat-ulations are correct, then I watched roughly TOO MANY CAT VIDEOS (or, two and a half hours).

I should get some sort of life achievement for this: “Pur-fect Score: Watch 100 Cat Videos”

It wasn’t all bad though. There were some good ones in there. Overall, the event had me feline fine.

(im sorry)

Last Saturday, Cornell experienced its typical Saturday — the snow was falling, the wind was angry, and there were at least a few students exhausted by the week. Yet for almost an entire two hours, an entire audience laughed nearly continuously at short cat videos compiled by a Will Braden. Going into the event, I expected to fall asleep at least once, because despite my affinity for cute things and natural exclamations when I see them, I hadn’t slept. Additionally, I have never considered myself an animal lover. However, at this event, these two hours brightened my, and I’m sure, many others.

At this event, Cornell Cinema was packed to its max, with a large part of the audience filled with children. As we saw cats make poor decisions, show their fear, pounce continuously on objects, and warm our hearts, it reminded me of how comforting it can be to see the silliness of ourselves in others. In this event, I heard laughs from adults and students as loud as any other laugh from the children. While of course we all strive to maintain our humor through our lives, it can sometimes be strained by the activities that worry us in our daily lives. The carefree ability to laugh uninhibited, and be amused by pets was a reminder of how little things in life can truly make our day better if we let it.

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.

(Sorry, the title is a lie- this post contains exactly 0 reasons why cat videos are the death of culture. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are, though.)

While watching the Cat Video Fest at the Cornell Cinema, I couldn’t help comparing these innocuous home videos to a very different compilation of animal videos, the animal rights documentary Earthlings. Directed by activist Shaun Monson and narrated by celebrity vegan Joaquin Phoenix, Earthlings explores five reasons for human exploitation of other animals: pets, food, clothing, research, and entertainment. The film is composed entirely of real life footage of human treatment of animals in the United States. The pets segment mostly focuses on the cruelty of breeding practices, and the entertainment segment only covers circus animals, but I think the way that we use our pet cats for entertainment is also worthy of criticism.

Sitting in the packed theater, I found myself slightly disturbed each time the crowd erupted into laughter at an animal getting injured or frightened. On one hand, cat videos are a perfectly normal and mostly harmless form of media, and I can see how my reaction would appear to be a bit irrational. It is natural to find humor in these situations: Cats are generally graceful and vicious animals, so when a cat reacts strangely to something, the unexpected behavior makes us laugh. Also, we enjoy watching videos of other humans getting hurt or scared as well, as proven by the long-standing popularity of America’s Funniest Home Videos. We don’t just find cat videos funny because of “speciesism,” since we enjoy watching the same things happen to our own species.

However, I do think that there is a key difference between videos showing humans getting hurt and videos showing animals getting hurt: consent. An animal cannot agree to releasing footage of it being hurt or scared, and it is difficult to gauge the extent to which it was harmed in filming. I’m not saying that these types of cat videos are inherently immoral, but I do think there are some bizarre elements of sadism and exploitation inherent in cute videos of kitties being scared ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So I actually do not really like cats, but I am curious with cat-obsessed culture. I came into college really wanting to challenge myself to learn new things and to try harmless and enlightening things that at first I might have been really opposed to. Because of that aspiration, I decided to check out this cat-video fest and make observation not only of the video, but also of how others would react to it. I must admit, that I actually enjoyed the video-fest quite a bit and I was glad to try something new and very culturally disconnected from what I am used to.

Earlier today I attended the Cat Video Festival through Rose House. At the beginning of the event, the staff announced that the money from the ticket sales would be given to the Tompkins County SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Then there was a trivia contest, and a hilarious cat impression contest. And then they rolled the comical and adorable hour long cat video compilation. The event was a ton of fun, and I would highly recommend it, especially if you are a cat fan.

It was great to see so many people come out to support the SPCA. Over half of the animals in shelters end up being euthanized. Donations help the SPCA to continue to shelter these animals. It is also important to remember that if you are looking for a pet to opt for a rescue animal over an animal from a pet store. There is currently an overpopulation crisis in the pet world. Animals in pet stores are often the product of breeders, and every animal bought from a breeder is a rescue animal that could have had a loving home but will have to be euthanized. Breeders often don’t neuter their animals, further contributing to the overpopulation. They can sometimes treat their animals poorly, and inbreeding to generate purebreds or specific breeds of dog can cause genetic defects which can be painful or even deadly. So if you or someone you know are looking for a furry friend, #adoptdontshop.