Sometimes animal lovers are in the mood to see kittens — lots and lots of kittens. Still photos of kittens may offer only partial satisfaction for your desire for cuteness. Fortunately, there’s plenty of video footage available, showing all the wobbling, bouncing, chasing, batting, squealing, head-tilting, cat-napping silliness you can stand.

For your viewing pleasure, I compiled this kittens YouTube playlist:







The videos play in this general order:

newborn kittens

wobbly, vulnerable first steps and mewing of early kittenhood

kittens playing with toys, boxes, a roll of toilet paper, and each other

white kittens (I’m partial to white cats, especially fluffy ones)

drinking milk, mostly from bottles — but, in one video, from a dog!

nodding off and falling asleep

If you find a kitten video that you think belongs in this YouTube playlist, please let me know. You can also find myriad kitten videos and slideshows on Kyte TV, and chat (text, audio, or video) live about them.

With visual access to so many kittens, is it possible to rank them in order of cuteness? kittenwar seeks to do just that, by encouraging users to click the cuter baby feline subject of two photos. One selection leads to another, and another, and another, and pretty soon you’ve found a new way to procrastinate with this addictive activity. After selecting the cuter of two kittens, kittenwar informs you of the percentage of how many users agreed with your assessment of the previous pair.

kittenwar compiles the stats of photos that garnered the most clicks (or "Winningest" kittens) and the least clicks ("Losingest" kittens). The collection of Winningest photos showcases those kittens — (often seen looking directly at the camera with wide-eyed expressions of innocence, sleeping in a pile of siblings and playmates, or curled up in a household object) — that have been statistically deemed cutest by kittenwar users. By contrast, the Losingest kittens tend to possess features that most people judge as unattractive in felines: hairlessness, bulging eyes, long snouts, long ears. Many of them are at least part Siamese, and some almost look like Chihuahua dogs.

Complicating matters is the battle of photo quality perception. Many of the Winningest kitten photos are of a high enough quality to be made into posters (the kind found in offices and dorm rooms with cliched captions like "Hang in there" or "Easy does it"); whereas the quality of the Losingest kitten photos are often low (over- or underexposed, "red eye" reflections, unappealing backgrounds, poor composition). So I wonder if, given a choice between two equally cute (or non-cute) kittens, Kittenwar users subconsciously choose the one in the higher quality photo? In any case, proud kitten guardians may want to upload images with only the best photographic quality.

kittenwar’s popularity has expanded into the book kittenwar: May the Cutest Kitten Win!, as well as the card game kittenwar, the Card Game: May the Cutest Kitten Win!.

More cuteness is available at Cute Overload, which has specific sections for kittens and other cuddly, furry creatures. If you’re in the mood for a laugh, check out Bonsai Kitten (it’s a joke, really!) and LOLcats ("I Can Has Cheezburger?"). Two of my favorite LOLcats are literary homages to Edgar Allen Poe and William Shakespeare.

If the sad truth about why there are so many kittens has inspired you to consider adopting a pet, you may find a loving addition to your family through any of these resources:

Posted August 17, 2008 by Mariva in animals, fun, games