The viral videos have become an industry, now with their own gathering – and with that comes a ‘cattoo’ parlor, astrology readings and a sexed-up music video

When Joel Shepard started selling tickets for an internet cat video festival, he wasn’t sure how much interest there would be beyond the cat fanatics (of which I am one).



Shepard, video curator at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, was astonished when tickets sold out a month before the festival. And then came the emails.

“It’s crazy. We aren’t ready to accommodate all the need. We sold out seven screenings but could have easily sold 70,” Shepard said. “I saw people on Craigslist asking for tickets. People have been emailing me begging for tickets.”

Of course on the internet, it’s a cat video festival every day. When Google’s computer scientists set 16,000 processors to study YouTube, those computers, with no prompting from Google, immediately began searching for and identifying cats. For this festival, Shepard sought to elevate “this artifact” of modern life.

The festival – which had me at “All new! All cats! All crazy!” – began with a 90-minute movie, a curated collection of viral cat videos put together by the cat artist Will Braden. In the hallways outside, the Cat Museum of San Francisco had an exhibit about felines on film, a fortune teller could do cat astrology readings, and an artist led a “cattoo” parlor. In another room, San Francisco Animal Care and Control had litters of kittens for adoption.

Annika Bastacky, 26, and Mark Gabriel, 29, settled down to watch Braden’s film, despite admitting that Gabriel is actually allergic to cats. “Jesus, it’s harder to get tickets to this than Burning Man,” Bastacky said, looking around the packed theater. “Do you know what this is exactly? I’m going into this blind.”

Would there be a narrator? A main character cat? Would it just be a collection of YouTubes and Vines?

The movie started. It was dedicated to Cecil the Lion. The first chapter was “Drama” and began with a video of a cat pushing a dog into a pool. Then a series of cats fighting bananas.

But a curious pattern began to emerge: a lot of the new videos were highly produced. Often credits would roll after the clip. Many were professionally done with virality in mind. Throughout the movie were throwbacks to videos from past collections (this is the fifth such cat video montage), and the contrast to those shaky-hand goofy living room videos was stark.

Then came the strangest turn: a sexed-up cat music video.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of Will Braden’s series of black-and-white videos featuring Henri Photograph: youtube

It’s hard to describe it, exactly. It was called Cool Cat by an artist identified as Stereolizza and involved a woman going on a series of dates with men whose faces were cat heads. The cat men were all seducing Stereolizza in some way, and the drama was in flirting but then rebuking their advances because of their cat-specific flaws: one runs bare-chested across a beach but then gets scared of the water; another eats a whole fish on a date. Stereolizza dances sensually during the chorus.

I looked it up on YouTube later. Before the music video started, an ad for GMC played in which a straight-faced guy in a suit carries a white persian as he hawks cars.

Cat videos have become an industry. It’s a common trend in the internet ecosystem. Brands take over Twitter. Airbnb is populated with professional landlords. And viral cat videos are now made by teams of professionals.

I stumbled back out to the Yerba Buena atrium, where it was all family fun. There was a line for the cattoos, and a group of children encircled the kittens up for adoption while parents stood warily by the door.

“You can’t take your cats out in public like dogs, so the only way you can share is through the screen,” said Jane Super, a bartender who runs the Cat Museum of San Francisco and has several real cat tattoos.

Two women were wearing cat headpieces, waiting for the next screening to start.

“I don’t wear them all the time,” Claire Beezy, 30, said of her cat-ear headband. “I saw people joking about this festival on Facebook, and I was like, ‘no, but really I want to go.’ I always have a really good time watching cat videos – they just put me in a good mood.”

She and her friend Mel Lounsbery, 35 and wearing a cat beanie, started joking about the meme of putting cucumbers next to unsuspecting cats, who then leap in shock and panic.

“My parents have cats and I said we have to try it,” Beezy said.

“Meh, my sister tried. It didn’t work,” said Lounsbery. “The cat didn’t really respond to the cucumber.”