Cats on Cats:
Nathalie Atkinson, Rebecca Tucker, Mark Medley, Jon Dekel, Jessica Leigh Johnston and Renee Alleyn, Jason Rehel | April 15, 2014
The Original Grumpy Cat (Screengrab from YouTube)For the Just for Cats festival offerings, the Arts & Life team enlisted their furry feline counterparts as film critics. Here’s what our four-legged friends might think about the popular YouTube clips:
Photo credit: Renee Alleyn
Right off the top this video makes me uncomfortable. Surely those things are not cats? What grotesque, naked abominations. What in god’s name has happened to their fur!? Stop the video: I have the sudden urge to lick my left side and reassure myself of the integrity of my own coat. Ok, that feels better; resume the video. No, wait. Stop. Are they listening to Mozart’s Serenade No. 13?
And what are they looking at? There is nothing behind me, is there? I don’t want to watch any more of this. The room is claustrophobic, the wallpaper is insipid, there’s an elephant (why is there an elephant?), and a hideous velour bedspread. My notion of free will is mocked by every jerky movement of their fleshy heads. Who am I? This is too much! I’m suffocating! I am very upset and now must soothe myself by yowling plaintively into the north-west corner of my living room. —Edwina, classic brown tabby, 16-years-old with anxiety disorder, OCD, growing senility.
“Cats Playing Patty Cake” (both English+French dubbed versions)
The story of “Cute Cats Playing Patty Cake” is the story of Catness (or in your case, Humanity). Initially created as a closely observed silent film about alienation and the struggle to connect with another being, the journey of the video’s subsequent impositions of human constructs gives pause, even as it explores the semiotics of appropriation. The first reprise “What They Were Saying” has deceptively petulant hoser dialogue but the impatience suggests a subtext (think Pirandello and Ionesco) to its theatre of the absurd. The second offers a level of interpretation through use of
folklore, with the sing-song recitation of French traditional rhyme “Dansons la Capucine” and speaks to compromise and the weight of shared history. Both appropriations, notably, break the fourth wall like fur-covered versions of House of Cards’ Frank Underwood.
Photo credit: Nathalie Atkinson
The longing to connect via tragic farce is so thorough
that its original director, hkbecky, was moved to explore the motif
further in Part 2 and Part 3. A combined 25 million views suggest that
Goo and Yat Jai’s imagined exclamations “dude!” and “whoa whoa whoa,
stop!” are less about being stoned or dismissive Gallic snobbery than
about PostModern society’s cri de coeur. —Buster, 5, adopted in February through CFHS partner Toronto Cat Rescue 
Photo credit: Jason Rehel
Because I am a small kitteh, I do not so much like the TV cats or the Internet catz. They are boring and do not smell nice like birds or squirrels. When I was just a very small orange cat, I would sometimes want to watch the small kitties on the BBC (British Broadcastings of Cats?) in a show called Big Cat Diary. It starred many African catz raising their kittens, and I liked watching them eat antelopez and hide snacks in trees for later. Especially Half-Tail and her cubs. You all thinks that small cats are cute, but big cats are way cuter and trust me thinks about eating humans less often than we do. Trust. Me. But now I cannot find Big Cat Diary anywhere except in silly scattered bites on YouTubez.
YouTubez. This brings me to the big festival I have heard about. I cannot go, and I would not like. To be honest, kitty senses of concentration are much better than humans now. I love to sit in the window and watch the birds and the squirrels and the raccoons. I am doing it right now as I dictate this review. Real life is REAL YouTubez, silly humans! But if I had to pick just ONE “cute cat video” as you all call them, then I would pick Sailcat. Which is very short video that shows how elegant and choreographed very short videos can be. So many are stupid cats that “look grumpy” — I feel sorry for these cats that are deformed and taken advantage of by human agents — or others are just cats that are psychologically broken, like the “nononono” cats. See, I know all these videos, but not from watching them over and over like dumb humans. But Sailcat? Oh yes. Many of you know this video, as “Cat Jump Fail with Music” has almost 13,000,000 viewings. BUT, maybe you did not notice yet the ears of this Siamese warrior. They haz bitez out of them. He is a very tough kitty. And in no way is this cat video jump a “fail.” I hope the TIFF programmerz renamed it for the festival. Is Sailcat. Foreverz. Nayaboo out. - Nayaboo, or just Naya, or just Boo
Photo credit: Mark Medley
“Surprised Kitty (Original)”
Okay, let’s see what all the fuss is about. My human watches this crap at least once a week. (Clicks on link.) 73 million views? Humans are dumber than I thought. (Presses play.)
Alright, that’s a cute kitten, I’ll give you that, but there’s no way
I’d allow myself to be placed on my back across my human’s thighs. If he
ever tried to that with me I’d swipe his face like I was trying to swap
a fly. This kitten is in desperate need of a mentor. And what is that
guy saying as he tickles the kitten’s belly? “Coochie coo?” Really,
dude, you’re just embarrassing yourself. And if anyone ever said I “look
like a little monkey” I’d go ape on their ass. And who is that laughing
in the background? You better watch your back, lady. (Sighs.) This video sets cats back a good ten years. — Oscar, a five-year-old with anger issues.
Image credit: Jessica Johnston
Сними очки
In Сними очки, a cat knocks his person’s glasses off of her face. She laughs, snuggles the cat and puts the the glasses back on. A few seconds later, the cat knocks the glasses off her face again. This happens a total of six times over the movie’s two minutes and three seconds. I found this instructional video quite inspirational. It gave me an idea I’ll be sure to try. The cat’s technique is excellent. He swats the glasses from the face with one swift paw movement. A quibble: I would have liked it if the filmmakers had shown the move more slowly, perhaps with an instant replay, to make it easier to replicate and practice. Another drawback is that not every cat’s person wears glasses, so the audience for this kind of material may be limited. Nonetheless, I give it a tail’s up. — Monster T. Truck, National Post
Jonathan Dekel
It’s so nice to see the dark lord has taken another one of his most loyal servants. My small intestine fills with joyous bile to witness my fellow dark traveler’s eyes sparkle with sadistic bliss as Lucifer’s hand guides the chug of Kerry King’s juicy riffs. Did you see the paw tap around the 36 second mark? It is the feline sign of the horns, of course. Sleep soundly humans, it’s only a matter of time before he gets his claws into you. — Mr. Marbles
Image credit: Rebecca Tucker
OH MY GOD I AM SO SICK OF THIS CAT. SO. SICK. OF. THIS. CAT. THERE IS ACTUALLY A PICTURE OF THIS CAT HANGING IN MY HOUSE, I KID YOU NOT. IF IT WASN’T HANGING SO HIGH ON THE WALL I WOULD KNOCK IT DOWN, JUST LIKE I KNOCKED DOWN A FULL GLASS OF WATER THIS MORNING AT 3 O’CLOCK WHEN I NOTICED MY DISH WAS NOT FULL TO MY SPECIFICATIONS (COMPLETELY FULL OF KIBBLES THAT HAVE BEEN OUT OF THE BAG FOR NO LONGER THAN TEN MINUTES). WHO’S GRUMPY NOW, I THOUGHT, AS MY PERSON TRIED TO EXPLAIN TO ME THAT IT WASN’T BREAKFAST TIME YET. WHAT DO I CARE OF BREAKFAST TIME? I’M HUNGRY WHEN I’M HUNGRY. AND ANYWAY WHAT IF BREAKFAST TIME CAME AND NOBODY WAS THERE TO FEED ME? THAT IS A RISK I CANNOT TAKE. I BET IF I WAS GRUMPY CAT MY PERSON WOULD PROBABLY SIT BY THE BOWL ALL THE TIME, JUST CONSTANTLY REFILLING IT AND LAUGHING AT MY STUPID DOWNTURNED MOUTH, LIKE SHE DOES FOR HOURS EVERY NIGHT IN FRONT OF HER COMPUTER SCREEN. BUT I DON’T HAVE A DOWNTURNED MOUTH. I’M PERFECT. UNLIKE GRUMPY CAT. I HATE GRUMPY CAT. — Euclid, a three-year-old orange tabby who doesn’t understand “indoor voices”
Just for Cats: The Internet Cat Video Festival takes place at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on April 17 with a VIP kitty red carpet adopt-a-thon and Canadian Federation of Human Societies patron Mrs. Laureen Harper in attendance. The Festival makes subsequent stops from Charlottetown to Vancouver, visit justforcats.ca for dates.
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