It’s no secret that YouTube is LOADED with cat videos.  Seems like the interwebs can’t get enough of the furry critters.  There’s LOLcats.com, the Internet Cat Video Film Festival (held last year at our very own Walker Art Center), “I can has” is a thing, and Grumpy Cat.  In fact, Grumpy Cat has even signed a movie deal (I’m sure it’ll be as good as everything Garfield).  But do we really know the origins of cat filming?  I think I might have traced it back to the very root.  One of Thomas Edison’s early films was called Boxing Cats, which is exactly what it sounds like. Apparently the boxing was part of a larger cat circus, but Tom decided only to film the cats boxing, which is a bummer cuz I’d like to see cats riding bicycles.  I found this on VAST,  a streaming video site.  It includes early films from all the great pioneering filmmakers; Cecil B. DeMille, D. W. Griffiths, Ernst Lubitsch and many others.  You can watch The Great Train Robbery, Films of the San Francisco Earthquake, and The Fugitive, and for those of you who prefer your horror cat-free, check out Nosferatu.  Maaaaaan, that is a scary movie.

Now before everyone pounces on me for not loving cats, I’ll just say this… I’m allergic to cats.