Obsessed with cat videos? The Pickford has what you need and it’s helping a good cause

Let’s be honest. How many times have you found yourself watching cat videos when you’re supposed to be productive? For procrastinators and cat lovers alike, the Cat Video Fest is a dream come true — and it made its way to Bellingham.

Offering 73 minutes of curated cat videos and playing at more than 300 theaters across the United States, Canada and Europe, the Cat Video Fest has something for every kind of cat enthusiast.

The Pickford Film Center in downtown Bellingham is one of the theaters hosting the fest. It’s offering three more showings on August 13 at 4:25 p.m., August 14 at 6:30 p.m. and August 15 at 2:10 p.m.

Each festival location sends a portion of the proceeds to an animal shelter or cat-focused charity in the area. The Pickford will donate a portion of ticket sales to the Whatcom Humane Society , a non-profit animal welfare organization in Whatcom County.

The Cat Video Fest began in 2012 when Katie Hill and Scott Stulen realized the cat videos they were watching instead of working could be an actual event. The first showing at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, drew a crowd of 11,000 people.

Will Braden, who took over as the festival’s director in 2016, has been involved since the beginning when his comedic short film about a depressed, existential French cat named Henri won the Golden Kitty award at the first festival.

“I got to go up on stage in front of everybody, and I told them, ‘This is great, I’ll be back next year with another Henri video,’” Braden said in an interview with The Bellingham Herald. “Then I got off stage, and (Hill and Stulen) said, ‘I guess we have to do this again next year, don’t we? You just told 11,000 people we’d be back.’”

Braden, a Western Washington University Alumni, now runs the festival out of Seattle and gets to watch cat videos as his full-time job.

“I watch 15,000 cat videos every year, whittle it down to 200 or so, and then edit it all together into a reel,” Braden said. “I do that each year.”

It’s important that the Cat Video Fest feels like a community event rather than a traditional movie showing, Braden told The Herald. To do this, they partner with independent theaters and donate a minimum of 10% of the ticket sales to an animal welfare organization in the same community.

“The needs of raising money for cats in Bellingham — it’s different than what you need to raise money for in Tucson, which is different than Chicago,” Braden said.

The festival raised $30,000 so far this year for various animal welfare organizations in the first two weeks. Despite COVID-19, it managed to raise $200,000 over the past few years, according to Braden.

“When we got over the $200,000 mark, that was a big milestone for me, and this year is shaping up to be really big,” Braden said. “I think that we’ll easily clear $100,000 this year.”

The Cat Video Fest offers various genres of cat videos, from classic, funny internet videos to animations and mini-documentaries.

“If somebody submits a video, and it’s like, ‘I just made this animated short for my graduation from animation school. Nobody’s seen it.’ That really tickles me,” Braden said. “Because I know that even the die-hard people that are like, ‘I watch all the cat videos,’ they’re going to be sitting there like, ‘I’ve never seen this.’”

Cat lovers can catch the remaining dates at the Pickford or submit their cat videos for a chance to be featured in future festivals.