Furry YouTube Stars
(unedited version)
by Bernadette Calonego
Confess that you are hooked. I know you are. Yu must be. Okay, I confess I am hooked.
I watch videos of cats on the internet.
You know, these videos of crazy cats do-ing crazy things. They make me laugh.
We grew up with comics and movies about Garfield, the feisty cat, and Sylvester, the outsmarted cat and – do you remember Tom and Jerry? But sometimes it has to be a real cat, even if it is only on the internet. The defense for my sanity is that thousands, probably million humans do it, too.
Maybe they don`t watch the same videos that I saw recently. Like the one of the Gander SPCA on Facebook. It showed a lively white kitten wrestling playfully with the much bigger tabby Tonto. The kitten stormed the fortress named Tonto over and over again, relentlessly, en-thusiastically, giddily. Tonto, like an old boxer in the ring, took it almost stoically. Youth, he seemed to think.
Another great video was posted on Face-book by Paul Severn Tucker, a Canadian soldier who is stationed in Belgium. His parents live in Ship Cove.
He filmed his kitten Atticus retrieving a pet mouse. I watched it about a dozen times with a smile on my face. I don`t apologise for it. Because I am not alone.
Watching cats on YouTube is an unex-plained phenomenon. Think of Grumpy, the snowshoe cat with a – yes, grumpy face, who became a star on YouTube. The video of the angry-looking cat got 15 million hits online. Hordes of reporters flocked to Grumpy`s home in Arizona where they caught a glimpse of Grumpy whose name used to be Tartar Sauce. That was before she became famous. How grumpier can this get?
It is not known whether Grumpy really is not happy but I can imagine that this cat would rather be left alone.
Normally a cat signals clearly how its mood is. A flicking tail means that the cat is nervous or annoyed about some-thing. Ears flat on its head means fear or attack mood. Wide dark pupils are also a sign of fear. And a yowling cat is clearly in distress.
We don`t want to see this on the inter-net, for sure. But there is also a video about two talking cats that is hilarious. Or the cat seeing snow for the first time and loving it. Or the cat stalking the owner from behind the furniture.
Sometimes, cat videos on the internet get out of hand. No skydiving cats for me, please. In my eyes this is abuse. The same goes for cats standing on surf boards. The last time I looked cats did not like water, especially if it looks like an ocean. They only live near the water if they can`t help it. In New-foundland for instance.
But there was this internet story of a cat in Moncton, New Brunswick, who sur-vived a fire in an apartment building. The owner, a seven-year-old boy, thought she his Zoe was dead. Miraculously, the cat was found after 17 days in the burnt-out building and returned to the boy`s family. It is so heartwarming.
Nevertheless there are cats that want their privacy. Like some people. They don`t want to publish every move for the entire world to see. They keep to them-selves and are content. My tabby cat Sammy would not let me make him famous. And I won`t spell his secrets. Because he does not spell mine either.
(published in the “Northern Pen”
