The Internet’s insatiable hunger for cat videos is sparking a new trend — offline celebrations of cat mania. This June, the first CatCon launched in Los Angeles, billed as a Comic Con for cat people, attracting thousands of fans, many lured by the headliner — the celebrity cat Lil Bub, a talk-show host and published author whose fans include Whoopi Goldberg and Robert De Niro.
And now comes the Kitten Pavilion, launching this year at the Denver County Fair, which starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday.
Lil Bub will also be the main attraction here — it’s her first visit to Colorado — and the 15,000-square-foot pavilion will be a feline extravaganza of cat shows, cat vendors and the Internet Cat Video Film Festival, which has proven wildly popular in cities across the country.
“There’s a cosmic cultural connectedness where an idea will come up at the same time,” said Dana Cain, director of the Denver County Fair. “This is the summer when big cat events are becoming a thing.”
Competition to be the best is this burgeoning field isn’t yet a cat fight — but it’s pretty fierce.
“CatCon did have Lil Bub … but it was just for one day,” said Cain. “Lil Bub will be here for three days.”
That was the big complaint about CatCon, she pointed out — lots of cat vendors and cat people, but no live cats.
A CatCon with no real cats?
The Kitten Pavilion does much better than that. There will be have daily cat shows, with more than 200 show cats on display, a competition for local cats, and cat adoptions. It also offers one-stop shopping for everything a hip cat needs, plus networking with cat people like Jackie Rose of Fort Collins, a member of the Yellow Rose Cat Club. She’s entered cats in competitions for nearly three decades and has the inside scoop on feline beauty tips — back when she had Persian cats, she bathed and blow dried them weekly.
But a big part of the Kitten Pavilion will be Internet cats, featuring a live celebration of cat videos — a curated selection of about 85 of the best, culled from thousands of entrants.
This makes a certain sense, because the Internet is a big driver of America’s cat craze.
“People have always loved cats, they’ve been one of the primary household pets in human civilization,” said Mike Bridavsky, owner of Lil Bub, a guy whose tattoo sleeve is festooned with images of his four rescue cats. “But the advent of the Internet has given them more pop-culture status. I think the entertainment value stems from the fact that cats each have such a distinct personality. They’re reclusive, or introverted, pets.”
Cain puts it like this:
“Dogs know they are goofy, but cats — they’re so aloof and so cool that seeing them screw up is kind of entertaining.”
Of course dogs are more popular. Nearly 37 percent of American households have dogs, compared to about 30 percent with cats, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.
But right now, cats have that celebrity cachet.
And Lil Bub is definitely the top cat.
Spin magazine dubbed her “the only celebrity cat that matters,” and her Facebook page has more than 2 million likes. She’s already such a hit in Colorado that all 225 tickets for her VIP meet-and-greets sold out weeks ago, raising $12,000 for cat charities.
“She’s a sensation,” said Bridavsky. “She’s social therapy for hundreds of thousands of people in a very tangible way. There’s a deep emotional connection.”
That’s because, for many fans, she symbolizes triumph over adversity. The runt of a feral litter, Bub was born with an extreme case of dwarfism. She’s got short legs, a long body, and four extra toes. Her tongue always hangs out because her teeth never grew in, and her lower jaw is shorter than her upper jaw.
But despite her physical limitations, her spirit is strong.
“Lil Bub is super-positive and super into helping others,” said Cain. “People lose their minds over that cat.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or twitter.com/coconnordp
