Spring Arts 2017

Spring Forward

The Sun is Returning. Put Down Your Dystopian Literature and Get Out There with Our Guide to Arts and Culture

To the Shire!

Appreciating John Yeon, Portland’s Unsung Hero of Architecture

In The Black, Intisar Abioto Documents Connection, Community, and Place

The Black Portlanders Photographer Traces Black Roots in Portland and Beyond

The Shirley Jackson Project is Like a Collection of Ghost Stories

Portland Comic Artists Share Their Passion for Shirley Jackson, Queen of Gloom

Inside Stream PDXā€™s Mobile Recording Studio

How an Airstream Trailer on NE MLK is Making Podcasting More Accessible

Rethinking the Canon

Portland Writer/Artist Dao Strom Discusses a New Local Effort to Showcase Authors of Color

Laura E. Hall, Escape Artist

Get Trapped With Portland’s Leading Escape Room Designer

Move Over, Maru. Make Way, Lil Bub!

It’s Oregon Cats’ Time to Shine at a New Cat Video Festival

The Facebook likes have cooled. The Instagram hearts feel hollow. Face it: Most people just canā€™t handle how great your cat is. They canā€™t see what you see when you watch your cat do something awe-inspiring, like shut its eyes slowly or roll over onto its back really fast. They donā€™t appreciate the voice you made for it inside your head. They donā€™t know the cute way it sneezesā€”well, you missed it that time, you pressed the wrong buttonā€”but here, look, sheā€™s still doing something really cute!

No longer. With the first annual Oregon Cat Video Festival, you can screen your fur ball in front of a captiveā€”and no doubt raptā€”audience in Salem, Oregon. For a $20 fee (*stage whisper* thereā€™s a Groupon!), you can submit your homemade cat media for competition. (The festival ticket is separateā€”but 20 percent goes to the Oregon Humane Society.) There will be no Lil Bub to hog the limelight, no Maru to steal your thunder. Really, the only hard rules for submission are that your video has a cat in it, is family-friendly, and has a copyright owned by you, its auteur.

Hereā€™s what the Oregon Cat Video Festival isnā€™t: the Internet Cat Video Festival, which has screened for the past few years at the Hollywood Theatre. That festival started at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis in 2012, and drew 10,000 people its first year. In 2016, the art museum discontinued the festival, ā€œto put our resources towards the remodeling of our campus including the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.ā€ The Twin Citiesā€™ loss is your gain, Oregon.

Nathan Marsh, the festivalā€™s executive director, wants to replicate the success of the Walker. ā€œWe were thinking, 'Hey, we could do that over here; thereā€™s nothing like that over here,ā€™ā€ he says. ā€œMaybe we could change it up and add some different things and make it an actual festival [rather] than just a viewing of one movie.ā€

Indeed, Marsh has worked hard to set the stage for what he hopes will be an annual tradition. Thereā€™s a beer and wine garden and cat-related vendors. Thereā€™s a Cat Condo Kid Area and Cat Costume Acrobat Show, and before you ask me if those are actually four separate activities and Iā€™m missing punctuation, no, Iā€™m not. Thereā€™s Moshow the Cat Rapper, who is the most exciting Portland phenomenon to go viral since Birdie Sanders.

ā€œWeā€™ve got this DJ console weā€™re going to load up with different cat noises for the kids to play DJ Kitty Boom Boom,ā€ Marsh says, referring another internet cat who is more famous than your cat but who will not be competing against your cat at the Oregon Cat Video Festival. ā€œWe also have some furries coming.ā€

So update your phone storage settings, find a piece of bread to stick over your catā€™s face and make it look like they have a bread headā€”that is always funnyā€”and submit today.