Thousands attend annual 'Internet Cat Video Festival' in St. Paul, Minn.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (KMSP) - The fourth annual Internet Cat Video Festival brought together thousands of cat enthusiasts at the new CHS Field in St. Paul on Wednesday night.
The event, organized by the Walker Art Center, featured a reel of approximately 100 cat videos picked from nominations by the public. The videos range from categories such as comedy, drama animated, musical action, vintage, and documentary.
“Internet cat videos are doing all of the things compelling art should: raising questions, challenging assumptions, angering people, and—in the case of our festival—creating a real experience,” the museum said on their website.
It all began in the summer of 2012 when the Walker Art Center planned a small experiment as part of its outdoor summer programming on the greenspace adjacent to the museum. A whopping 10,000 people showed up on the hillside to participate.
Word of the quirky event quickly spread worldwide and has become and international sensation. It has been covered in the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and Time Magazine, to name a few.
“(The Walker’s) Internet Cat Video Festival, a traveling show that features an 80-minute reel of clips culled from 10,000 submissions and edited by museum curators, has been shown around the world, concert-style, to throngs of fans, some dressed in cat costumes, and others with live cats in tow,” the New York Times reported.
This year’s event was hosted by radio personality Barb Abney of Go 96, “a forever fan of cats.”