New Zealand / Media

'I was just overcome at how everybody loved it': Crazy kitties get non-stop laughs at Nelson's cat video festival

15:30 pm on 10 August 2024

Photo: @mscotten_candy

As curator of the upcoming Nelson Cat Video Festival, Jessica St Germain has seen "more cat memes than her brain can handle".

Her favourite? A little grey cat face overlaid with the lyrics to Men at Work's 1981 hit 'Down Under' - "I met a strange lady, she made me nervous, she took me in and gave me breakfast…"

The"perfect night out for cat lovers" will be held on 17 August as a fundraiser for St Germain's workplace - the local charity Nelson Center of Musical Arts (NCMA).

Inspired by the huge all-day cat video event in her home state of Minnesota - a growing trend in North America - St Germain hosted Nelson's first festival last year.

"I was just overcome at how everybody loved it. The whole auditorium just erupted in laughter for two hours. You know, it doesn't get any better than that."

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Jessica St Germain, Funding and Development Manager at the Nelson Centre of Musical Arts Photo: NCMA

As you'd expect, the festival programme - which features four 15-minute blocks of back-to-back cat videos - includes cats doing all kinds of daft things, St Germain says, sometimes with voiceovers.

"We've got cats swimming, cats sleeping, cute cats, ugly cats… I mean, all the cats."

At the festival, a choir will also deliver a purr-infused performance of 'Cat' by Australian composer Steven Leek, conducted by local musician Dan Callahan.

All money raised on the night goes towards supporting NCMA's community music programmes whose students range in age from 6 months to 96, St Germain says.

With operation costs increasing and grant funding drying up it's getting harder to keep the music classes running, she says, although they change people's lives on a daily basis.

"It's really important what we do. And we got to keep the lights on."

As part of her mission to help people feel more at peace, St Germain, a former life coach, also does readings as a psychic medium.

"I just realised that it's a special skill I have and I've been working on developing that more and more. I've found that I can kind of deliver some really beautiful messages from Spirit to people.

"When you know someone is grieving or someone is struggling and you know going through a lot in their lives, a message that comes through might bring tears to their eyes and just give them this overwhelming sense of peace. For me, that just fills my heart and makes me feel just so fulfilled."