Cat celebrity might be the purest form of Internet celebrity. Cats don’t hold jobs, conduct interviews, or grow up. As beings, they’re almost purely defined by their images: loving Grumpy Cat and loving a video of Grumpy Cat are very nearly the same thing. Maybe that’s why people are so oddly astonished when they meet a celebrity cat in person: the cats are there in 3D, but otherwise remain identical to their online avatars. A common reaction is, “She’s smaller than I expected.”

A quasi-philosophical question in Internet cat circles seems to how crucial the cats themselves really are to the success of cat videos. At the second annual Internet Cat Video Festival on August 28 at the Minnesota State Fair, host Scott Stulen suggested that “this isn’t really about the cats,” provoking a number of angry response shouts: “Yes it is!”

Of course, the importance of the cat varies by the video—and by the cat. “Henri,” the winner of last year’s grand prize, looks and acts like an average cat, and that’s all he (Henri isn’t even his real name) has to do for his owner William Braden to cast him as Le Chat Noir, narrator of sardonic French commentary that’s subtitled in English for the convenience of those of us who speak neither French nor Cat. “Henri” could be any cat, but Grumpy Cat, on the other hand—this year’s big winner—has to be Grumpy Cat. She looks grumpy. She always looks grumpy. That’s her thing. She’s Grumpy Cat.

The Grumpy Cat phenomenon is not dissimilar to a work of conceptual art: you could imagine the Walker Art Center—proprietor of #CatVidFest—displaying in a gallery a small typed card reading, “Find a cat who looks grumpy. Call her Grumpy Cat. Watch her become famous for being a grumpy-looking cat named Grumpy Cat.” Stulen, of the Walker, said that he doesn’t care whether or not cat videos are art, but obviously the great appeal of the event is that it bestows a semi-serious crown of artistic legitimacy on cat video artists, who already enjoy popular success eclipsing most of the other artists featured in the Walker’s programming.

The other big question, beyond whether the cats themselves “matter,” is: why cats? Why not dogs? The seminal text addressing this debate is Leigh Alexander’s 2011 Thought Catalog post “Why the Internet Chose Cats.” Alexander’s theory is that Internet influentials are disproportionately likely to be cat people versus dog people, but I think the answer might be simpler than that: cats are just funnier than dogs.

Dogs’ trademark eagerness to please makes then endearing to many (not me) IRL, but cats are better for indelible video-friendly moments. A central theme of the videos featured in this year’s fest was indignity: cats are intrinsically funny because there’s a contrast between the humbling realities of their existence and the haughty diffidence with which they typically conduct themselves. When a dog is confused, it’s kind of pathetic, but when a cat is confused, it’s absolutely hilarious: the cat’s icy demeanor is replaced by sheer panic. Cats are their own straight men.

It takes a lot of patience to catch a cat breaking character, which is why the concise medium of online video is perfect for them: the cat’s owner does the work of waiting until the cat does something ridiculous, then shares it online for the rest of us to watch over and over and over. There’s no need to establish a lot of context or character: the cat is just a cat. Distinguishing characteristics are immediately apparent: that cat’s grumpy, this cat is sticking its tongue out. After a brief establishing shot, we can get right to the good part, when for whatever reason the cat totally loses its shit.

In a meeting that was advertised as having the potential to “break the Internet,” on August 28, Grumpy Cat (you know, the grumpy one) and Lil Bub (you know, the one who sticks her tongue out) met each other for the first time. The Internet didn’t break, possibly because Lil Bub immediately shied away from her fellow feline celebrity. Bub likes people, explained her owner Mike Bridavsky, but she doesn’t care for cats. Does that make her a diva—or just a normal cat?

– Jay Gabler