How Our Cat Compilations Got Their Humor

How Our Cat Compilations Got Their Humor

By Serenity of the Mind

🎬 Watch the Short: Cat-titude Compilation — The Feline Mix of Personalities

How we first started four years ago on YouTube

When we first began on YouTube, there were a lot of people promoting the idea of using free copyright-free platforms like Pexels.com. The advice was simple: depending on the type of video you wanted to create, just paste together a bunch of clips until you reached the length you wanted.

For example, if I wanted to make a calming river video that was 15 minutes long, I would collect enough river clips to fill that time, and then go to YouTube Audio and add some music to match the mood.

Of course, these early videos never did very well. They were boring and repetitive. They were repetitive because everyone who was just starting out was using the same free footage and the same free music. Nothing about our videos stood out.

I don’t know if we ever would have changed direction if YouTube hadn’t introduced the Shorts platform. That new platform completely changed what we were doing on the channel.

We originally started with calm videos because all the YouTube influencers insisted you could “make a mint” with calming content — just paste clips together from Pexels.com and add free music. No one ever mentioned cats.

But I love cats, and one day I found a really cute clip of a cat walking on a piano. I thought, “Maybe I can use Shorts to advertise what we’re doing on the channel.”

Our very first Short was actually about a product we no longer have — the Mood Room — but the second one had that cat walking across a piano. It was promoting “Healing Sounds at Serenity of the Mind.”

Here is the video if you want to see it.

It was also the first time we got a reasonable number of views: 645 views and 25 likes. That’s when I realized — by accident — that people on YouTube really love cats.

The other thing I realized was that stitching together random clips with free music was boring, so I tried something new just to see how it would go. I started using our own cats in Shorts, at least here and there. But our own cats are actually pretty mellow. My wife began making costumes for them, so those videos did a bit better — like “Polaris Cat Stole the Christmas Gift.” That one showed our Siamese actually stealing a toy out of one of the stockings and playing with it. It got 354 views and 3 likes. Better, but still not like the piano-cat ad.

Then I got the idea to make the Shorts funny. “Cat-titude: The Feline Mix of Personalities” was one of our early attempts. We used AI voice-overs because so many YouTube influencers were pushing AI at the time. Later we found out people really don’t like AI, and once YouTube started adding banners to mark AI-generated content, we had to stop doing that. We were also still using free videos from Pexels, which meant we quickly ran out of unique cat clips to build Shorts from. And we were still using YouTube Audio.

But this was a turning point — it was the moment I decided to use humor in the cat Shorts.

And that idea came from my older brother… He and I have always had a fun relationship, and humor came naturally. (We were in a large family, too.) I learned from him to look at the funny side of life. So I’ll see, say, a cat climbing a screen door, and it becomes Ninja Cat Training.

We grew up in a household that ALWAYS had cats! Our two Siamese were a major part of our childhoods. We witnessed literally thousands of cat behaviors. Our Siamese (a neutered brother and sister) would sit in the front yard, waiting for the neighborhood dogs to walk by. One (the brother) would challenge the dog, and when it entered the property, the sister would charge it, blindsiding it with catlike fury!

Those cats were wise souls, too. They would tolerate childish behavior only for so long; at some time around 6 or 7 years old, they would Give Us The Word. Then we all got along, very well.

When I moved to another state we continued texting funny jokes until he passed away; I like to think I’m honoring his memory through our funny cat compilations.

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Watch More Funny Cat Moments

🐾 Kitty Chronicals: A Tail of Laughter and Cuteness – YouTube Playlist

How a Funny Cat Video Went Viral Around the World

 

How a Funny Cat Video Went Viral Around the World

Normally when I upload a video it only gets at best 1000 views and maybe 20 likes if I am lucky. I try to upload at least a couple of times a week. If possible, I upload a Funny Cat Compilation and what we call a Funny Cat Brain Candy a short about 5 to 10 seconds long. If our artist gets something ready for us or I dare to edit something we get a calm video of some kind.

On September 1 I uploaded a short that did so well. It did way better than I had ever hoped it would. I just did what I always do. I look at whatever short cat videos I might have and if they touch me just right I make a funny comment. Let the cats talk like how I think they would if they could speak for real.

I got this humor from me and my brother telling jokes. My brother is now deceased so I can not play the jokes game any more. We played the jokes game ever since we were children, but I never forgot how to make jokes to make people smile and that is exactly what I do in my Funny Cat Compilations. I try my best to make people smile.

So on September 1, doing as I had aways have done, I upload a short I finished called, ”Cat Joy: Funny Cat Compilation” and at first I thought it would be a dud, because at first that evening when I made it public and hour later when I took a look at it, it only had something like 40 views and no likes. So I went to sleep feeling heavy that I had worked so hard to create a dud and wondering what I could do to make the Funny Cat Compilations better.

So after I woke up and had breakfast, I looked at the dashboard on YouTube, and oh my, what a happy surprise. The Funny Cat Compilation called “Cat Joy: Funny Cat Compilation" did better than I could ever hope! People are still viewing the video from time to time and as of today it has 8795 views and 725 likes and 113 subscribers. I had heard on YouTube that people can get a viral video and I never believed it before now. I believed that it can take years just to get a few good videos of 1000 views and maybe if you are lucky 15 or a little more likes and if lucky at the most 2 subscribers.

The thing that really touched my heart and encouraged me to continue to do my channels, cat videos and calm videos was that this video actually went around the world. Here's the list of countries that saw our cat compilation, United States, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Uzbekistan, Philippines, Germany, Japan, Türkiye (known as Turkey in English), Vietnam, Ukraine, France, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), Canada, United Kingdom, Pakistan, Poland, Iran, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Romania, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Belarus, Greece, Chile, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia.

That is 39 wonderful countries in this great big beautiful Earth of ours. I thank all of you for supporting me, (Serenity of the Mind, YouTube Channel) from the bottom of my heart. You mean, well, the world to me. And I pledge to do my best to continue creating and publishing videos to the best of my ability to make you laugh, say awww, and to help you stay calm and to sleep. Thank you each and every one of you!