Best cat video of 2011

As with every year since the Internet became popular, 2011 was a great year for cat videos. Pretty cats, ugly cats, sleeping cats, cats dressed up as Hello Kitty—it’s been endless. Despite the variety of options, the basis of cat videos remain pretty much the same: keep it under one minute, make sure nobody dies. It’s what we look for in cat videos that has slowly evolved over the past 365 days.

At the start of 2011, a simple cute cat could earn 500K-plus views. Kittens emerging from a Christmas box, a kitten wildly attacking two green apples, whatever, just make it cute and frisky.

Then the year got wacky (I blame Charlie Sheen) and we started to expect more. I know at some point my affinity for beautiful but boring calendar kittens gave way to messed-up looking cats, or even better, disabled bunnies.

I don’t know about you, but now I’m most interested in cats, and dogs for that matter, that are actually doing something—preferably something funny. Not all cats are held to the same standards. For a crushingly cute kitty like Maru, sleeping in an unusual position is enough to keep me tuned in (Maru is the Kim Kardashian of cats). Dogs dressed up like Harry Potter work even better.

But best of all is a cat caught acting like one of the “Jackass” guys: trying a crazy, sure-to-fail stunt for our entertainment that can only end in torn ligaments and facial scars.

So far, watching animals mess up is the pinnacle of online entertainment, at least for me. Kim Kardashian got married, divorced and publicly accused of being a bad person for her fans this year. The cat in this video goes even further.

View below.