MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — An annual event in Minneapolis brought cats to their windows for hundreds of people to admire.
The 6th Annual Wedge LIVE Cat Tour took place on Wednesday night after a one-year hiatus.
Cat lovers gathered in Mueller Park before setting off on a two-mile tour through the Wedge and Whittier neighborhoods to look at the local cats.
"This is the cat's meow of local, weird events," said John Edwards, a hyperlocal journalist behind the news site Wedge LIVE!
It all started with Edwards taking pictures of the local cats he would come across on his walks around the neighborhood.
"I just invited a group of people to take a walk with me and it turned into this," Edwards said.
The first group in 2017 included maybe one to two dozen people. Edwards estimates that about 300 people came out for this year's cat tour.
About two dozen cats were registered by their owners to participate in the tour. Some cats made guest appearances, as well.
"I'm obsessed with cats. I think about cats 24/7. I have a cat tattoo and my cats are my babies," said Elise McMahon, whose cat Sprinkles was one of the stars.
McMahon was joined by Mia Her and cat Saturn.
"I'm also a cat lover and I love seeing the community get together," Her said.
Sprinkles and Saturn sat outside where admirers could approach the cats. Others could be viewed from their balconies, in the windows, or in cat enclosures.
Robin Fanning, who is blind, has gone to the cat tour four times now and enjoys, "Getting out, getting exercise, hearing descriptions of the cats, hearing everybody's oohs and ahhs... claps for the various local kitten celebrities."
Edwards did not hold the Wedge LIVE Cat Tour last year in protest of the city's decision to not implement full-time bus lanes on Hennepin Avenue.
At Wednesday's event, Edwards reminded people it's an election year, adding, "The way our neighborhoods look, whether they are safe and affordable, whether they have businesses and services that meet our daily needs, whether they provide safe and convenient transportation for everyone, whether they have spaces to move and gather with each other — all of these very local circumstances that affect our health and happiness don't happen by accident."
The 7th Annual Wedge LIVE Cat Tour will take place next summer around the same time in the end of June. It's free to attend.
Edwards keeps bringing the tour back because, "Once you've seen one cat, you've seen them all. It's the people that make it special."
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