Kitten Bowl – Pain In The Bud

It’s Kitten Bowl Sunday!

It’s the big game! Watch adorable, adoptable kittens and puppies square off on a tiny football field for a no holds barred game of…catch? Fumbling? We don’t know! They’re doing something, okay?

It’s time for the Kitten Bowl!

What, you thought we were gonna blog about that other game?

For the second straight year the former Kitten Bowl has been renamed the Great American Rescue Bowl, and will feature puppies as well as kittens. It’s moved from its former home at the Hallmark Channel to the Great American Channel, but retains its hosts, its partnership with the North Shore Animal League, and most importantly its adorable furry participants.

You can catch the Great American Rescue Bowl at noon eastern, making it a convenient watch whether you’re headed to a ~~Super Bowl~~ Taylor Swift Bowl party later in the day or you care not for sporting contests that don’t feature four-legged athletes.

If you don’t get the Great American Channel as part of your cable package or you’re a cord-cutter, you can stream it for free on fubo.

While the kittens and puppies are adoptable, this year also includes three special young cats — Meowi Wowi, Hana Lulu, and Surfin Sammy — who were displaced by the Hawaii wildfires of August 2023.

And if you’re hosting a party today and you need a last-minute addition to your menu, Buddy has kindly offered to share his recipe for Buddy’s Extra Turkalicious Turkey Wings:

Turkey wings for guests (24) and for Buddy (48)
Turkey sauce, 2 cups
Buddy’s BBQ Turkey Seasoning
Turkey bacon

In a large bowl, mix the turkey wings with the turkey sauce, then arrange the wings on a non-stick pan and bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Glaze with additional turkey sauce. Garnish with turkey bacon. Goes great with your other favorite turkey-based snacks!

Sunday Cats: Super Bowl, Kitten Bowl, Tiger Bowl

Today’s the big game!

Happy Super Bowl, a special day when Americans across the country will gather and watch more than 200 commercials, and some team will play some other team in just 11 minutes of actual game time.

No wonder the NFL and its advertising partners try to sell the commercials as entertainment in their own right: If you watch the Super Bowl, you’ll be subjecting yourself to an relentless onslaught of adverts for everything from Budweiser to Booking.com, insurance companies trying to out-zany each other, and gambling commercials. Lots and lots of gambling commercials for sites like DraftKings, Caesars Sportsbook, MGM and FanDuel.

Super Bowl Sunday was previously made brighter by the Kitten Bowl, but Hallmark canceled the cute fan favorite last year, saying only that it’s “not currently developing original animal-centric programming.”

It was inevitable that another network would move in to capitalize on Hallmark dumping its popular annual special, and taking the place of Kitten Bowl is the Great American Rescue Bowl, an event by the Great American Family Channel and the North Shore Animal League which will feature adoptable dogs and cats on a pet-size football field, along with host Beth Stern revisiting the stories of kittens, cats, puppies and dogs who were featured last year and found their forever homes. If you don’t get the Great American Family Channel you can stream the event on Hulu beginning at 10:30 a.m. (See the previous link for other streaming options.)

Viva la Tiger Bowl!

Watch this space in the coming week for a new longform story about the Champawat tiger, the most dangerous animal documented in more than 5,000 years of recorded human history. Little Buddy and I did quite a bit of research for this one, and we hope it’ll make for a good read.

wildlife photography of tiger — Credit: Sayantan Kundu/Pexels

Kitten Bowl VIII Is Today!

Kittens running around having fun. What more do you need?

Make sure you’ve stocked up on snacks and beverages, because today’s the big game.

Kansas City Chiefs vs the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the immortal vampire Tom Brady? Nah, we’re talking about the Kitten Bowl.

Like its predecessors, this year’s Kitten Bowl uses a flimsy football pretense to air the blood pressure-reducing, relaxing spectacle of a bunch of cute kittens running around a miniature arena and chasing after balls.

The program, which is a collaboration with the North Shore Animal League, pet food brands and other organizations, also serves as a TV-show-length PSA reminding people to adopt instead of buying kittens. Come late spring/early summer, every shelter will be overflowing with kittens just like the little ones in the Kitten Bowl.

The Kitten Bowl airs at 2 p.m. Eastern on the Hallmark Channel, and you can also stream it on Hallmark’s official site.

Click the photos below for full-size versions:

Adorable and adoptable kittens compete for the coveted Kitten Bowl VIII trophy. Hosted by TV personality and animal advocate, Beth Stern, this year’s feline catstravaganza promises to be more PAW-SOME than ever! Credit: ©2021 Crown Media United States LLC/Photographer: JJ Ignotz