Third Year Of Friskies’ Cat Video Awards Will Feature YouTuber Judges

For the third year in a row, Friskies is honoring the best cat videos on the web through an award ceremony called The Friskies. This year, The Friskies will get a big bump thanks to some assistance from the YouTube community.  Four celebrity “captains” will use their YouTube channels to get the vote out and raise money for cat shelters in the process.

The Friskies began in 2012, when Michael Buckley presented awards across four different categories

. This time around, The Fine Bros joined Grumpy Cat at VidCon to announce a new format, one that will divide into four open-ended categories of its own: Funny, Res-cute, Strange, and Epic.

Each of these categories will be overseen by its own judge. Grace Helbig is attached to Funny, Jesse Wellens of PrankVsPrank will captain Rescute, Henri Le Chat Noir creator Will Braden will take control of Strange, and Vine star Zach King is in charge of Epic. Each of these “captains” will create an announcement video on his or her channel, thus drumming up social interest in The Friskies.

Of course, a cat video awards show needs cat videos, and Friskies has urged owners to submit their videos through the contest’s official website. 3 finalists in each category will be announced on August 11th, at which point fans will have four weeks to vote for their favorites. It will be difficult for any video the near perfection of last year’s winners.

The big social media push for The Friskies comes at a time when Purina (the parent company of Friskies) is hoping to soup up its YouTube presence. Enlisting the help of YouTube stars will provide a big boon to this goal, but let’s be real. With so many great cat videos, there is no way The Friskies could ever fail.