More than 120 cats held court in windows, on porches and in strollers across Lincoln Square on Saturday afternoon, as Chicago hosted its first neighborhood Cat Tour. The event ran from 3 to 5 p.m. following a noon screening of CatVideoFest 2026 at the Davis Theater, drawing cat fans from well beyond the neighborhood and even a Kentucky resident who made a six-hour drive just to see the felines.
According to Block Club Chicago, the event traces back to a Facebook post that Christine Blevins wrote suggesting a neighborhood cat tour, which received nearly 200 comments after it was posted in May 2026. Samantha Borow, who lives near Leland and Leavitt avenues in Lincoln Square, helped organize the resulting tour and said it quickly grew beyond anyone's initial expectations. “The tour took on a life of its own,” Borow said, according to the outlet's report.
The tour included a digital map showing participating cats' names and addresses, letting attendees plan their route past specific felines. Organizers connected with dozens of local businesses in the area, and about eight of them offered cat-tour-related discounts to visitors carrying leashed cats or pushing them in strollers through the neighborhood.
A Persian Fan Club and a Cat Named for Jason Derulo
Kat Nasseri organized the Pink Persian Club as part of the tour, celebrating Persian cats Fitzgerald and Gertrude. Nasseri said she learned about the event through Facebook and felt her cats deserved to be seen and adored by everybody, per the same account. Her mother, Karen Nasseri, made the six-hour drive from Kentucky to attend and calls the cats her grandchildren.
One of the tour's more memorable stars was Grayson Derulo, a cat named after singer Jason Derulo and adopted from Touched By An Animal. Sarah Corley, a marketer and Chicago cat influencer who lives in a third-floor apartment, held Grayson Derulo from her window for passersby and called the tour his big moment. Cindy Valdes brought her eight-year-old black-and-white cat Kimchi, who used to ski, hike and snowboard with her, and Valdes said she left the event with new information about training Kimchi as a therapy cat. Valdes had previously attended a cat tour in Portland, Oregon, one of the grassroots events that has helped spread the concept, including Portland's Sunnyside Cat Walk and Milwaukee's Riverwest Cat Tour.
Why Caturday Landed on August 8
The Saturday event, dubbed Caturday, coincided with International Cat Day, which is observed each August 8 and was established in 2002 by the International Fund for Animal Welfare before global campaign coordination shifted to the British nonprofit International Cat Care in 2020. The concept of a neighborhood cat walk itself dates to 2017, when Minneapolis editor John Edwards created the Wedge LIVE! Cat Tour to highlight cats visible in windows and on porches, according to MPR News. That Minneapolis event grew from a social-media joke into an annual gathering drawing hundreds of attendees, a model Lincoln Square organizers appear to have echoed.
Caturday itself was entirely free, and the tour promoted several local animal rescue organizations and adoption centers, partnering with Harmony House for Cats, Touched By An Animal, Catnap From The Heart and One Tail at a Time. Harmony House for Cats operates a cageless sanctuary in Avondale housing 80 to 90 cats and kittens, prioritizing strays that might otherwise end up in overcrowded city facilities, according to Voyage Chicago. Touched By An Animal runs a similar cageless sanctuary on West Berwyn Avenue in Bowmanville, typically housing 60 to 80 cats while helping elderly residents keep their pets, per Mutual Rescue.
Timed to a Shelter Capacity Crunch
The rescue partnerships carry extra weight this summer. Chicago Animal Care and Control hit maximum cat capacity in late June with more than 200 felines in its care, forcing the municipal shelter to pause walk-in surrenders, as Hoodline previously reported. The shelter has roughly 130 designated small-cat spaces, and the crunch reflects what International Cat Care describes as peak kitten season, when unspayed free-roaming cats produce seasonal litters that spike shelter admissions worldwide.
The tour's timing also dovetailed with the Davis Theater's noon screening of CatVideoFest 2026, the second annual iteration of the film event showing viral cat video compilations, which cost $10.08 per ticket according to Block Club Chicago's report. The Davis Theater, originally built in 1918 as the Pershing Theater before converting to show talkies in the 1930s, designated 10% of ticket sales from the screenings to Red Door Animal Shelter. CatVideoFest is distributed nationwide by Oscilloscope Laboratories, which partners with independent theaters across the country to raise funds for regional shelters — a similar arrangement Hoodline noted recently at a screening that unfolded at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Organizers Hope the Tour Spreads Citywide
Borow said she wants Caturday to eventually take place throughout Chicago rather than staying confined to Lincoln Square, and residents from other communities have already reached out because they want to organize similar events of their own. Bennie, known on Instagram as Bennie the Tuxie, was among the internet-famous felines who joined the lineup alongside newcomers like Kimchi and Grayson Derulo.
Both organizers and attendees hope the event returns in future years and eventually expands into neighboring communities. For now, Lincoln Square's sidewalks offered a rare afternoon where strollers held cats instead of children, window sills doubled as viewing platforms, and a Kentucky grandmother got to see her feline grandchildren admired by an entire neighborhood.
