Apparently this is what people watched in 1894……

Let us pause, dear readers, and pay our respects to the brave pugilists of the Edison studio—not because they won any championship belts, but because they were cats. Cats! The same creatures who today judge us from atop refrigerators and refuse to acknowledge our existence unless a can of tuna is involved. And yet, in 1894, these proud beasts were reduced to donning tiny gloves and trading blows like a pair of drunken uncles at a wedding reception. This is not just a historical oddity; it is a cautionary tale about the entertainment industry’s eternal willingness to exploit the innocent for a few flickering frames. The footage, sourced from the Reddit rabbit hole of r/Weird, reminds us that Thomas Edison—the so-called wizard of Menlo Park—was also the P.T. Barnum of early cinema. His studio churned out not only lightbulbs and phonographs but also cat boxing matches, electrocuted elephants, and other spectacles that would make modern PETA activists spontaneously combust. Professor Henry Welton’s cat circus toured the nation, peddling the absurd notion that cats could be trained to ride bicycles and perform somersaults. One imagines the cats unionized quietly, but their demands were lost to history, probably because they refused to negotiate with humans. There is something deeply poetic about the fact that the very first generation of filmgoers—people who marveled at moving pictures as if they were sorcery—chose to spend that miracle on cats punching each other. It says everything about humanity that we have not changed one bit. Today we watch cat videos on TikTok; our ancestors watched cat videos in darkened nickelodeons. The technology evolved, but the content remained stubbornly feline. We should not be horrified by this footage; we should embrace it as evidence that the internet was inevitable, a destiny written in whiskers and fur. Of course, we cannot ignore the darker side of this spectacle. The cats were likely trained through methods that would make a modern animal behaviorist weep. But let us not judge the Victorians too harshly; they also thought cocaine toothache drops were a fine idea. The real tragedy is that these cats never got a fair rematch, a retirement deal, or even a commemorative can of sardines. As we watch history’s first recorded catfight, we should remember the real lesson: in every era, humanity will find a way to make animals do ridiculous things for our amusement. And cats, being cats, probably plotted their revenge. We are still waiting for it.