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The ennui of Henri the cat

Five years after his first appearance on YouTube, Henri has thousands of fans on Facebook—but that hasn't cheered him up. 

 

Fruzsina Eördögh

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Posted on Apr 12, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 6:36 pm CDT

Being a cat can be rough, especially for one as intelligent and philosophically minded as Henri.

In a follow-up to his 2007 hit, Seattle director Will Braden recently released “Henri 2, Paw de Deux.” In the two-minute, black-and-white short, Henri—presumably Braden’s cat, at least judging from this Facebook page—waxes poetic in French (with subtitles).

“They leave tasty snacks just out of reach,” Henri states, starting at caged parakeets and mice.

“They taunt me mercilessly,” he adds. “I alone feel this torment.”

The video is filled with such memorable one-liners, like “The white idiot writhes on his chair, begging for cheeseburgers.”

Uploaded onto YouTube on April 6, “Henri 2, Paw de Duex” sits at just over 260,000 views, after being linked on Reddit and subsequently posted on Wednesday by BuzzFeed, Jezebel, and Huffington Post.

“Finally, a cat video on the internet that doesn’t make me question what I am doing with my life,” wrote Honey-Badger in a top comment on Reddit.

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*First Published: Apr 12, 2012, 7:01 pm CDT