Meeting Grumpy Cat Is Worth Waiting Hours And Hours, Some People Think

Published on 3/20/2015 at 3:53 PM

<p> Anna Hanks / <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grumpy_cat_(8576174898).jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a> (<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY 2.0</a>) </p>

Grumpy Cat is unenthused. Photo: Jo Piazza

For the past three years the Bittner family of Austin, Texas has made a trip into downtown Austin's SXSW festival in March. They don't come for the panels, they come for the cat - Grumpy Cat.

"We're just die-hard fans," family patriarch Brian Bittner told Yahoo Travel, while standing in a line that snaked down the street and around the block to greet the famous feline at the pop-up Friskies Haus of Bacon on Saturday morning.

The wait to see Grumpy Cat was approximately an hour and a half. Photo: Jo Piazza

Grumpy Cat, arguably one of the most famous cats in the world, was at SXSW for a brand activation with Friskies Tasty Treasures to raise consumer awareness of the brand's bacon-flavored cat food products and to donate 50,000 meals to shelter cats.

Brian and the rest of the Bittners were frenetically excited about the day's visit.

Related: Hello Kitty! New York's Cat Cafe Opens

"We watch her Christmas special. We are die-hard Grumpy fans. We just love her," Nathan Bittner said, as the doors were about to open, his smile wide above a T-shirt bearing Grumpy Cat's likeness with the words, "I had fun once. It was awful."

The Bittner family's annual pilgrimage to see Grumpy Cat at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Photo: Jo Piazza

Thousands of other fans had waited for hours to see the Grumpy Cat and a brethren of other Internet-famous cats like Nala Cat, SamHasEyebrows, Oskar the Blind Cat, and his brother Klaus.

Grumpy, on the other hand, had absolutely no interest in the Bittners - or anyone else for that matter.

"She could care less," her owner Tabitha Bendesen said. "Her work ethic really is to just sleep."