IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Photos and text from wire services she lives.

“I’m a little allergic to cute,” Hotchner said. “My universe is all about education.”

There are no awards, but her dog fest has been selling out since 2015, she said. Tickets were selling well for all slates heading into the weekend at the School of Visual Arts, which has a 530-seat theater.

“Many people have never been to a film festival. They’re not trying to see the next Martin Scorsese. The first year was word of mouth and people were flying in,” Hotchner said.

So why add cats? And why on separate days?

“It’s sort of a merger but it’s a schizophrenic merger,” Hotchner joked. “Cats are not little dogs. And cat people aren’t necessarily dog people.”

She said she started with dogs “because it honestly didn’t cross my mind that there could be a decent movie about a cat.” Hotchner was pleasantly surprised when she went in search of film fodder.

In the 8-minute “Scaredy, the Cat,” for example, New York City filmmaker Markie Hancock celebrates the life of a feral cat taken on to be a ratter at some public clay tennis courts in Riverside Park. The problem was she turned out to be scared of rats — and most people, yet she has forged a close bond to a small handful, going so far as to wait for some to show up at their regular times.

DIMITRI MESSINIS — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE A stray dog, called by protesters Loukanikos (Sausage), barks to a motorcyclist policeman as high school students block the avenue outside the Greek Parliament during an anti-austerity protest in Athens.