And the winners are ... the cats!

Holster your paint cans, animal rights activists: The celebrity guests wearing the real fur coats at these Hollywood and metro New York red carpet events are the cats, the fur coats are the ones they were born with, and the events are … (envelope, please) the 2011 ACATEMY Awards. Ta-dahhh!

The Los Angeles and New York programs of Best Friends Animal Society will host the first annual ACATEMY Awards, an all-cat adoption event on February 19 and 26, respectively.

Riffing on an Oscar theme, celebrity cats such as Cindy Clawford, Will Feral, Cat Winslet and other A-listers will walk the red carpet, purr for paparazzi and generally look too fabulous for words.

Adopters will receive a commemorative statuette, walk the red carpet with their new celebrity cat and be ushered into the ACATEMY Awards gifting lounge so they can dip into all that kool kitty swag.

Joking aside, these are important events: Each ACATEMY Awards event will feature more than 200 shelter cats from area shelters. That’s really cool because 70 percent of animals entering shelters across the country are cats, but only 10-20 percent are adopted out and only 2 percent are returned to their people. This event takes life-saving work to glamorous new heights.

I highly recommend either of these family-friendly adoption events to everyone in the L.A. or New York area who is thinking about bringing a cat into their home.

Los Angeles:
Hotel Palomar, 10740 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California
Saturday, February 19
11 am – 6 pm

New York area:
Monmouth County SPCA, 260 Wall Street, Eatontown, New Jersey
Saturday, February 26
12 am – 5 pm