Tally ho! Imagination runs wild with “Nature Cat” on PBS Kids

Nature Cat

Brothers David and Adam Rudman have long worked on Sesame Street (David is Cookie Monster’s puppeteer and Adam is a writer), and they’ve created Nature Cat, an animated kids series for PBS inspired by their own adventures playing outside as kids. “We wanted to do Looney Tunes with a nature curriculum,” David says. “And we felt like that’s a great way to get kids interested in going outside and inspired to go out in nature.”

Nature Cat

Nature Cat (premiering Nov. 25 on PBS; check local listings) is about an exuberant housecat who goes outside with his animal pals to explore the outdoors and their imaginations. The voice cast includes Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam, Kate McKinnon, Bobby Moynihan and Kenan Thompson. It was Moynihan who spread the word among his SNL castmates. “I loved [Nature Cat] so much from the second I saw it,” he says. “I just thought it was such a brilliant idea, and then when we started seeing a couple things roll in. Yeah, that’s all I did was tell my friends.”

I let my sons, ages 5 and 3, watch a preview episode of Nature Cat that PBS provided to TV critics. The first story involved a suave hamster who sweet-talks his way out of his cage and escapes the house, sending Nature Cat and crew on a hunt to track him down in the woods. The second story involved a trip to outer space, with the revelation at the end that their rocket ship was made of cardboard boxes and other household items, and that their imaginations had taken them on the adventure.

Nature Cat was a hit with my sons, and I’ve heard many shouts of “Tally ho!” — Nature Cat’s catchphrase — from them. Preschoolers are natural binge-watchers, as all parents know, and mine could probably watch the preview episode on a loop for eight hours if I’d allow them to. Hopefully, Nature Cat will inspire kids to go outside and experience things you can’t get from a screen.

Photo: © 2015 Spiffy Entertainment; LLC; All rights reserved.

About Ryan Berenz 2166 Articles
Member of the Television Critics Association. Charter member of the Ancient and Mystic Society of No Homers. Squire of the Ancient & Benevolent Order of the Lynx, Lodge 49, Long Beach, Calif. Costco Wholesale Gold Star Member since 2011.