The year is young and the upcoming Oscars are voting on last year’s movies. But The HollywoodBowles is ready to announce this year’s winner of the Coughy, which goes to the funniest viral video of the year.

While ‘21 will surely offer some worthy contenders, it’s hard to see how you could beat Cat Lawyer, which captured a Zoom call this week in a Texas courthouse.

The 48-second video has it all: The kitten filter works seamlessly, and kitty’s panicked, darting eyes out-animate anything South Park ever drew. The panicked gasp at :13 is Simpsonesque voice work. And the corner geezers are straight out of a Coen comedy, particularly when Gibbs Bauer puts on his glasses to make sure he’s seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. Rod Ponton’s “I’m not a cat” is the best feline punchline since Joe Exotic.

The icing: The recording of this hearing or live stream is prohibited. So the filmmaker had to risk legal prosecution to get the movie made.

This Coughy’s for you.