Environmental Media Award-winning and Emmy Award-nominated animated PBS KIDS series Nature Cat, from Spiffy Pictures, will return for fourth and fifth seasons. The series’ all-star, comedic voice cast, comprised of Saturday Night Live current stars and alumni — Taran Killam as Nature Cat; Kate McKinnon as Squeeks, a daring and fearless mouse; and Bobby Moynihan as Hal, an overly curious, rambunctious, lovable dog — along with Garfunkel and Oates’ Kate Micucci as Daisy, a super smart bunny, will all return for the newly ordered seasons.
Combined, Seasons 4 and 5 will consist of 20 half-hour new episodes plus two one-hour movie specials and will debut in 2022.
Created and executive-produced by brothers, Emmy Award-nominated puppeteer David Rudman (Sesame Street, The Muppets) and Emmy Award-winning writer Adam Rudman (Tom & Jerry, Sesame Street) — who also created and serve as executive producers of PBS KIDS’ newest hit series, Donkey Hodie — Nature Cat follows Fred, a house cat who dreams of exploring the great outdoors. The series is designed to encourage kids ages 3-8 to explore and develop connections with the natural world.
“The humor of Nature Cat along with the overarching theme of the importance of spending time in nature continues to resonate with kids and families, especially over the past year,” said Adam Rudman and David Rudman. “The new seasons will bring bigger, bolder, and of course funny adventures while presenting relevant themes such as weather, recycling and civics in relatable stories for our young audience.”
In each episode, once his family leaves for the day, house cat Fred transforms into Nature Cat, “backyard explorer extraordinaire.” Nature Cat can’t wait to get outside for a day of backyard nature excursions and bravery, but there’s one problem: he’s still a house cat with no instincts for nature. With the help of his animal friends, Nature Cat embarks on action-packed adventures full of nature investigation, “aha” discovery moments and humor, all while inspiring children to go outside and “play the show.”
Fans can watch Nature Cat on their local PBS station and stream for free on PBS KIDS. Games, activities and more that reinforce the series’ curriculum can be found and will continue to be updated on pbskids.org/naturecat and the PBS KIDS Games app. A Nature Cat book series from Little Bee Books is currently available at retailers nationwide with two new book titles releasing later this year.
Over the past year, Nature Cat has reached more than 30 million TV viewers across PBS stations, and is streamed an average of 7.7 million times per month on PBS KIDS (per Nielsen NPOWER, L+7 4/27/20-4/25/21, P2+, K2-11, Std Unif., 1+ min. Google Analytics Jan – Apr 2021).
