Simply airing TV commercials featuring an insidiously catchy jingle is apparently no longer an adequate way to sell cat food, and so the Meow Mix people yesterday opened the "Meow Mix Acatemy" (Get it? A-cat-emy? Hilarious) in the Daryl Roth Theater on Union Square. For the next week, New Yorkers will be invited to "learn to think like a cat" by taking seminars with titles like “Feline Freud,” “Understanding Your Cat’s Meow,” and “What Is My Cat Doing and Why.” For the opening-night festivities last night, a fifteen-piece marching band from St. John’s University played that dastardly tune, accompanied by cheerleaders chanting “LETS … GO … COOL … CATS!”

There are activities for the furry friends, too, and Vincent Pastore, better known “Big Pussy” from The Sopranos (Get it? Big Pussy? Hilarious), was considering enrolling a black stray he has befriended near his new home on City Island. “What I'm going to do is bring the cat down here, and try to let him realize that there is more to life than hanging out on the streets," he explained. "You know, I came from the street, I became an actor, and things are good. Maybe I can show the cat the right direction. Pull him away from the streets." The model Rachel Hunter, meantime, confessed she no longer kept any cats — perhaps because she was afraid of becoming a crazy cat lady. "We were asking ourselves recently, how many cats does it take to become a cat lady?" she fretted. "I would probably end up becoming the cat lady with really independent cats who all ran away from her." —Katie Van Syckle