Billerica comedy duo finds internet fame with ‘Cat-Friend vs. Dog-Friend’ video

By Glenn Yoder, Boston.com Staff

Jimmy Craig and Justin Parker, both 27, have been making videos together since they met at Billerica Memorial High School. But nothing has garnered attention quite like the latest YouTube sensation from their comedy duo Fatawesome, “Cat-Friend vs. Dog-Friend.”

Since being posted to the site on Nov. 21, the clip, which addresses what it would be like if friends acted like a joyful dog (Parker) or surly cat (Craig), has racked up more than three million plays and attention from sites like the Huffington Post and CBS News. And it just keeps getting more clicks.

“Every time we think the video is losing a little bit of steam as it naturally would, we get another email from somebody telling us it’s going viral in Brazil or something,” Parker said Friday. “Like every day we wake up, we get something else.”

Craig said the video has been embraced by some audiences the pair wasn’t expecting.

“We received an email from a deaf person asking us to transcribe it. And after we did that, we had other people in the deaf community reach out to us and thank us and tell us it was spreading on sites specifically for that,” he said. “Forbes.com posted it yesterday and that’s an audience that we never expected we’d reach.”

And the home-grown nature of the video holds special appeal to its creators, Craig said.

“To get three million people watching something that we produced in Billerica is amazing,” he said. “It doesn’t require going out to L.A. and pitching to execs. We can do everything from home and still reach those huge audiences.”