Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele are promoting their film Keanu, which comes out next Friday. If you’ve seen the ads, you know that the film stars an adorable little kitten named Keanu. Only THR reports that Keanu was actually played by SEVEN identical little kittens!! THR did a big write-up about how Key & Peele and the crew worked to make the kitten-stunts look real because they didn’t want to CGI a kitten throughout the whole film. Some highlights:

Kitten Auditions: The kitten’s name is Nacho. And it’s Jefe. And also Squibword (an ode to the squib work he did). As it turns out, seven different but very similar-looking kittens were used to shoot Keanu. “Cuteness was definitely the biggest priority,” says director Peter Atencio, who held a kitten audition in New Orleans, deciding between two types: brown tabbies and black-and-white tuxedo kittens. Tabbies, which also were the most common at shelters, ultimately were chosen because they were the easiest breed to match. “They’re extremely photogenic and easy to work with,” says Atencio.

Kittens were trained using treats: “Food is the ultimate motivator. The kittens were taught to walk, run and sit on marks by using buzzers and food rewards. For instance, Payne taught the kittens that if they walked over to a buzzer, they’d get a treat. For one scene, Payne put a dollop of baby food on Peele’s face so the kitten would give him a kiss… After weeks of conditioning — using treats as rewards and “a lot of repetition,” says Payne — the trainers were able to coax the kittens into performing many of the stunts without any CGI help at all, including a scene in which Keanu sprints through a gunfight (the cats were taught to dodge exploding squibs). “The studio said, ‘You’re going to do all CGI for this right?'” said Atencio of the shootout scene. “And I said, ‘No, we have to use real cats. You have to see the cuteness!'”

Cats don’t like to wear hats: One of the toughest tricks was getting the cats to wear hats; the trainers taught them to tolerate the headgear by feeding them treats whenever they slipped them on (the bling was lightweight plastic and less annoying to wear).

The kittens were treated like stars: On set, says Payne, the kittens “were treated like little stars.” Potential cast and crew were all asked if they had any cat allergies (it turns out Key is allergic to cats, but was able to use medicine on set), and the kittens served as the on-set therapists. “If anybody was having a bad day, they’d send them over to the kittens,” says Payne. “Everybody loved the cats.” An American Humane Association rep was on the set at all times, and there were no injuries to cat or human (aside from some playful kitten scratches).

[From THR]

After the film wrapped, all of the kittens – which were brought in from shelters – were adopted and taken to forever homes. One of the actresses, Tiffany Haddish, took one (she named her kitten Catatonic), and the cat-trainer took home three of the kitties. I’d also like to say that I hope to one day be involved with KITTEN AUDITIONS. OMG. Also, I can’t believe they trained kittens to do all of that stunt work.

Key & Peele also did an absolutely hilarious Reddit AMA – go here to read. They got tons of questions and references to their Key & Peele sketches, but they didn’t get annoyed by it at all – they happily played along with the exchange about “p—sy on the chainwax” and that bit is still… perfect. PERFECT. I giggled to myself throughout the AMA!!! Really carve out some time and enjoy it.

Photos courtesy of WENN.