From fashion choices to funny voices: Florida designer goes viral with cat videos

ORLANDO, Fla. – Lorena Pages went from working in the fashion design industry to becoming a full-time social media content creator — using her cats to create funny videos. She also uses her Hispanic heritage to give her content an extra twist and laughter.

“My main thing is the accent, the misunderstandings, everything we feel when we move to a different country,” Pages said. “All those boundaries and barriers, I kind of flip them into something humorous.”

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Pages is known for her humor and her funny voices on social media. Her cat, Tokyo, is the star in several of her videos. In 2019, the Venezuelan native ventured into the social media world, at first as a hobby, she said.

“I always loved creating comedy content for just me and my friends; I was a little bit shy about posting it online,” she said. “I decided just to give it a try and see if anybody liked it; I wasn’t sure anybody would but….”

To her surprise, Lorena’s humor piqued the interest of social media users.

“During quarantine, I was hanging out with my cats a lot, so I felt like they had a lot to say, so I started giving them voices or kind of like sharing their opinions or what I thought their opinions were, and then people started using those audios,” she said.

She remembered during quarantine, wardrobes were put on hold for many and that’s how one of her most used audios came to life being used by thousands. One user got millions of views with it.

“For a moment I was like, ‘oh maybe this could be an exciting viral Tik Tok audio.’ I didn’t think it would be like a global,” she recalled.

Lorena’s comedic talent goes back to her childhood.

“I grew up with a mother that was always kind of — would try to laugh at all — like at everything, even if we had issues, that was the way we like coped with everything,” she said.

When Lorena was 7 years old, she moved with her family from Venezuela to South Florida and began making videos with a friend.

“It was fun for both of us to see like the culture differences and our language barriers and our customs,” she said. “We started just making videos together because I had that language barrier so we would laugh a lot.”

Despite having worldwide exposure, with more than 1.3 million followers on Tik Tok and 241,000 on Instagram, Lorena said her loved ones keep her rooted.

“My family for sure and my friends and also realizing that nothing really changes with, I guess like followers or stuff like that. It’s more of like it makes me happy to know people are enjoying it,” she said.

She takes pride in her heritage and being able to unite different cultures through laughter.

“I love it, I love that I get to share a different culture and I get a lot of Americans that enjoy that and they’re understanding us more, like our point of view or our difficulties, and we can all kind of connect through humor,” she said. “I think every month is Hispanic Heritage Month for me, right? Because I live it every day.”

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