Cute Things Falling Asleep

OMG, y'all, look at the puppies! They are sooo cute! And kittens! And ponies and bear cubs and fluffy bunny rabbits and little yellow ducklings!

The Puppycam may be over, but thankfully, the blog Cute Things Falling Asleep is still going strong. Want to see a baby chick pass out atop a slice of bread (yeah, we don't know why either)? A narcoleptic dachshund? How about a baby polar bear sleeping next to a plush, stuffed polar bear? Cute Things Falling Asleep might be the most adorable time waster since Animal Planet began hosting puppy sporting events.

As a comedy writer, Nick Malis (whose credits include Curb Your Enthusiasm and Mind of Mencia) has a lot of downtime. He began posting videos of sleepy cute things in 2006, but nobody really took notice until a month ago. More and more websites started linking to him, and then came the news outlets. "CNN called, and suddenly I found myself on Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," says Malis. "I was like, 'Do you realize there's a war going on?'" (See pictures of animals in love.)

Malis combs YouTube and other websites for videos, then rates the animals on cuteness and sleepiness scales from 1 to 5. The younger and fluffier the animal, and the harder it fights off slumber, the higher the rating. Some animals are at a disadvantage. In fact, he's never given anything the coveted 5 rating. "I would love to see a 5 animal," he says, "but I don't know what one would look like."

So does he ever get complaints? "I once rated a baby a 2, and the mother wrote me and said, 'I think my baby is more than a 2.' " Malis refused to change the rating. "My attitude is this: I didn't make your baby a 2 — you did. It just happens to be a 2. That's what it is; I'm sorry."

Low ratings aside, there's nothing on Cute Things Falling Asleep that isn't adorable. One visit and the site will have you cooing like a 12-year-old girl at a petting zoo.

See the top 10 animal stories of 2008.

See pictures of animals in space.