The first rule of Meow Meetup: When other attendees ask about your Instagram, it’s a trick question. What they’re inquiring about isn’t you—sorry, human—it’s your cat’s social media presence.
But what kind of emperors will these tiny carnivorous mammals make? I must admit that, as a brand-new owner of a kitten, I left the meet-up feeling a bit insecure. Remember when ownership was mostly a matter of taking care of your cat’s sustenance, shelter, litter box, and in exchange for—if you’re lucky—some affection?
Meow Meetup
No longer. Feline-obsessed grassroots communities born on the Internet have grown and spawned celebrity cats with millions of followers who get book and movie deals and appearance fees at the cat-themed conventions, which keep springing up around North America since the debut of CatCon in Los Angeles in 2015. To keep up, cat enthusiasts must now serve as their creatures’ PR person, social media manager, and marketing executive.
I strolled over to celebrity cat’s Chuck the Duck’s booth to meet the Lakeview-based Instagram star, but the 11-year old orange tabby was on break in his hotel room, said his owner Cody VandeZande. Four years ago, , a professional hairdresser, started to dress up his cat in elaborate costumes and post pictures of them online. One in particular, of Chuck wearing hair extensions in imitation of went viral, and he now has 11,500 Instagram followers. Not bad for a former barn cat from rural Wisconsin.
She taped the resulting event on a GoPro and the video of a black-and-white colored kitty named Oreo slinking around or on top of Skaluba and other women as they made catlike poses earned 13 million views on YouTube and inspired what’s become a nationwide phenomenon: Cat Yoga. “I still get contacted from media outlets about it,” said Skaluba. “Recently it was BBC Russia.”
