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Los Angeles Times

Pet Projects: Q&A with CatCon Founder Susan Michals

Every summer, thousands of cat lovers, artists, and feline celebrities descend on Pasadena for CatCon, a one-of-a-kind convention that's part art show, part adoption fair, and part community celebration of all things cat. Founded by journalist and producer Susan Michals, CatCon has grown in ten years from niche event into the country's biggest gathering for fans of felines. We talked with Susan to talk about the evolution of CatCon, the changing image of the 'cat person,' and why supporting small businesses and animal welfare is at the heart of it all. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Sure, I worked for years at E on shows like Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Live from the Red Carpet. I was lead producer for promos for 160 countries outside of the US. At the same time, I like to say you know this is LA, everybody has kind of a side hustle these days, two or three jobs. I really wanted to be a journalist, and I worked for Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Huffington Post. But it wasn't my ticket out of my day job, because, as a freelance journalist it doesn't really pay that well. So I moved from celebrity into the art world because I have an art background. And the first show I created was Cat Art Show. That debuted in 2014 with established artists—my headliners were Shepard Fairey, Mark Wright and Gary Baseman, all LA-based artists. And then I had emerging artists as well. 4000 people showed up at that show, and I realized that this was a demographic of cat lovers that was not being represented. At that point, the only thing on the feline landscape was really the breeder shows, sort of the best of breed, the Westminster Dog Show kind of thing. But regular cat fans were not being represented. Many of these fans were a younger demographic. And so I thought, you know what? I want to do a bigger show, like a convention that would appeal to them, and I needed to curate it like an art show. I decided I wanted to do information, education and entertainment. Because what I found is that people really wanted to learn a lot about their animals, and you can make even a topic like 'clipping your cat's nails' sexy if you have the right speaker, the right title, and a dynamic person on stage to talk about what this means. The first year, there was only three of us working on this. I curated all the exhibitors. I had people apply. I put together a workshop schedule, a celebri-cat schedule. I wanted it to be immersive as well, and so I thought up activations and I pitched sponsors and sort of brought it all together. I will say is that my experience working in production and as a journalist really lent itself to putting on a convention, because it is a production in its own right. I brought on people that had done trade shows and worked Comic Con and the Toy Fair to really help me build this show from the ground up, and they are still with me to this day. It's very important for me to offer opportunity to small businesses. Very, very important. It goes back to the Cat Art Show of emerging and established artists. Big sponsors help to support us and finance the show, but it's very important to me in this curatorial process of picking exhibitors to support those that are on Etsy. Those that are small businesses and give them the opportunity to showcase their wares and their talents. And it was also very important for us to give back to the city of Pasadena and Altadena. We have been, as a community, ravaged by the recent fires, and Pasadena Humane is still boarding animals that their owners have not found a place to live. They're continuing to board and support the people of this community by taking care of their animals. Pasadena Humane and the city of Pasadena have been so good to us. Los Angeles in general for the past 10 years, but specifically Pasadena since 2017. There's this—and it's still very present—this negative association with cat ownership, the crazy cat lady. Cat ladies are 60 plus, hoarders, spinsters, Grey Gardens, Dickensian characters. They live with 1000 cats, smell like cat pee, and are unmarried, right? I will tell you that through the years I get asked two questions every time I say I run a cat convention. The first question is, 'How many cats do you have?' And I say one, and people are shocked. I have one cat and one dog. And a second question that I get asked, which I think is really actually rude, but it's what I get asked, is, 'Are you married?' Every time I say I am between husbands at the moment, but that's not what defines me. And what I found is that, over the years, with CatCon, I think we've made a significant dent in what it means to be a cat person. It's when you put the word crazy in front of cat lady that has the negative connotation. When you say Catwoman versus cat lady, what do you think of? Catwoman—strong and fierce and independent, right? Sexy, right? When you look at the word cat lady, it's the exact opposite—somebody that you don't want to be with, somebody that isn't empowered. What we've seen over the years with CatCon is the rise of a different cat lady. It is a combination of empowerment, passion, enthusiasm, and independence. Our convention is not just cat food and cat litter. We had Petfinder there talking about adoptions. We have people that are bringing the latest in cat tech in water fountains and smart litter boxes and AI and all these different things. We have people that are creating clothing for humans that is cat-centric. We had a fashion show on Saturday called Project Catwalk, where people were given the idea of elevating the cat lady. What I love about CatCon is: there's no dog park for the cat person, right? There's no place to commune, and it's a community of people that come together to share one single purpose: that they love kitties. Animals give us such wonderful unconditional love and it's my job to create something year after year that people want to come back for. There are so many celebrities that are cat lovers and we're right here in Los Angeles so we get a lot of visits from the stars. We had Jake Johnson there. Matt Groening from The Simpsons was there. Lisa Loeb was there. Alexandra Shipp, Seth Green. David Dastmalchian was there from MurderBot and Dexter. He came with his family, and Gilles Marini comes all the time. It's amazing to see them show up and support the event, to help raise our profile and get the word out. With the advent of the adventure cat, of which we had a number at CatCon, it's no longer that cats are just indoor creatures. Now, I would say the majority of them are still very much indoor creatures, but we are seeing this definitive will see hotels that say pet friendly and you have to see if they take cats specifically but a lot more have started to. Hyatt, Sheraton, case by case, they're starting to accept cats, because we are seeing this uptick in people taking their cats with them when they travel. The adventure cats that come to CatCon are like Hollywood child stars. They've been doing this since they were little, so they're used to this sort of thing, the crowds and the attention. We have all these kitties this year who did meet and greets, and they average 100 meet and greets per hour. We had two cats, Sponge Cake and Buttercream. They travel with their owners all over the world in a backpack. They just got back from Venice and they've got 2 million followers. What I know about Hollywood and sort of the way we live now is you can do a phenomenal job, but every year you've got to up the ante. And I welcome that challenge, because I want to keep it fresh. And that's why I work on CatCon all year round, because I'm looking for what's going to make this audience come back. What's going to make them happy, and what's going to help them make a better life for them and their pets. I spoke at South by Southwest in 2019, and I really loved it. And I would really love to do a TED Talk eventually. I love public speaking. And I thought, you know, there's really nothing out there for cat people in—I mean, sure you can watch TikTok videos, you can watch a YouTube video, but how do I continue to bring the community together in person? So what I decided to do was to create this sort of salon environment called The Meow Factor. We did something about my—basically, my cat's a celebrity, and how I'm dealing with that. We did something on cat portraiture. And then we did something with Nathan the Cat Lady and Sterling the Trap King about trap neuter return. I'm creating more of a salon setting. It's not 300 people, it's 50 people so there's better engagement and opportunity to ask more questions. I've already done it at Annenberg Pet Space, and it's something that I'm looking at branching out across the country. Once I get a little bit of rest after CatCon, I'm definitely going to continue on my kitty trajectory. It's going to be sometime next year. January 2024 was 10 years, and I do it every two, so at some point next year. I don't know where it'll be or precisely when, but stay tuned!