Were You at Pop Cats This Past Weekend?

If you’re a cat-loving human, we can only hope that you didn’t miss out on this past weekend’s Pop Cats exposition at the Palmer Events Center. Because, except that it (like most things) could’ve benefited from a few more actual cats in attendance, the event was just the sort of thing to get you purring with joy.

If you were there, you don’t need a recap of the experience or the featured speakers – Moshow the Cat Rapper, Tumblr’s meme librarian Amanda Brennan, the “Cattoo” artist Betty Rose, and more – to remind you of what a good and educational time it was, to rave about the amount of entertainment, information, and camaraderie-with-fellow-ailurophiles that supercharged the whole venue.

But, just in case, because now this inaugural Austin gig has passed and maybe there’ll be another one here next year, know that attending Pop Cats was like …

… well, it was like encountering a delightful conflagration of feline aficionados, animal welfare groups, and the vast part of Etsy that goes meow, is what it was like.

The expo encompassed a wealth of indoor acreage showcasing booth after booth of handcrafted DIY artworks and trinkets, interspersed with tables promoting professional cat-sitting services and suchlike, spiked with the outposts of rescue centers, with a few choice areas set aside for staging performances and informative talks. There was much strolling and merch-browsing going on, the crowds coalescing around tables stocked with a wild variety of cat toys and fashion accessories and printed T-shirts and original artwork, and there was, everywhere, rising and falling like a many-voiced tide of sound, conversation about cats. A person, who might feel a bit out-of-place when going on about their love of felis domesticus, ah, that person would feel right at home among the welcoming populace of Pop Cats.

So, how about Pop Cats 2019? Could this be an annual thing?

We don’t know the answer at press time … but we’re keeping our whiskers crossed.