Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? (True Adventures in Cult Fandom) by Allyson Beatrice

Author:Allyson Beatrice
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Sourcebooks Trade, ISBN-13: 9781402208454
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Celebrity Pussy

One day while meditating (slacking) in front of my computer at work, I got a call from the mighty Joss Whedon’s office. It was Kern, one of Whedon’s assistants, and he sounded mildly desperate.

“Do you know anyone who wants a cat?”

In my world, this question sets off the same firing of defense neurons that happens when a stranger on a bus asks,

“Would you like to attend our church’s open house on Sunday?” Any answer other than “yes” is going to set off a conversation in which I will be assaulted with guilt. It’s hard to say no to an animal, when you know the alternative is that the critter will likely be gassed at the local shelter or live a vampirepeople_internals 6/6/07 8:12 PM Page 134

Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?

miserable life in a tiny cage being poked at every week on Pet Adoption Day in front of a grocery store at a strip mall.

I have a cat, a rescue named Ruby who hates other cats the way I hate other people. I’m content with Ruby, and would no more bring home another cat than she would bring home another human. Mutual respect, that. I thought of Ruby and said I couldn’t take the cat, but I’d ask around and get back to him if anyone wanted the soon-to-be-evicted feline.

Kern pleaded that this was a hugely time-sensitive issue, since the couple who owned the animal had just had a baby who was recently diagnosed with a severe allergy to cats.

My brain is slow on the uptake in the morning. It took me a minute to remember that Joss and his wife just had a baby.

So I asked, “Whose cat is it?”

He quickly, nervously replied, “A friend, why do you need to know?” Defensive.

I stifled laughter. It was ten a.m. on a workday. He was determined to find a home for this cat and wasn’t using the silent, private communication method of web-based email. I’m an assistant, I know all the signs. This was an assigned task. This was his boss’s cat. I’m unsure why Kern was reluctant to tell me the truth about the cat. Maybe he thought that by not admitting it, he had some sort of plausible deniability thing going in case Joss would later waterboard him for cat adoption intel.

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Since there was a sick child involved, I let him know that I had a friend who ran a nonprofit cat rescue who might have some alternatives given the gravity of the situation.

In the same microsecond it took to hang up the phone, I was instant messaging my partner in fandom follies, Kristen,

“Dude, have I got a story for YOU.”

As it turned out, Kristen and I did have a mutual friend, Amanda, who was trying to convince her husband, Brad, to let her adopt a cat. Brad was on the fence about the whole thing, but Kristen said she’d make the call and see if the cat’s shiny background would help clinch the deal.

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