It’s probably no secret by now that season two of My Cat from Hell, staring tattooed rock star cat behaviorist Jackson Galaxy, is premiering this weekend on Animal Planet. But what you may not have known is that some of the best-known cat bloggers across the Internet have joined forces not only to promote the show but to find out who Jackson Galaxy really is.
What makes a guy like Galaxy, whose life started with a theater degree and a dream of making music for the masses, become a cat-loving guy with a knack for solving bizarre kitty behavior problems? What does he do when he’s not filming episodes of the show? What’s his greatest passion in life?
And how did this mass publicity campaign, which I’ve decided to call the Week of the Cat Daddy, come to be?
Well, it all started on December 29, when Kate Benjamin of the Moderncat blog wrote a post about the upcoming premiere of My Cat from Hell. The closing words of her post were, “I want you to be watching on January 7, but I want to help you spread the word to others outside the inner circle of cat lovers.”
This call to action inspired a whole bunch of bloggers, myself among them, who had watched the three episodes of the first season, to do what we could to promote the show. After all, the whole reason the show was renewed is that cat lovers all across the country, and probably all around the world, contacted Animal Planet and begged them to bring Galaxy back for another season.
You might think that if a whole bunch of people are writing on one subject, interviewing the same individual, that the same content would appear in every single one of those posts. But that wasn’t the case at all each blogger had a different angle for her (all the bloggers who participated are women) story, and each one showed a different facet of America’s favorite cat daddy.
So who blogged and who wrote about what? Read on!
Sally Bahner of Exclusively Cats started the ball rolling on December 29 with her post, “Tune in Jan. 7 for Jackson Galaxy Redux.”
Hot on her heels was Ingrid King, author of the award-winning website The Conscious Cat. On December 30, she shared her interview about what My Cat From Hell viewers can expect in Season 2.
After a brief hiatus for the New Year’s weekend, my interview, “More Than Meets the Camera: An Interview with Jackson Galaxy,” went live. Multimedia blogger and animal welfare advocate Lisa Richman wrote about the amazingly positive impact a show like this can have to save feline lives.
Wednesday saw a blitz of publicity including a post on Catster’s The Cat’s Meow blog;an interview by Deb Barnes of the award-winning Zee and Zoey blog, in which Galaxy recounted some of his most intriguing cases;and an article on the Anipal Times website.
On Thursday, Angie Bailey of Catladyland shared her interview in a post with the intriguing title “My Cat from Hell‘s Jackson Galaxy Talks Cats, Music, Zen, and Airplane-Weeping.”
On the same day, another award-winning blogger and cat rescuer, Robin Olson of Covered in Cat Hair, wrote “Jackson Galaxy Is My Copilot,” in which she and Galaxy discussed how Galaxy figures out what’s causing the strange behavior (“In some ways, Jackson IS like Dr. House, but he’s NOT a fictional character.”) In another cool twist of fate, Robin and her rescue allies in Georgia had just pulled a cat from a high-kill shelter and put together a plan to bring him north to her home in Connecticut, where he stands a much better chance of adoption. She decided to name this huge white love-kitty Jackson,in honor of her favorite cat behaviorist.
And this morning, Sparkle the Designer cat, another of my favorite feline bloggers, wrote her own post about the upcoming premiere. I’m sure more Jackson Galaxy articles will appear today, too, and I’ll post them here as I find them.
This just in: Blogging cat Gracey, The Tiniest Tiger, just shared her interview with Jackson Galaxy on the importance of letting cats be cats — and engaging in frequent play sessions!
Caroline Golon of the Happy Litterbox website has announced that Galaxy is going to share his “litterbox wizard” skills every Friday and answer readers’ questions about their feline friends’ cat-box issues.
Also today, the amazingly talented (as in, I wish I’d had my act together like that when I was a senior in high school) Rachel Shubin posted her interview with Jackson Galaxy in her blog, We Have a Situation; and Mousebreath editor Karen Nichols shared a video interview in her post, “Jackson Galaxy says, ‘Hunt. Catch. Kill. Eat.’“
I should point out here that none of us were paid to do these interviews and write these posts. We did it because we believe in what Jackson Galaxy is doing and we want to support his efforts and his show because in the end, all of us want to save cats’ lives and help them find good homes (or live in well-managed colonies, if they’re feral cats).
Stock up on snacks and kitty treats and get ready for an awesome evening. The season two premiere of My Cat from Hell airs on Animal Planet tomorrow, Saturday, Jan. 7, at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time. There’s even going to be a Twitter party during the show; if you want to join, use the hashtag #TeamCatMojo.
