“I think I, in my own small way, contributed to making cats more awesome.” After visiting his home, and reading his new book, Guys Can Be Cat Ladies Too , it’s not hard to see why.
This is Michael Showalter with his cat Louise. Michael is a cat lady.
Emily Berl for BuzzFeed
It's 8:30 in the morning, and Michael Showalter is balancing a coffee in one hand while he opens the door to let me in with the other. He looks nervous, but not about spilling his coffee. "Come in, please," he smiled, "otherwise they'll run out." He was talking about his cats. There are four of them, sharing a Hollywood home with him and his wife. I'm introduced to each.
Tim is the only boy, and the only black cat. Sally just likes to sleep and eat. The sweetheart is Louise, she's everyone's favorite. And Billie, who was quite shy at first, "is somewhere hiding, I would assume," he said, looking up the stairs. "Billie is a girl," he clarified. "William, we gave her a boy's name." His face warmed, like a proud parent.
Showalter is best known for his roles on Wet Hot American Summer, and the TV series Stella, but he moved to Los Angeles from New York two months ago to write on Rebel Wilson's new show, Super Fun Night. He agreed to meet with me before setting off to the writer's room. I wanted to talk about his upcoming book, Guys Can Be Cat Ladies Too. It's not his first published book; in 2012 he published Mr. Funny Pants: A Memoir of False Starts. But this is the first book that deals exclusively with his love of cats — and his secret life as a closeted cat lady.
Showalter had to buy extra seats on the plane so all of his cats could sit next to him.
"We flew all of them with us," his eyes widened at the memory. "You put them under the seat — each of them in their own separate carrier — and you store them underneath your seat. We bought four tickets. So we had four seats on the plane for us, and our four dumb cats."
