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Yes, Your Cat Can Get A Movie Deal

This is a cat who appears in a perfectly lovely piece of stock photography but who, as far as we know, lacks a movie deal. Get on it, Wet Cat!
iStockphoto.com
This is a cat who appears in a perfectly lovely piece of stock photography but who, as far as we know, lacks a movie deal. Get on it, Wet Cat!

"Mr. Lashes, 34 years old, is an agent for Internet cats."

That's a quote from The Wall Street Journal in an article about Ben Lashes, who recently landed a movie deal for Grumpy Cat, the online sensation rapidly becoming an industry. G-Cat has a book deal, too, and is at BookExpo America this week to promote it. You know, like any author.

Lashes was also Keyboard Cat's agent. Remember Keyboard Cat?

Apparently, none of this is made up.

I really don't know what to tell you about the phenomenon of Internet cats having an agent that specializes in their unique needs, but any story that includes the story of how an agent told a man to replace his dead cat with a new cat in order to make more YouTube videos must be read to be believed.

In the meantime, I suggest you go home and say something about all this to your cat. "Fluffy," you should say, "while you are sitting here eating and using the litterbox and purring, other cats are participating in the march of global online commerce and helping to pay the bills."

If you have children, they probably already have ideas about how to capitalize on your cat's charm. I know my sister and I were visionaries in our interest in creating Unwillingly Wearing A Party Hat Cat and Unwillingly Riding On Its Back In A Toy Baby Carriage Trapped Under Several Stuffed Animals Cat.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.

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