Cats

You will recall that last week I put a trailer together for The Brink of Fame, the second book in the Emily Daggett Weiss mystery series, the one where our intrepid heroine is forced to go to pre-WWI Hollywood and search for a missing silent film star. To my eye, the trailer is charming and totally deserves to go viral. So far, however, the trailer has been viewed only twenty-four times, probably twenty of those times by me.

I went to a party last Saturday — a Burns Night party, awash with single-malt Scotch — and began to complain about my lack of exposure to anyone who would listen. "Does your trailer have cats in it?" someone said. "People like to look at cats on YouTube. You should put cats in your trailer."

"Cats! Brilliant! I'll take a pound of catnip and a video camera to Tabby's Place (a nearby shelter for sick and unwanted cats), get all the cats stoned, and take videos of them frolicking and romping!"

"Great. You can tell them you came to adopt a cat, but your husband is very choosy, and you have to photograph them so that he can look at them."

That would explain the camera. But the catnip — Wait. Would that be ethical, to take catnip to the animal shelter? Or would it be like taking a pound of marijuana to a juvenile home? Should people even give catnip to their own cats? Doesn't that make junkies out of them? Surely that would be wrong.

As I was pondering these issues, another of the party guests pointed out that some cats react badly to catnip, turn into mean drunks, as it were, and that many cats at Tabby's Place were on medications that might cause dangerous interactions.

"Oh, go ahead," my husband said. "Only make sure you take your cell phone, so that you can call me from jail."

Upon sober reflection I gave up the Tabby's Place idea. I'm still looking for goofy footage of cats, however. I have six months to get this book into the public eye. The Cat Trailer may well be my next step.

— Kate Gallison