Liz Miele, author of the book Why Cats Are Assholes, describes herself as a “cat comedian.” That’s why her favorite Charlottesville place to visit was The Cat House, the Downtown Mall’s most reliable home decor source for a self-professed crazy cat lady.
“I just feel like someday, someone will discover my body, because, you know, I won’t have anybody,” says Miele. “And my cat will have eaten my face, and then they’ll be like, we should just save it as it is and let people see she was a decent comedian, who lived with her own thoughts, and this is how it ended up. And it will be like a museum-slash-cautionary tale.”
The Cat House has closed, but Miele returns to Charlottesville on November 6 as a headliner in the 10th annual United Nations of Comedy Tour. New on this tour are a few Miele-approved COVID-19 safety measures.
“Some things shouldn’t be the same [as they were before],” Miele says. “I hate shaking hands with men. I just think they’re gross. Honestly, as somebody that works with mostly men, it’s been really nice not to have to shake their hand.”
Prior to Charlottesville, Miele spent her current run of shows joking with crowds everywhere from Richmond, where the fashion choices of a polo-shirted front row guest invited a roasting, to Forth Worth, Texas, where she promised the audience there would be no sex with any of them that night, as she’d like to leave the state with her uterus intact.
At the Paramount she’ll be laughing about the pandemic, sex, and breakups, but her signature cat comedy has recently taken a sad turn—Miele’s beloved companion Pasta, the subject of frequent jokes during her pre-COVID shows, passed away after a recent move.
“I move in, three days later my parents drop her off, and two days later she died,” says Miele. “It was pretty bad. I was like, cool, way to change the mojo in my new apartment, Pasta.”
Three months later, Miele is ready to love again. In her search for a new cat, she’s recruited scouts to look for a male, non-black, “chill” cat.
“I gave my friends a bunch of interview questions,” says Miele. “I was like okay, there’s a bump in the night. Do you bite whatever’s closest to you, do you hiss, or do you just cuddle harder? There is a correct answer. Please ask every kitten.”
These careful requirements for the future Tater Tots—although Coupons and Mrs. Nesbitt were close runners-up for potential names—are designed to protect the legacy of the female, black, un-chill Pasta watching from photo frames around the apartment.
“She died over a month ago, and I’m so worried I’m gonna get this kitten and then people are gonna treat me like that guy whose wife dies and he’s married to a younger woman three months later,” says Miele.
As the cat interviews get underway, Miele, who’s been featured on Comedy Central, NPR, and Hulu, and gone viral on YouTube and TikTok, is hard at work on her next animal-related project. She plans to branch out into the world of the hour-long TV dramedy. The historical details of her script, about animals and medicine set in the 1960s, will take some research, but Miele’s veterinarian parents taught her the main theme by heart.
After completing her current set of North American shows, Miele, who has also starred in a web series and done an hour-long YouTube comedy special, will return to Europe, where she was packing houses before the pandemic sent her back to New York City. The comedian attributes her international success to two things: other countries’ Hollywood-enhanced familiarity with American accents, and the global relatability of her New York neuroticism. Audience members of her show in Karachi, the 12th-largest city in the world, may live in Pakistan, but jokes about stop-and-go traffic and over-friendly commuters land just like they would with any city-dwelling American.
“City people become a certain type of people,” Miele says. “My aggression or impatience is all very relatable to any city, no matter where you are. Bangkok and New York City are going to have a lot more in common than New York City and West Virginia.”
In addition to the absurdity of the modern city, Miele says cat comedy—in which furry companions like Pasta are vehicles for jokes about love, loss, and trauma—holds an emotional universal appeal for people, no matter what dog owners might say.
“No one gets a cat,” says Miele. “Basically, something bad has to happen to you, and then cats just kind of fall into your life. I say that everyone’s one bad breakup away from owning a cat, whether you like them or not.”
United Nations of Comedy
November 6
The Paramount Theater
* Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the date of the United Nations of Comedy event as November 26.
