Seattle cat convention 'busted' by activist who thought it was a furry event
Activist Jake Lang filmed himself outside Sea-Meow in Seattle and claimed he had 'busted up' a furry convention. Staff had to explain: it was a convention for cats. Actual cats.
There are many ways to tell whether you have stumbled into a cat convention. The giant sign reading “Sea-Meow” is one. The kittens from local shelters are another. And then there’s the member of staff in cat ears, politely explaining: “This is a convention for cats.”
That was the scene outside Sea-Meow, an all-ages cat festival at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall (7–8 November), when Jake Lang – the activist and pardoned 6 January Capitol defendant – turned up shouting. In a video he posted on 8 November, he claimed to have “BUSTED UP” a “FURRY CONVENTION” that was sexualising children. There is no evidence for his allegations.
AI illustration – the audience was not won over. Not the actual event.
So what had he actually found? According to the organisers, a few people in fluffy fur suits who had just taken part in the festival’s cat-themed costume contest. The rest of the programme was about as wholesome as it gets: cat rescuers, adoptable kittens, a talk by cat behaviourist Jackson Galaxy, and 15% of ticket proceeds going to charities such as Seattle Animal Shelter and Feral Care.
“We honestly were quite confused when he showed up, shouting outside of the event,” the organisers told Newsweek. They told Snopes they asked him to leave and he complied: “It was honestly a very short interaction and most people did not know this even happened until the video was posted.”
AI illustration – what was really going on inside (roughly). (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
The clip passed 6.5 million views on X, where a Community Note gently pointed out that it was, in fact, a cat festival. Sea-Meow has asked for an apology, saying a minimum of research would have shown he was “barking up the wrong tree”. Newsweek contacted Lang for comment.
The cats, as far as we know, have not commented. They rarely do.
Sources: Snopes (Rae Deng, 10 November 2026), Newsweek (Sam Stevenson, 11 November 2026) and PinkNews (12 November 2026).
Images: main photo – “View from the Space Needle” by SecretName101, August 2019, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped; representative, not the event). Illustrations: Gorilla Gazette / AI-generated.
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