In response the question about the lack of any 'small animal meet and greet' panel at either of the big cons (ie. AX, Otakon, Famine, etc.)
A 'small animal meet and greet' was held at some of the smaller, more local cons this year. As for the larger cons:
There is no 'one reason' and anyone who says there is 'one reason' is overstating it. Sometimes I get PMs from people who seem like they are trying to 'make a statement'. Really the purpose of this board is not that, it's a Q&A board. If you ask your question in a straightforward way, you will get a good and straightforward answer.
Otakon is fan-friendly but they are far away and the small animals are rather busy this year, there wasn't the will to travel that far. Not being at Otakon has nothing to do with any problems with the Otakon staff, leadership, or Otakon in general. They just didn't feel any compelling reason to be there. I guess you could say the pig was the main driving force behind getting the rest of the small animals motivated to show up at Otakon in prior years. Famine is the same way -- too far away. I know people will say that it is much closer than Otakon, but as far as small animals are concerned, they're both 'very far away'.
AX is more local and I know some people might have thought they were going to do a panel 'for sure' this year. So that wasn't really a problem, but apparently AX is having their own budgetary problems this year. At least that's the idea you'd get if you asked Mikey to elaborate. Mikey was very insistent that the convention provided fresh fruits and vegetables from a local store and that there was no way that local food provided by convention stands or 'fast food' restaurants would suffice. This should come as common knowledge to anyone who keeps small animals, that it's always important to have a good supply of fresh, edible food on hand. But Bobby, the staff member assigned to coordinate the event with Mikey was apparently not listening and kept passing over the food issue. He kept dismissing Mikey with "Yeah we'll figure something out" and other messages like that. As if this wasn't enough, when Mikey finally did pin Bobby down and get him to agree on a small budget that could be used to buy carrots, romaine lettuce, and mini peppers from a nearby supermarket, and provide the small animals with a volunteer to actually make the purchase, transport them, and wash them on-site - Bobby did agree to this but the next day Bobby was gone and replaced another staff member, Chris. Now this Chris guy was totally clueless, it was obvious he'd never done a small animal event before and he kept asking Mikey things like "Exactly what do you guys do...?" Mikey would patiently answer each question and explain the event to him in detail but then the issue of food came up again. When Mikey explained that Bobby had already agreed to budget for food and agreed to provide a volunteer, Chris balked and said unfortunately that wouldn't be possible (apparently there's also a shortage of volunteers). Not too long after that, Chris informed Mikey the panel had been moved to a smaller room, that only one podium with a fixed mike would be provided and that he (Mikey) would have to bring his own tables for the small animals to stand on. This was just too much for Mikey and Mikey said no, that the small animals were pulling out and no longer wanted to do the panel.
Afterwards Mikey did hear of Chris trying to ask some of the individual small animals (that Mikey normally answers for) if they wanted to be part of the event and that individually they all answered no. So that was pretty much the end of that.
As for when the next "small animal meet and greet" panel will be, I would personally guess ALA which is typically in the first half of January.
Oh one more thing that is absolutely not true. A number of people kept asking me if Mikey was the third 'mystery musical guest' who was going to be at the concert with Megumi Nakajima and May'n on Friday in the Nokia Theatre. In fact I was asked this by four seperate people in multiple PMs. I think it's safe to say that the answer is a big NO, and I wish people would get off this rumor. No idea where that one came from, you know the old saying about rumors, the more 'patently ridiculous' they are, the farther they go. That one needs to stop here.