It’s winter – The house is sealed against the cold and every time I have a shower the windows steam up. This annoys Bella as she can’t see out any more, so she has learned to wipe her body against the glass to remove the condensation. Luckily, the real cat that stares at stuff hasn’t learned to climb onto our balcony so he/she can peer in on us. Yet.
I’m surprised to find how popular this series of finger-wagging strips has been – the cartoon doesn’t normally get shared on Facebook but these ones have been promiscuously shared from the GoComics site. I always thought these were fairly weak cartoons saying obvious things in an obvious way. It just goes to show that that last person who should be consulted about the worth of his work should be the author!
A full cast of cats appears in the last frame, with three extras.
To the bottom left you can find one of Val Ware’s cats from the Paws for Thought strip. I’m not an aficionado of one panel strips normally but I love this one. When it first started I thought it was just going to be a bit of Hallmark Cards style sentimentality, but it’s grown into so much more. On one day you might get a piece of fine art recast to star a ginger cat, a piebald cat and a boxer dog – the next you’ll find a well observed bit of animal behaviour – and then an illustrated bit of philosophy. Try it. Work your way thru the back catalogue – it works best in bulk.
Fluffy from Snow Sez is directly behind The Cat That Stares At Stuff. Snow will be promoted to the GoComics main page soon, and about time too!
The tortoiseshell-and-white cat lying on the window ledge is a drawing of my first cat, Sunday. She had so many beautiful colours in her fur that she was perfect as an illustration of what this strip is about.
The Cat Who Stares at Stuff, that’s who.
Sometimes a drawing comes flowing out of your pen that is just right. Panel 4 is one such drawing. That’s a T-shirt contender. I also had fun in the first three panels depicting Smith’s expression using just the eyes.
The Elf on the Shelf, a Christmas tradition stretching way back to about 2005, selling the idea of supernatural surveillance to those who are too young for full strength religion. It’s time to give the little sod a taste of his own medicine courtesy of The Cat That Stares at Stuff.
Please keep your animals indoors tonight folks, it’s not safe for them to be out, and those bangs can be terrifying if you don’t know what they are. Different animals have different responses to fireworks. Smudge used to love them, and would watch them from the window sill, pawing at the starbursts that blossomed in the sky. Bella is unconcerned. Billy hides in the wardrobe for the duration.