Miaow!

Originally published 4 October 2010

Happy Hogmanay!

This was the strip that launched the cat flap. We won’t get to see the entire cat flap saga here, before the strip starts up again, but take a look at GoComics and scroll back to 4 October to read the entire story in the right order

Another Brick in the Wall Part Two

Originally published 19 November 2010

The question I set the readers when this first came out was ‘how many other well known LP covers can you see in this strip’? There are a few red herrings, but there are definitely four recognisable ones, and two obscured ones. Answers below. Wipe over the following space to reveal them

Frame 1: Beatles, Sgt Pepper (under Smith’s rear paws)
Paul Simon: Graceland (under Sgt Pepper)
Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon (under Smith’s front paws)
Frame 2: Beatles: With the Beatles (UK edition) (in front of Smith)
Pet Shop Boys: Introspective (under With the Beatles)
Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells (under Smith’s tail)

Incidentally, I think The Wall is the most overrated album ever recorded. I think I can only take one side of Roger Walter’s whinefest at a time, and there are four ruddy sides of his passive aggressive self pity to wade through. If you’ve never heard it, don’t bother. Like most of the works of Frank Zappa, the idea of it is much better than the reality.

3am

This happens every night in the Pilcher household. Billy and Bella still retain their standoffishness during the day, refusing to be picked up and spurning outstretched hands of welcome, but at night it all changes. At 2 or 3 in the mining both cats will leap on to the bed, purring the heads off, and demanding our attention. We’ve learned the best way to deal with it is to sleep with one arm outside the bedclothes, then we can pet them as demanded, with the minimum of disturbance. I swear Linda’s worked out how to scratch Billy’s head and still keep sleeping!

Sleeveface

Originally published 17 November 2010

This is like a memorial to a dead internet meme. Does anyone do this any more?

Coney gloom

Originally published 15 November 2010

Back to November for this one, New strips start again on Monday 6th January, so I’m now putting in stand-alones I haven’t run in this blog until then, rather than republishing a storyline that won’t ever get finished. And Scrumpy, the grey rabbit of melancholy, always goes down well.

I'd better get drawing again I suppose...

Vooooooo

Originally published 29 December 2010

This was the first appearance of the Smith vs the Vaccuum Cleaner trope, based on Cholmondeley’s abject terror of our Dyson. In fact the only cat I’ve ever known to be totally undisturbed by vacuums was Smudge. She was a cat you had to vacuum around.

Christmas wrapping

Originally published 27 December 2010

It’s Chrrrriiiiiisssstttmmaaaaaaassssss! A very Merry Christmas / Holidays / Kwanzaa / Festivus / Winterval / Yule / Convenient excuse to get drunk (delete all which do not apply) to you all. And don’t forget to leave the discarded wrapping laying around for your cats to play with.

The Christmas No 1

Originally published 22 December 2010

Don’t worry, Jones won’t be the Christmas Number One. For a start, she’s never appeared on the X Factor, so she’s disqualified already.

I have felt your presents

Originally published 20 December 2010

It’s pointless wrapping presents for cats. Though it can be fun watching them rip into a loosely wrapped catnip mouse.

Going all Philip K Dick on your ass

One for all you comics philosophers out there: if only half a tree appears in a cartoon strip, does the rest of the tree actually exist? Is Smith’s home real or is it just set dressing that is assembled as required for each frame? By extension, how do we actually know the rest of the world beyond our vision is actually there, or is it a simulation assembled as required to give us the illusion of freedom? Happy Christmas.

I’d have some photos for you of Billy and Bella going bonkers in and around our Christmas Tree, but my camera’s run out of battery and I’ve left the charger in the States. (Assuming the States are really there, of course…) Bella’s favourite trick is to remove the tinsel while leaving all the ornaments undisturbed. That and playing with a particularly springy lower branch for hours on end.

Jones o’Lantern

Originally published 29 October 2010

Combining a traditional jack o lantern with cats’ penchant for squeezing themselves into completely unsuitable spaces.

Good meaty nourishment

Originally published 27 October 2010

Another gag recycled from 1981. The original tagline was “Ah yes, Wiskas is good meaty nourishment alright!”, echoing Wiskas’ cat food’s slogan of the time, but it got changed to something less libellous this time around. I’d like to point out that Wiskas does not contain any of the ingredients mentioned, unless theres yet another food labelling scandal pending which we don’t know about yet…

Halloween

Originally published 25 October 2010

How seasonal. This strip was a word perfect redraw of one I originally did in 1981. And I used the gag in a Millie cartoon in the early 90s as well. Where will it turn up next?

Fleas

Originally published 22 October 2010

I’ve skipped a month, as we’re getting near to Christmas. OK, it was an uploading error.

This was actually the closing strip in a sequence about Smith and hedgehog, which he considers to be like a Rubiks Cube for cats.

The hedgehog is, of course, called Martin. This will explain why.

Splat

Originally published 20 September 2010

Growing up around the apple orchards of Kent, I sort of got used to this. In Hastings the equivalent problem is seagulls.

Blackberries

Originally published 17 September 2010

I love blackberrying - I’m lucky enough to have a wood riddled with brambles on my doorstep. In good blackberrying session I can collect several kilos of the things. In fact we still have blackberries in the freezer that I collected last year. The one drawback about blackberries is that if they’re very ripe, they will burst as you try to pick them, and you’ll be left with mauve fingers for a couple of days.

Lost in bed

We have one of those memory foam matresses. My wife loves it - while I’ve grown to accept it over the years. Given the choice, I’d just have a futon and a duvet - nice and simple and hard as a steel plate under a layer of cotton. But that's not going to happen.

Therapy

Originally published 15 September 2010

I know it sounds simplistic, but this is good a way of getting rid of the blues as any. Given the voice between a session with a psychiatrist and a pile of leaves I’d say the pile of leaves wins hands down any day.

Scandinavian Noir

Originally published 13 September 2010

If I wasn’t doing reruns at the moment, I’d be running this strip upside down or playing some sort of practical joke today, what with it being Friday 13th.  But instead we have a Scrumpy strip, professing his love for the terminal gloom of Scandinavian Noir TV.

Actually, he’s referring to the BBC remake of the original Swedish shows, which occasionally break with tradition by having some scenes filmed while the sun is actually out. Another plus is that some of the shows have my old friend Roz Smith (under her stage name of Jessica Lloyd) playing Dr Malmstrom, the police mortician.

Carry on Columbus

Originally published 10 September 2010

I just like the bit of dialogue: “Ha! Superstitious peasant!” With hindsight, it's the little touches like that I like the most.

Way blocked

Originally published 8 September 2010

The internal monologue here is a bit too Snoopy for comfort - sometimes your influences come out a bit too obviously. I try to avoid the cats having solo ‘just pretend’ sessions now, but that doesn’t them getting together in groups every now and again and outvoting me.

Duvet day

Originally published 6 September 2010

Dedicated to the real Smudge, who would never let me change a duvet cover unaided.

Daisyfoot

Originally published 3 September 2010
This has nothing to do with this strip apart from the conjunction of a foot and daisy, but have you ever noticed how much dancers and choreographers  favour odd socks? I’ve spotted this trend a lot lately, doing shows with the Hastleons, where several of the girl dancers favour non-matching legs. The reason is quite simple - it helps to differentiate your left from your right in a visual way, which is a help if it takes even just a split second for your brain to process which direction is your stage right and which is merely your ordinary right. I saw this best exemplified by a choreographer called Emma when she was choreographing a show I was directing. She was a bit of a hippy and would dance barefooted, with a daily between the toes on her right foot. Thus, instead of invoking potentially confusing instructions like ‘to your left’ or ‘to my right’ or ‘stage right’, she would give instruction like ‘lead with your daisyfoot’, which everyone could understand.

Meta

Just playing with the medium.

Cats always land on their feet?

Originally published 1 September 2010

Yes. If they’re allowed to. Setting the template for several other stories over the following couple of years, this sequence ended with Smudge’s wall.

Pdoyyynng

Originally published 30 August 2010

An example of cartoon physics - I’m not sure that Jones would make that much of a difference to be honest. Anyone care to draw a moments diagram showing the forces involved?

Pinging the branch

Originally published 27 August 2010

Occasionally I have nothing to say except this this today’s cartoon. This os one of this days.

This is today’s cartoon.

Ha

Originally published 25 August 2010

This is essentially an old joke wrapped up in new clothes which acknowledge exactly how annoying that old joke was in the first place. Note the ’sound’ effects in the third panel - ROTFL ROTFL. I like doing silly stiff like that.

Cling

Originally published 23 August 2010

Note Smith’s prehensile tail.

You can tell I’m writing these blog entries against the clock before flying off to the States, can’t you? I’ll be flying back today, arriving at Heathrow tomorrow around noon.

n n n n n n n n

Originally published 20 August 2010

There are some stimuli that just can’t be resisted…

The Comet of the Century?

Remember the fuss that was being made about Comet Ison earlier this year? It was going to be the comet of the century. Its tail was going to be so long it would wrap three times around the planet. It was going to cause the end of the world and a plague of frogs. It was going to outshine the moon and be visible during daylight. It was possibly going to very bright. It was going to look not quite so bright but pretty bright nevertheless. It was going to look like a dim hairy star. It was going to look like a big smudge. It was going to be visible to the naked eye. At the time of writing (15 November) it might possibly be visible if you have very strong binoculars, a tripod, and a place to view it from which is at least 100 miles away from the nearest light source.

Nevertheless, lets pretend all that never happened. This strip was inspired by Smudge and Cholmondeley’s reaction to fireworks whenever they saw them through the front room windows. They loved them and tried to paw at them before they fizzled out. This was based on me imagining what their reaction would be to a comet which just hung there in the sky, the way that comets do. Well, the ones that can be bothered to put on a proper show anyway.