Can you handle the cute?

 I've found some old photos of Smudge and Cholmondely from when they were kittens. I'd put them at about four months old here. Here they are running around my old flat in Tunbridge Wells, around April and May of 1996. By law kittens have to pose for photos in baskets, and Smudge and Cholmondeley don't disappoint...

The Paw of Doom

Once again this is based on observing my own cats. In particular, this was Cholmondeley, who would get frustrated if anyone decided to use the toilet and not let him in to watch.

Linda and I are fairly relaxed about bodily functions and we will leave the door to the toilet open so that the cats can wander in and out while we are sitting on the loo. Smudge would just check you were OK and then leave you to it. Cholmondeley, on the other hand, would leap onto the sink opposite, sit in the sink bowl and then stare until you until you had finished, purring in an encouraging manner.

If we had friends round and they used the loo, they would encounter The Paw of Doom. This can be quite alarming if you're not expecting it. Imagine sitting on the loo in a strange house when a big blue paw suddenly thrusts itself underneath the toilet door and starts scrabbling for purchase! Eeeeeeeeeeeee!

Eek a mouse!

Here's Chumley, Smudge's brother. Like the real cat he's based on (Chomondeley, now sadly deceased) he's a gentle giant. His first response to any problem is to purr at it it to see if it'll be his friend. Or to run away from it (see the Scrumpy Jack story from last week).

Here are a few photos of the real Cholmondeley. 

Over the hedge

It's been a hectic week this week - I've had no time to myself at all. It's all down to having one show ready for performance tonight and starting rehearsals on another one, so I've been trapped in draughty church halls every evening this week.

This cartoon came from watching Cholmondeley, Smudges big brother, negotiate his way along a dividing wall between gardens. He could manage the wall, he could manage the fence, but when he tried running along the top of the box hedge, it all went wrong for him.

This is one of my continuous background strips. It's a technique I've borrowed from one of my favourite strips when I was a kid, Maurice Dodd and Dennis Collins' 'The Perishers'. It's OK, Maurice says he got the idea from a 1930s strip called 'Pop' by Millar Watt, so it's not like he has an exclusive on the technique. It works the same way as animation, with a single background broken up into frames and the characters moving from frame to frame.

A previous example of mine from last summer's trip to Hastings' fishing beach.

...and a couple of examples from the masters, Collins and Dodd.