Meet the beach

Originally published 12 July 2010

Some cats and a beach. All I need now is a balding bloke in a bow tie and I would have had the premise to Buzza Wuzza, but no, I missed that chance and decided to start in a ghost and blue quadrilateral doctor-free universe.

The strip is set in my home town of Hastings, and Hastings has a beach (though we don’t like to tell anyone it’s entirely made out to pebbles until they have made the journey here), so it would be a waste not to use it. . So once a year Smith and Jones make the mile-long trek to the sea.

I think at this point we have a generic beach, hence the sand - the strip would gradually become more geographically accurate as the story went on.

Drought

It's been raining solidly for what seems like three months now. Strangely, Hastings is no longer under drought orders, but Tunbridge Wells, twenty miles away, still is. It all depends on which company is supplying your water. Go to Yalding in Kent and you will still see the tide marks half way up the walls of the high street, where the drought of ten years ago reached its high water mark.

Rinkidinkidinkidinki!

Am I the only person on earth that hears 'rinki dinki dinki dinki' when cats shake their wet paws dry? Let's find out...

I'm especially proud of the first two panels of the cats wading over the stream. Sadly, I had to lose the backgrounds in the last two frames to give clarity to the shaken off water.

Sink

Once again based on observation of my own cats. They prefer their water to be moving, preferably fresh from the tap, and don't care what shapes they have to contort themselves into to get it. Cholmondeley used to sit in the sink opposite the toilet in my old house, and stare at you while you were trying to do your business until you turned the tap on.

I've now bought a pet fountain for my cats, which gives them the opportunity to drink from a moving aerated water source 24 hours a day. Highly recommended. See here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pet-Mate-06039-Fountain/dp/B001NYGB8W/ref

Other pet fountains are available but I don't recommend the Cat-it, which is noisy and needs a lot of maintenance.