Fat Freddy's Cat

by Michael
(London, UK)

Fat Freddy's cat was an underground comic cat. He was a "scrawny orange cat" with a black striped tail. He was clever and funny. He belonged to Freddy of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Freddy's siblings were Franklin and Phineas. In fact he first appeared in "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers."

Fat Freddy's cat has not got a name. I guess that had to be case by the way he is referred to. He talked to the reader and other human characters in the comic but they did not understand him.

He is a typical, adventurous, outdoor cat it seems; prowling the streets at night, invariably getting in to fights and chasing females.

He sings:

I'm an ornery cuss
and I'm so full of piss
if I don't like your looks
I'll hit you with this!

That actually sounds as if the creator, Gilbert Sheldon, was not that fond cats but he did understand them (see below); just a thought. Gilbert Sheldon also created Wonder Wart-Hog.

This cat likes to taunt Freddy through bad behavior such as peeing on Freddy's typewriter or smarter stuff such as performing clever acrobatic tricks and then when his human companion wants to photograph him he sits still (I can relate to that, incidentally).

Like a number of real life cats, Fat Freddy's cat drinks water from the toilet. If a human fails to flush the toilet after use he pees in their drink! He is a bit malicious, it seems, at times.

He gets his own way in relation to food by employing another trick. If his food is not up to standard, he unplugs the fridge. The human food goes off and gets thrown out. The cat takes the thrown out human food. This by the way presupposes that a domestic cat would eat human food that has spoiled - don't be so sure. In fact my experience tells me it would not happen today but perhaps in the 1970s it would have!

He doesn't like dry cat food, a dirty litter box or being called "kitty". I can understand all three. If the litter box is dirty he might defecate on Freddy's pillow or in his boots, in the flower pot or in the stereo headphones.

As is the case for real life cats he can detect when a can of cat food is being opened from a good distance.

The comic strip in which he appeared, "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers" (The Freak Brothers) was published in the L.A. Free-Press in 1967. The cat strip was "tagged on" to the paper.

The Freak Brothers featured in a successful six issue comic book starting 1971 published by Rip Off Press. They also published five issues of The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat from 1977 to 1980 and again in 1988.

Source:

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals by Jeff Rovin.

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