Fat Freddy's Cat - History

History

Fat Freddy's Cat first appeared in 1969 in underground newspapers as a character in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers strip, and later had his own small topper strip, in imitation of the early Krazy Kat strips below The Family Upstairs by George Herriman. Many of these strips have been collected in comic book form, in Rip Off Comix, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Comics and Stories (one shot, 1983), and The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat, which ran for four small size issues in the 1970s which were reprinted and expanded (starting over from #1) in six comic book size issues in the 1980s. This title included new longer stories about the Cat. A seventh edition was released (in the US only) in 1993. After the demise of the underground newspaper, the Cat continued to appear in various comic books. His last appearance to date was in a 1990 strip reprinted in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers #12.

The Cat is much smarter than Freddy, and is a sort of hippie Garfield (whom he predates). He tends to regard the Freak Brothers with amused contempt, frequently expressed by defecating in inappropriate and inconvenient places, such as stereo headphones.

While the Cat is usually featured in a small strip below a Freak Brothers strip, he has had independent appearances and storylines of his own. Like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, he has a fertile imagination, and one of his storylines featured him playing the role of "F. Frederick Skitty", an undercover agent sworn to stop the distribution of "Tee Hee Hee", a drug that turned people into homosexuals. In another story, one of Fat Freddy's schemes involved trying to replicate Dick Whittington's success by selling the Cat to the (fictional) small, oil-rich nation of Pootweet to deal with mice.