Bill the Cat

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Bill the Cat is a fictional cat appearing in the works of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, beginning with the comic strip Bloom County in the 1980s and continuing in Outland and Opus in the following decades. Bill also appeared in some of Breathed's illustrated children's books, including A Wish for Wings That Work, which was also made into an animated Christmas television special, and also on greeting cards and other sundry merchandise. The cat's most frequent spoken sentiments are "Aack!" and "Thbbbt!" The former is a result of his regularly choking on furballs, the latter sound an approximation of the "raspberry". These statements have often been used in the cartoon as a social indictment of policy or popular opinion in the United States.

He was raised in Dubuque, Iowa, left for New York to become a film star, leaving his girlfriend, Sally, behind. His film roles include the leads in Orangestoke: The Legend of Bill, Lord of the Monkeys and Terms of Bill's Endearment. During this period, he drank heavily, used illegal drugs, and "free-based Little Friskies", until his friends helped him to recover. Bill spent time as an unintelligible rock star who played lead electric tongue with his heavy metal band Deathtöngue, later Billy and the Boingers. Bill got rich when their song "U-Stink-But-I-♥-U" became a jingle for Wheat Thins, but he did not share the wealth with his bandmates. Although Bill was the front-person of Billy and the Boingers, the band excluded him and disbanded when it became public that he spent his nights staying up late, reading the Bible with a nun. After this incident, Bill became the televangelist "Fundamentally Oral Bill", parodying Televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts. Soon after, Bill joined and became a member of an enigmatic Hare Krishna-type cult.

Bill was also depicted to be a defector to the Soviet Union, but being traded back soon afterwards. The reasons he stated for returning to the US were, as he put them, "to again walk the green grass of liberty" or (less politically correct) "to make some big dough".

Bill the Cat twice won the National Radical Meadow Party's nomination to run for President of the United States, in 1984 and 1988, despite being dead in the first instance (official cause: acne; unofficial cause: driving into a cactus at high speed on a remote section of Route 66), and despite having a vocabulary that mainly consisted of "Aack!" he lost twice, once because of coughing up a furball on Connie Chung. This did not stop him from selling secrets to the Soviet Union, including the alleged secret of George Bush's appeal (the secret being that he didn't have any), embarking on a torrid love affair with Jeane Kirkpatrick, and being used as the primary source for an illegal cat-sweat-based baldness cure. His brain was replaced with Donald Trump's (who had been hit with his yachts anchor while sunbathing in New York Harbor).

Bill the Cat has returned to comics in Berke Breathed's latest strip, Opus. Given his ostensible death and revival by tongue cloning (a la Sleeper), his carcass was suggested as the source of the recent BSE(aka. "Mad Cow Disease")epidemic. Later, he was chosen as the new mayor of Bloom County. He got the message when he was playing Garfield at a mall promotion (the child in his lap asked her father if Garfield had died). Mayoral efforts for Bill and Opus involved forcing low-jeans teenagers to wear suspenders. Bill, however, lost an election a few months later because of an affair with Paris Hilton.

Bill the Cat is commonly seen as a parody of Jim Davis' Garfield, an attempt to create a character so repulsive that it would have absolutely no merchandising potential. Naturally, Bill the Cat trinkets and figurines have therefore sold in great quantity. There is, nonetheless, a real person behind the story. Bill the Cat was inspired by a colorful economist named Bill Moore. Moore was a graduate assistant at the University of Texas in Austin during the 1970s, and one of Berke Breathed's teachers. Recognizably wild-eyed (and one legged), Moore also became one of Breathed's friends.

[edit] Trivia

• A Bill the Cat doll can be seen in Eminem's The Real Slim Shady video.
• In Bill the Cat's first appearance, he sings the song "Tomorrow" and claims that it gives him hairballs. This was one of the rare occasions where Bill actually spoke.
• Bill the Cat has appeared in three of the comic strips by Breathed now: Bloom County, Outland, and Opus. Opus has also appeared in all three of those strips; only the character of Steve Dallas has appeared in more of Breathed's strips. Dallas appears in all four, including "The Academia Waltz."

[edit] Further reading

Rovin, Jeff. The Illustrated History of Cartoon Animals. New York: Prentice Hall, 1991. ISBN 0-13-275561-0.

[edit] References