Fat Freddy's Cat
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Fat Freddy's Cat is a fictional orange tomcat nominally belonging to Fat Freddy Freekowtski, one of the Freak Brothers, a trio of hippies who are featured in Gilbert Shelton's underground comix. He 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. 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.
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.
[edit] Cat stories longer than one page
There have been more than a hundred small comic strips about the Cat, most of which have been reprinted, many more than once and in various formats. But there have only been seven stories longer than one page.
- I Led Nine Lives! (5 pages) (Adventures of ... #1)
- Untitled (2 pages) (Adventures of ... #1)
- Chariot of the Globs (6 pages) (Adventures of ... #2)
- Animal Camp (13 pages) (Adventures of ... #3)
- The Burning of Hollywood (6 pages) (Adventures of ... #4, in color in Thoroughly Ripped)
- The Sacred Sands of Pootweet (9 pages) (Adventures of ... #5)
- The War of the Cockroaches (27 pages) (Adventures of ... #6)
- Paradise (7 pages)
The Cat also appears in
- Frederick the Duck (3 pages) (Fat Freddy's Comics & Stories #1)
[edit] Books
- The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat (1977) ISBN 082960054X (reprints the four small Adventures of ... " comix except for 4 strips from #2 and 1 strip from #3.)
- More Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat (1981) ISBN 0896200574 (reprints 91 one page strips.)
