Toys, Cartoons and Animated Characters

My humans continue to tease me lots.

For the last few days, they have been comparing me to a cartoon cat who seems to be taking over the Internet (Simon's cat). The cat has a little moving cartoon where he goes to a lot of effort to wake his human and then points to his mouth to demand food. This cartoon has also been shown on breakfast television. Andrew grew up with real cats so claimed this was very realistic. I said this was yet another reason to prefer toy cats: we don't demand food all the time.

But today my humans wanted to get up and Andrew slept through the first alarm. Now they blame me for not waking them! They have had a couple of late nights recently and they can hardly blame me for that! Toy cats don't stay out all night either!

Simon's cat may do cat-like things but he's still just an outline cartoon. For the most part, Disney are very clear that their characters are not "cartoons", they are "animated characters" ("Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" is artistic licence). Dumbo wasn't just an elephant and the seven dwarfs weren't just dwarfs: they each had their individual personalities. So, if you want to see a cat with unique character being lively in the morning when someone else wants to sleep, have a look at "Cat Nap Pluto". Please remember, however, that the cat character concerned was just acting a part for Mr Disney and is really a very sweet, good natured kitty who deserves a cuddle.

And I'm just joking about the humans teasing me. What it really means is that they are paying attention . . . and that my place on the bed remains unchallenged.

Prrrrr.

Character 9 - Elastigirl

I wasn't sure whether to have another character picture yet but my humans were going through some picture of me and I saw this one. I couldn't resist her: Elastigirl, Mrs Incredible, Helen Parr or whatever you call her.

She was really nice to me. Look how she is stroking my head and holding me close. And of course it helped that she could reach across from the far side of the room to pick me up!


This picture was taken in the animation section of the Disney Studios park. I think this was one of those times when the Incredibles were just waiting in a corner of the room - not occupying the main "character greeting" area. That meant there was not so much of a line.


I hear Disney are now doing a "Toy Story 3". Surely it can't be stretching things too much to have "Incredibles 2"? Let me think. Several years have passed; the kids are leaving home; Mr and Mrs Incredible feel lonely and adopt a "super" pet - a black and white cat. Sounds good so far.


Prrrrr.

I'm Still Here

I have to aoplogise for being away but we have been having problems with computers that my humans couldn't solve very easily. They even had a professional engineer come in and tinker inside the box. It turned out it was just the monitor screen (the box was working fine - but the engineer charged them anyway). Of course, they never asked me for help. Serves them right. Anyway, we have now bought a new monitor and I can start catching up with what has been happening.

At the end of October we had Halloween. The humans held a party - as they did last year - and spend a lot of time decorating the house inside and out. The house name was changed to "Haunted House" and there were giant images of skulls with red eyes staring out the windows. One room was converted to a dungeon with a grim stone wall and a skeleton hanging in a metal cage. There were lots of spiders and one witches' cauldron bubbling mist across the living room. I was glad I stayed upstairs. I had to be firm with the humans. Neither I nor any of my fellow Figaros were dressing up as a black cat.

Quite a lot of local friends came and many dressed up. Perhaps it was one of the witches who came who put a hex on the computer. We were supposed to have a boy wizard (see photo) but he didn't sort things out either. Did he have any useful spells ("computus reparo"?). He's not a Disney character.