Fat Freddy's Catfirst appeared in 1969 in underground newspapers as a character in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers strip. He soon gained his own small spin-offtopper strip, in imitation of the early Krazy Kat strips below The Family Upstairs by George Herriman. Some full-size stories also featured Fat Freddy's Cat. Many of these strips have been collected in comic book form by Rip Off Press in a series of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers compilations and later The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat, which ran for four small size issues in the 1970s. Fat Freddy's Comics and Stories also included several stories about the Cat. The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat were reprinted and expanded in six comic book size issues in the 1980s. They included new longer stories about the Cat. A seventh edition was released 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.
Character
The Cat is much smarter than Freddy, and while sharing many of his preoccupations such as drugs, food, sleep and sex, his stories also feature a fair amount of defecation. Like Garfield he is laid back, but in his personal habits and outlook he is more like the Freak Brothers. However he tends to regard the Freak Brothers with amused contempt, frequently expressed by defecating in inappropriate and inconvenient places, such as stereo headphones. Like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes he has a fertile imagination. He is apt to tell tall stories to his three "nephews". One storyline features him playing the role of "F. Frederick Skitty", an undercover agent sworn to stop the distribution of "Tee Hee Hee", a drug that turns people into homosexuals. Another story involves a scheme by Fat Freddy to replicate Dick Whittington's success and sell the Cat to the small, oil-rich nation of Pootweet to deal with mice.
The New Zealand band Fat Freddy's Drop, whose debut album won the 2005 Gilles PetersonWorldwide Winners Award, were named after the comic. The band's debut single had been recorded under the influence of LSD blotters that had been printed with images of Fat Freddy's Cat on them, and the band liked the name. The popular 8 bit computer gameJet Set Willy has a room entitled "We Must Perform a Quirkafleeg", in honour of this strip. Fat Freddy's Restaurant, in Galway, Ireland, described as "Galway’s favourite restaurant", is extensively decked out with arcana and other memorabilia relating to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy's Cat.
There have been more than a hundred small comic strips about the Cat, most of which have been reprinted in various formats. But there have only been eight stories longer than one page:
"I Led Nine Lives!" — first appeared in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers #3
"Chariot of the Globs" — first appeared in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers #4
Untitled — first appeared in Fat Freddy's Cat #1
"Animal Camp" — first appeared in The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers #5
"The Burning of Hollywood" — first appeared in Fat Freddy's Cat #4
"The Sacred Sands of Pootweet" — first appeared in Rip Off Comix #7
"Paradise Revisited" — first appeared in Fat Freddy's Comics & Stories #1
"The War of the Cockroaches" — first appeared in Fat Freddy's Cat #6
The Cat also appears as a key character in:
"Frederick the Duck" — Fat Freddy's Comics & Stories #1
Solo titles and collections
The Collected Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat and his Friends
The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat —reprints the four small Adventures of... " comix except for 4 strips from #2 and 1 strip from #3
The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat
More Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat — reprints 91 one-page strips
Fat Freddy's Comics & Stories
The Fat Freddy's Cat Omnibus — reprints The Adventures of Fat Freddy's Cat #1-7, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers'' #1-6
