Kevin Rudd’s Cat (Jasperus arsehatus)

It’s sunday night and there I am, working doggedly trying to come up with a cartoon about bees for Crikey. Wandering about the internet looking for possibly humorous bee facts, like for instance, did you know that bees…. but no, that’s for another time. Prime Minister Rudd is appearing on Rove shortly so I have the telly on Channel 10 and anyway Cindy Lauper is on Australian Idol so who wouldn’t. She out Marcias Marcia, whatever that may mean.

I like Rove, he seems nice. The show starts, Rove moves into Kevin Rudd PM segment (which I also like because it lowers the standard for video comedy to a level where I think even I can compete). And then on comes Kevin Rudd, it’s his birthday! Happy Birthday, talks up family tradition, all the family around the bed in the morning with the dog and cat (my ears go up – but I’m just hoping for Rudd pet facts so I can stick them into the next gigantic lolfest that is a Kevin Rudd’s cat cartoon) when all of a sudden….

“…and so I got these teatowels”. Oh. My. Ghod.

You know the rest, if you don’t you can watch the video.

Meanwhile, everything has gone white. The room shrinks while the universe continues to expand rapidly.

Like a chicken running from a whippet, I shriek a warning to the other chickens. My special friend who is nearby, hurtles gracefully into the room and we both stand transmogrified as the Prime Minister declines to say “If I could use a can opener you’d be totally fucked” on national television. And who can blame him.

Just thinking about it for a moment, I have become enormously excited because my cartoon of a swearing cat that Crikey thought would work as a tea towel has been discussed on National Television by the Prime Minister. I have been working as a freelance cartoonist for years and things are finally starting to get good and weird.

Since Crikey found me at the Lort Smith Animal Hospital and took me in (for which I am embarrassingly grateful) I continue to marvel every day that a: my well meaning pictures of marsupials and angry cans of fanta are thought by others to be even mildly entertaining and b: Crikey considers me worthy of keeping here in this box under the desk with the printer on it.

My reason for living says to me “your mother would be so proud”, and it’s true. Cue teary moment. Why? Because Kevin Rudd talked about my swearing cat tea towel on telly. Kind of odd. Next week the Large Hadron Collider turns the world into a giant Violet Crumble called Sandra.