‘Breaking Cat News’ is amazing art and evidence of dreams come true

By David McElroy · March 27, 2017

For the past couple of years, I’ve been reading a web comic that captured cat personalities in a way that I’ve never seen in art — and it just started running in newspapers nationally today.

“Breaking Cat News” captured my imagination from the beginning. The concept was brilliant and the execution was even better. Artist Georgia Dunn watched her three cats — Elvis, Puck and Lupin — and then developed a continuing story around them. She imagined them as the operators of their own television news operation — and she imagined how they would view and report the events of her own household.

If you’ve lived with cats and have a love for them, her work just might melt your heart, because she imagines her cats in ways that many of us have done. (Although I never got around to making the website for him, my Merlin ran for president last year on a platform of every cat receiving his dinner on time.) I immediately identified with the work Dunn was doing based on her cats — and I suspect millions of others who live with cats might feel exactly the same.

Breaking Cat News touches on the things we can imagine cats thinking about and talking about, such as this very early episode about the cats’ outrage at their food bowls being empty at 7:31 a.m. The art style has evolved slightly since those early episodes, but the basic conceit — that the cats are reporting on serious news in their world, while “the People” are oblivious — hasn’t changed.

“The People” in the strip are Dunn and her husband, Ryan. The two children — who the cats call the Toddler and the Baby — are their real-life children. There are various other cats who Dunn has worked into her stories over the last few years. For a creative person who loves cats, it’s been an amazing thing to watch.

In addition to loving the strip, I’m inspired by what Dunn has accomplished. What started as simple illustrations she did to share with her friends on Twitter took on more and more of a real life. A book of the cats’ reports was published last year — and now more than 100 U.S. newspapers have started running the strip as of today.

For a writer, photographer and wannabe filmmaker, it’s proof that great things sometimes happen to artists who have talent and fearlessly push their work forward. There are millions of talented artists out there, but only a few break through to success, and it’s inspiring to watch one of those stories happen. I’ve enjoyed watching the public part of this come true for Dunn — and it gives me hope that my own art can find commercial success if I’ll trust the work and put it in front of the right people.

If your newspaper runs Breaking Cat News, please give it a try, especially if you love cats as much as I do. I think you’ll find this strip accurately captures the heart and soul of cats’ lives. It’s funny and emotionally moving, depending on the day and the story.

If your local newspaper isn’t yet running the strip, you can keep up with it on the syndicate’s website and read it every day online, as I do.

The lives and adventures of Elvis, Puck and Lupin make me happy — and they remind me that good things can come to talented artists who pursue their creative dreams.

Give Breaking Cats News a try. I think you’ll like it.

Note: If you’re on Instagram, you can follow my six cats (and dog Lucy) at the McElroy Zoo, which you’ll find @themcelroyzoo.

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It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

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