Bill the Cat
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- See also Billy the Cat.
Bill the Cat is a fictional cat-based character appearing in the works of cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, beginning with the comic strip Bloom County in the 1980s and continuing in Outland and Opus in the following decades. Bill also appeared in some of Breathed's illustrated children's books, including A Wish for Wings That Work, which was also made into an animated Christmas television special, and also on greeting cards and other sundry merchandise. The cat's most frequent spoken sentiments are "Ack!" and "Thbbbt!", the latter sound an approximation of the "raspberry". These statements have often been used in the cartoon as a social indictment of policy or popular opinion in the United States.
Bill spent time as an unintelligible rock star who played lead electric tongue with his heavy metal band Deathtöngue, later Billy and the Boingers. Soon after, Bill joined and became a member of an enigmatic Hare Krishna-type cult.
Bill the Cat twice won the National Radical Meadow Party's nomination to run for President of the United States, in 1984 and 1988, despite being dead in the first instance (official cause: acne), and despite having a vocabulary that mainly consisted of "Ack!". He lost twice. This did not stop him from selling secrets to communist Russia, including the alleged secret of George Bush's appeal (the secret being that he didn't have any), embarking on a torrid love affair with Jeane Kirkpatrick, and being used as the primary source for an illegal cat-sweat-based baldness cure. He also swapped brains with Donald Trump (who had been hit with a cruise boat anchor while sunbathing in New York Harbor).
Given his ostensible death and revival by tongue cloning (a la Sleeper), his carcass was suggested as the source of the recent BSE epidemic. However, he has recently been chosen as the new mayor of Bloom County. He got the message when he was playing Garfield at a mall promotion (the child in his lap asked her father if Garfield had died). Recent mayoral efforts for Bill and Opus are forcing low-jeans teenagers to wear suspenders. Bill, however, lost an election a few months later because of an affair with Paris Hilton.
Bill the Cat is commonly seen as a parody of Jim Davis' Garfield, an attempt to create a character so repulsive that it would have absolutely no merchandising potential. Ironically, Bill the Cat trinkets and figurines have sold in great quantity. Nonetheless a real person is behind the story. Bill the Cat was inspired by a colorful Economist named Bill Moore, who was a graduate assistant at the University of Texas in Austin in the 1970s and who taught Berke Breathed. Recognizably wild-eyed (and one legged), Moore was a friend of Breathed's.
Bill the Cat has returned to comics in Berke Breathed's latest strip, Opus.
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