Wee Little Beasties

Where did the ceiling go?

2009-07-12T11:57:00.001-05:00

Where did the ceiling go?
Originally uploaded by queenbeeamy

A Flickr friend's rattie takes a stroll in the yard, enjoying the wonderful summer weather...

Hellllloooooo!

2009-05-05T02:00:00.000-05:00

Simon's Cubby

2009-05-03T15:46:00.000-05:00

Mouse.Kat.Pup.Brick

2009-04-29T02:00:00.001-05:00

Herriman: Cartoonist who equalled Cervantes
Sarah Boxer marvels at the world of George Herriman, the creator of the ludicrously imaginative comic strip Krazy Kat

We call him “Cat,” We call him “Crazy” yet is he neither. – George Herriman on the title character of Krazy Kat

There is no comic strip simpler, on the face of it, than Krazy Kat. In its 31-year run (from 1913 to 1944) the plot never changed much. Ignatz Mouse, sadist supreme, aims to bean the beribboned Krazy Kat, soulful innocent, with a brick, and usually succeeds. Krazy Kat takes the brick, even seeks it out, as a missile of love. And Krazy’s secret admirer, the police dog Offissa Bull Pupp, throws the errant mouse in jail. All’s well.

'A genuine state of poetry': Ignatz Mouse, Krazy Kat and Offissa Bull Pupp, as drawn by cartoonist George Herriman

Yet despite the repetition, Krazy Kat is endlessly perplexing, energetic, deep and playful.

In Krazy Kat, George Herriman made everything indeterminate. He set the strip among the rocky outcroppings of Monument Valley, opening up the funnies to vast, abstract spaces. (Yes, he beat John Ford there.) He made the trees, rocks and moons shift shape from frame to frame for no apparent reason. His free-floating page design, with its mad array of wheels, zigzags and frames within frames, kept changing.

And then there’s that Krazy language. The Kat speaks a dialect that is distinctive, yet elastic, and impossible to pinpoint. Yiddish? “Ooy-y-y- Sotch a noive.” Creole? “S’funna, but I dun’t see no stomm – the sky is klee – blue an’ bride wit’ sunshine – not a cloud in it.” Brooklyn-Italian? “Jess fency, Offissa Pupp, the tree of us, riding around tigedda – like boom kimpenions.” At one point, Krazy asks Ignatz: “Why is lenguage?” and then answers the question: “Lenguage is that we may mis-unda-stend each udda.”

The ceaseless flux drove readers crazy during Herriman’s lifetime. If it hadn’t been for the ardent support of the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the strip might never have survived. Hearst gave Herriman a raise – apparently against his will. And a happy band of readers followed Krazy religiously, including Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, HL Mencken, ee cummings, Walt Disney, TS Eliot, Frank Capra, Willem de Kooning, Jack Kerouac and Charles Schulz. The critic Gilbert Seldes, an early fan, called Herriman a “great ironist” who belonged with Chaplin, Cervantes and Dickens.

advertisementIn 1946, cummings saw Krazy Kat as a “meteoric burlesk melodrama of democracy… a struggle between society (Offissa Pupp) and the individual (Ignatz Mouse) over an ideal (our heroine)”. In 1959, Kerouac found in Herriman’s strips some of the roots of the Beat Generation: “It goes back to the inky ditties of old cartoons (Krazy Kat with the irrational brick).” In 1963, Umberto Eco called Herriman a Scheherazade who creates “a genuine state of poetry, an uninterrupted elegy based on sorrowing innocence”.

In 1971, however, the Krazy world changed. While researching an article on Herriman for the Dictionary of American Biography, the sociologist Arthur Asa Berger got a copy of Herriman’s birth certificate. Although Herriman died Caucasian, in Los Angeles in 1944, the very same George Herriman, the son of two mulatto parents, was born “colored” in New Orleans in 1880.

If Herriman knew he was black, he certainly did not flaunt it. That’s no surprise. In 1880 Herriman would have been considered a “free person of color”. But by the turn of the century, when he was a fledgling cartoonist, the newspaper bullpens “were open to immigrants but not to blacks”.

How did he respond? Oddly. He made cartoons that seem a little racist themselves. In 1902, Herriman drew a cartoon called Musical Mose, in which a black man repeatedly tries and fails to “impussanate” a white man. In one instalment, Mose masquerades as a Scotsman. Some white women discover he’s black and beat him up. Mose moans, “I wish mah color would fade.” His wife is unsympathetic: “Why didn’t yo impussanate a cannibal?” she asks.

Herriman went on to create other comic strip heroes: Professor Otto and His Auto, Acrobatic Archie, Major Ozone’s Fresh Air Crusade, Rosy Posie- Mama’s Girl, Baron Mooch, and The Dingbat Family (later renamed The Family Upstairs), a strip about a family obsessed with the people living on the floor above. In 1910, at the bottom of one Dingbat Family strip, he drew in a cat and mouse, just “to fill up the waste space” below the main strip. Krazy and Ignatz were born. On July 26, Herriman had the mouse bean the cat for the first time. After a month or so, Krazy Kat fell in love with her tormentor. She kissed Ignatz as he slept. “SMACK!”

So, what do we know about Krazy? Krazy looks kind of feminine, but there are signs that she’s not. Ignatz sometimes calls Krazy “he”. Krazy claims to be confused: “I don’t know whether to take unto myself a wife or a husband.” At another point, Ignatz’s wife and kids can’t figure out whether to call Krazy “Uncle” or “Aunt”. They try out both. Krazy doesn’t answer to “Uncle”, but at “Aunt Krazy” turns his head: “Kollin me, dollins?”

Sex is to Krazy as race is to Herriman: indecipherable, dangerous, interesting. As Herriman himself put it: “Krazy was something like a sprite, an elf. They have no sex. So that Kat can’t be a he or a she. The Kat’s a spirit – a pixie – free to butt into anything.”

What about Krazy’s race, then? She is definitely black, with a few – or not so few – crucial exceptions, as when Krazy gets doused in white paint or in white flour, or switches skin with Ignatz, who, in turn, becomes “a l’il eetiopium mice, bleck like a month from midnights”.

Herriman once placed Krazy in the same scenario as Musical Mose. Krazy goes to a beauty salon and when she emerges, all white, Ignatz falls in love with her, not realising who she is. She coyly drops her handkerchief, with the initials “KK” on it (just one K short of the Klan), and Ignatz looks surprised. Krazy turns and explains: “My initchils – mins Krazy Ket – y’know that dunt you dollin?” Ignatz runs for a brick and Krazy wanders off, saying: “L’il tutsi-wutsi thinks because I change my kimplection Ishould change my name.”

Herriman is even bolder when it comes to class. In one strip, some of Coconino’s citizens, Walter Cephus Austridge, Terry Turtle, Gooseberry Sprig, Ignatz Mouse and Kolin Kelly are all smoking “at the Klub” and boasting about their royal roots. And who should come waltzing by but Krazy Kat, singing like an old-time minstrel about “the old ‘haunted-house’ and the cellar unda-neet it, and the dear old ‘wash-boila’ ee-e-een which I was ‘born’”? The other animals are appalled: “Oh, that us aristocrats has gotta breathe the same air as a ‘wash-boiler’-bred boor – s’awful.”

We get the real score from Joe Stork, the “purveyor of progeny to prince and proletarian”. It turns out, according to Joe, that all the animals are lowborn. The only thing that distinguishes Krazy is that she hasn’t any shame. She sings out her story in her bastard dialect. She was born in a cellar. So what?

Yet Herriman did care – about colour, class, race, and all matters high and low. This comes through in the strip’s very architecture. Remember that Krazy and Ignatz didn’t arrive full-blown on the page. They appeared in a basement strip under the Dingbats, who in turn lived under the family upstairs.

Herriman was obsessed with up and down. For him, almost every torment – tossed bricks, loud neighbours, beatings from racists, the delivery of babies by Joe Stork – comes from above. Ignatz is almost always higher on the page than Krazy. But down below is where the soul of the strip is.

That’s where Krazy was born, where she abides, and where she is the unconscious foe of everything that rises. Towards the end of Herriman’s life, and strip, a strange thing happened. The little sliver of basement space that had been the birthplace of Krazy and Ignatz opened up again. Herriman created a new underworld and filled it with enigmatic codas commenting on the strip above, much as he had when Krazy and Ignatz were infants under the floorboards. Sometimes those slim bottom strips include a periscope that never quite manages to peer into the world above.

In one 1940 comic, Krazy talks into a bent tube. “Helloi,” he says, and “Helloi” comes back. He responds: “Mus’ be my ‘eggo’. ” Given his accent and the pipe, Krazy probably means “echo” or “ego”. In other words, “It must be me.” (Or was he talking about the Eggo brand of waffles?)

Herriman’s last Sunday page, exactly two months after his death, shows Offissa Pupp watching bubbles emerge from a pool. He thinks Krazy is drowning and dives in to save her. The underpanel shows Krazy safe, floating on her back in the underworld and holding up a sail as ripples spread from her in the calm water. She is under her own power, but going nowhere, idling in the “waste space”, as Herriman called it, the breeding ground of endless subversion, waiting for the next breeze.

This is an edited version of an article that appeared in ‘The New York Review of Books’. The complete Krazy Kat is being republished by Fantagraphics in several volumes as ‘Krazy and Ignatz’.

Warning: Cute Overload!

2009-03-26T22:26:00.001-05:00

Four baby flying foxes who were separated from their mothers during fierce storms on Australia's Gold Coast are being cared for by volunteers at a wildlife centre.

Photo by David Hardenberg/Getty Images

The Squirrel Next Door

2009-02-20T15:26:00.000-06:00

Brothers

2009-02-15T22:13:00.001-06:00

Brothers
Originally uploaded by Trishymouse

Tigger uses Simon as a pillow...

Unlikely Friends

2009-02-11T22:29:00.000-06:00

Cats on the go

2009-02-07T18:26:00.001-06:00

Simon on the stalk.

Tigger is not amused.

Lap rats

2009-01-27T13:24:00.006-06:00

The rats love sitting in their little dog/cat bed.

The boys just don't want to hold still for pictures unless they get treats.

Piglet and Drinky.

Winnie stretches and looks out.

Piglet can look so serious...

Isis in a rare still pose.

Cat glam

2009-01-27T13:14:00.005-06:00

The cats like to pose, sometimes.

Haiku

2009-01-19T16:01:00.000-06:00

Why I am So Tired...

2009-01-14T07:11:00.000-06:00

boy rats checking things out

2009-01-08T18:42:00.003-06:00

The ratty boys get a chance for walkabout.

girlie rats looking about

2009-01-08T18:36:00.004-06:00

Buddy is a flirt when she wants to be.

Drinky is starting to look as old has her mother.

xmas cats sez...

2008-12-25T14:00:00.001-06:00

"Bah humbug..."

Of Mice and Cats

2008-12-20T21:25:00.002-06:00

I was holding old Lady Mouse when Tigger cat insisted on some lap time. Tigger cat did not seem to be very excited about Lady Mouse. And Lady Mouse seemed only a little concerned about Tigger cat.

Ratty boys in a basket

2008-12-04T11:17:00.004-06:00

Barnabas rat, Groucho rat and Harpo rat relax while Chico rat explores.

Old lady rats having a treat

2008-12-04T11:13:00.002-06:00

Winnie rat and Isis rat sipping some Pediasure.

Oh, oh...

2008-12-03T21:44:00.003-06:00

Simon cat checks out Piggy rat.

Of Bird and Rodent

2008-11-23T13:17:00.003-06:00

Before the cat's arrival arrangements were made for rodent and bird security. Right away one of the cats, the "little" cat Tigger, took notice of Agatha budgie bird and intended on introducing himself, but, Agatha would have none of that and proceeded to voice her protests to the event. Agatha and Tigger exchanged chirps and soft meows for a sort time and when Tigger was told "NO," he stopped approaching the birdcage. Tigger would also get down off off the counter tops or out of general mischief if addressed with a firm "NO."

The rats seemed to notice the arrival without actually seeing the cats and moved themselves to the farthest back corner of their habitat. Lady mouse appears not too be so concerned. When the "little" cat Tigger approached the boy rats door he was met immediately by the oldest boy rat Barnabas, who stood his ground and gave Tigger the classic 1000 yard stare. Barnabas's fur was slightly raised, and, when I tried to calm him, Barnabas acted suspicious of me until I paid him the proper compliments and made the proper offering of treats. Once again when Tigger was given a firm "NO," and a slight tap on the backside, he backed away from the cage and sat back to watch "Rodent TV" from a distance. Tigger tried to look in on the girl rats, but, appeared by then to be getting the idea to stay away.

A layer of "hardware cloth" was added to strategic points of the rodent's habitat. As well, there are links of metal shower curtain rings at various points to serve as "alarm bells" if a cat tried poking around unwatched. Lady mouse's habitat has been attached to the larger rat habitat so that it could not be knocked over or dragged away. And for her safety, Agatha budgie bird will have to have her free roaming restricted while to cats are out. Agatha budgie bird has a sturdy cage with plenty of space between her and the cats.

The cats will be supervised when out in the general area with the bird and rodents. When the cats can not be supervised they will be put into a spacious room with good light and ventilation. This is also the room where their food, water, litter and bed is kept.

The cats move in...

2008-11-22T20:08:00.003-06:00

Not quite four hours and they are starting to feel at home.

A conspiracy of rats

2008-11-16T16:10:00.001-06:00

"You distracts them while I gets yogies..."

Lady rats

2008-11-10T13:30:00.002-06:00

Winnie rat gives me a look...

Isis rat having a hammock snuggle.

The might YAP!

2008-11-08T19:51:00.001-06:00

Chico rat lets fly his mighty YAP!