I pulled out this cartoon this morning and laughed. Not because of the punch line, which I do think was pretty funny, but because of the background I drew. The “Oni-Kitty” and cockroach posters are shout-outs to some civilian friends of mine. Denise and Telf (whom I would later share an apartment with for a year, post-college) had this really evil cat named Truffles. Truffles only seemed to like Denise and absolutely loathed everyone else, as I recall. Except for my boyfriend/future husband Michael. For some reason, Truffles really, really liked Michael, especially when she was in heat. That only made her more evil in my eyes of course. So we called her Oni-Kitty, which meant devil cat. Oni is a Japanese term for demon or devil, and Denise and Telf and I spent a lot of time with the Virginia Tech Anime Society, so it was only natural we pick label Truffles with an anime nomiker. Evil, evil cat, I swear.
The cockroach poster was a salute to one of my best friends, Joelle, who was working on her master’s degree in entomology at Virginia Tech. She was writing her thesis on something to do with blattella germanica, or the German cockroach. For fun, Joelle would sometimes take a Madagascar cockroach from the entomology department out for a walk. Madagascar cockroaches are HUGE, and all Joelle had to do was glue a bit of string to the back of one for a leash. Oh, these cockroaches also make a weird hissing noise if you poke them. We always called the cockroach Pookie, just to be cute.
So I drew cartoons about Truffles the evil Oni-Kitty and Pookie the cockroach, and I had forgotten all about that until I saw this week’s cartoon. I’m still chuckling over it. Joelle, Telf and Denise, wherever you are, I hope you guys are doing well 😉
