Pancakes & Ninja Training

He told me to make him look "stately and/or presidential", the vain little fucker...

My cat, Licorice, is a ninja. No, really. Most nights, he can be heard doing his tumbling exercises that he studiously practices up and and down the hallway of the house. If he's not in the mood for pats, you'd better have a damn good reason for having your hands anywhere near him, because stroking him can end in tears. Your tears, to be precise.

He even has a Japanese code name, Kanzou, which translates, among other things, to both spellings of Licorice/Liquorice. Some of those other translations include, liver, liver cancer, liver transplantation, tempered distribution(click here)(for the mathematicians out there...I actually have no idea what tempered distribution is and I didn't understand a single word of the Wikipedia article to which that highlighted link is) and my personal favourite, beefsteak fungus(also beefsteak mushroom but the former is way cooler and would actually make a good name for a band).

When I was a kid, I was completely obsessed with Garfield. I even made sure that there were always Garfield books stocked-up in the toilet. I was quite keen on drawing and writing. I decided that writing and illustrating a hugely successful comic strip about a domestic ginger tabby was the way I'd like to make my living. Thanks, Jim Davis for making it look a million times easier than what it actually is, not to say that your comic is shit...far from it. People have criticized Garfield for not being cat-like enough, or for simply not being very funny. I disagree with the former. I think that Garfield is not only very cat-like, I also think that Davis is spot-on in regards to one important and rather profound aspect of them: Cats are remarkably self-aware creatures. I think that Davis illustrates this well when you see his protagonist admiring himself in the mirror or staring out the window while he contemplates his world. Garfield might not be the funniest comic of all time, but it has a philosophical side to it that I've always appreciated.

Jim Davis' Garfield also has an alter-ego: The Caped Avenger. When Garfield is in this mode, he can do things that his natural self might not do so well, like stealing his owner, Jon Arbuckle's pancakes. I thought that all of this was mere exaggeration for the benefit of the comic strip until I sat down with my pancakes this morning. They disappeared in a flash of black shadow.

Licorice, I love you, you little bastard. Don't ever change. You'll get all the pancakes and maple syrup you want.