Cat Skeletons in Trees and My Scrolling Faux Pas

I was going through my artwork the other day… maybe it was all the cat art but a memory popped into my head and next thing you know I was laughing so hard I was snorting.

First off, let me start by saying this: fucking cat people.

Stop. Don’t.

You know exactly what I’m talking about. They’re just their own brand of people. Not a bad brand. Nothing wrong with the brand at all… I’ve got a cat myself, but let’s just call these people out: they dance to the beat of their own drums.

Now back to the story…

On this one particular day I found myself scrolling as I often do, absentmindedly on social media. I’m working on it… ADHD is fun… anyhow… and I happen upon a post from a local town’s page.

A person had posted about how the fire department had just performed a rescue. In their post they had included a picture of some fire trucks parked on their little suburban street. And they were praising the fire department for their fantastic work in rescuing a cat that had somehow gotten itself stuck up in a tree.

Which reminded me of a video clip I had seen a while ago… while also mindlessly scrolling on the internet… I know… I said I was working on that. And anyway THIS clip was of a comedian who had just happened to be telling a really funny joke about cats and firemen and skeletons and trees.

Basically the comedian said that he was calling “bullshit” on the whole cats needing to be saved by firemen because when was the last time you were driving down the street and you saw a cat skeleton in a tree?

And the audience erupted in laughter.

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I mean shit… I laughed out loud too. It was funny and he had a point.

So now I’m staring at this post on the town social page and I’m thinking about cat skeletons in trees and I thought… this would be funny…

I pull up my little comment tab and I write, “That’s great that the fire department was able to help this cat, but do we really think it’s necessary to pull cats out of trees? I mean let’s be honest, when was the last time you saw a tree line, littered with cat skeletons? Lol”

Ha. Ha. Funny.

I’m laughing. It’s innocent, funny, albeit ever so slightly dark humor in a sea of “so glad the cat was rescued”, “awesome job fire dept.”, “great work”, boring old comments.

Humor: good.

Laughing: fun.

Well some time passes… I get back to work, totally forget about the cat comment and proceed with my day until later on I get a notification and it’s a reply to a comment I had made (that I had completely forgotten about) from some random person whose name I don’t recognize.

So I click on the notification… never click on the notification…

THAT would be my word of advice here… but I did any way and the click brought me back to the little town’s social page with the firefighter ‘rescuing’ the damn cat out of the tree and all the boring “yeah, good job fire department” comments and the picture of the fire trucks and then my comment…

With a reply from some woman whom we’ll call “Susan,”

Who responds not with matched merriment and jest but rather stone cold seriousness and ALL CAPS…. Which you know,

Is never good.

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“HOW DARE YOU! MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T SAY THINGS YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. THIS IS HOW MY CAT, MUFFIN-CUPS DIED. SHE WAS STUCK IN A TREE AND PERISHED AND IT WAS AWFUL. YOU MONSTER. DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE NO CAT SKELETONS IN TREES BECAUSE THEIR DEAD BODIES FALL OUT OF THE TREES? GET EDUCATED.”

Now it took me a hot minute to pick my mouth up off the goddamn ground.

I was shook.

I was shocked, horrified… taken aback.

And while I was super sad for “Susan” and “Muffin-Cups” I was now roaring with laughter because what my friends… what are the fucking chances that I make the same joke that hit so damn well at the comedy show - because it’s so true mind you - and I manage to tell it in front of THE ONE lady, in probably the entire history of ladies with cats, who had a cat die up in a tree and had its lifeless corpse fall back down to the ground???!!!

Now I sucked at Probability and Statistics but I’m going to say that those chances seemed: pretty slim…

…yet here we were… I had pissed off “Susan,” desecrated the memory of “Muffin-Cups,” and had managed to disrupt the town’s social with a harmless little ‘cat skeletons in trees joke’, which like “Muffin-Cups,” had apparently not landed well.

So I sat there in horrified laughter… I had to wipe back tears I was laughing so hard. Again… not because of “Muffin-Cups,” (read the room, bro) but the situational humor was like top fucking notch…

Like this was some scripted type sitcom humor… but the funny sitcom (not the stupid sitcom where they need a laugh track), kind of top notch situational humor I was now finding myself… well, muddled in.

And I have to tell you… for a split second I will confess… I typed a comment, and I almost hit the little send button… I was laughing so hard I wasn’t thinking straight (rest in peace Muffin-Cup’s soul).

…but, not wanting to distress “Susan” any further…

I decided that it was probably best to erase my comment:

Sounds like you should have called the fire department.

“Susan” was already pretty pissed and I wasn’t wanting to make things any worse than I already had.

Let me tell you… that comment section was HEATED.

Nerve struck…

Don’t fuck with cats.

Mental note made.

Anyhow… cat people are something else.

RIP Muffin-Cups / sorry Susan.

Left to right: The Cat In The Hat; Don’t Fuck With Cats; and CatFish. - Private Collections

“No One.” - Private Collection