1981 was a year when cats topped the bestseller lists
Well, not as writers of course, but as characters they were endless entertainment
"October," CBC's The National host George McLean told viewers in the fall of 1981, "is one of the the busiest months for book publishers."
But that fall, he added, instead of the usual novels, biographies and diet books, "a different sort of reading material is clawing its way up the bestseller list."
It seems that bookstore shelves were cluttered with cat-related choices, and enough people were buying them that at the time of this Oct. 5, 1981 report they were also taking up several spots on the bestseller lists.
"Now cat lovers and cat haters who buy books are making bestsellers out of anti-cat books."
The bestselling paperback that week, in Canada and the U.S., was by cartoonist Simon Bond.
In One Hundred and One Uses of a Dead Cat, the cartoonist provided illustrations of dead cats as bookends and toast holders.
The pet owners love to hate
In Toronto to autograph copies of the bestseller, Bond spoke to reporter Russ Patrick about why the books were doing so well.
"Well I guess there's plenty of cat lovers with a sense of humour," Bond told him.
"I'm a cat lover, and everybody involved with the book is a cat lover," he offered up as an explanation books with anti-cat titles being snapped up by cat fanciers.
'A bit of an anti-hero'
Less than a month later, Jim Davis, another author whose cartoon character cat Garfield was a steady title on the bestseller list, was a guest on CBC TV's McLean at Large.
At the time of his Nov. 6 appearance, the New York Times paperback bestseller list contained three of his titles — Garfield at Large, Garfield Gains Weight, and Garfield Bigger Than Life.
Host Bob McLean asked for an explanation of the extraordinary celebrity of a cat "so much beloved or hated?"
"Number one he's a cat," Davis said.
And cat lovers, Davis explained, are "probably the most zealous on the face of this earth."
"Number two," he added, "he's a bit of an anti-hero" who "militantly defends his right" to do all the things we are made to feel guilty about, such as over-eating and avoiding exercise.
Garfield, McLean asked, "was the result of a bit of market research, wasn't he?"
"I had tried a lot of cartoons," Davis explained, as he quickly sketched the well-known character.
He created a comic strip about a gnat, he said, but "nobody can relate to bugs."
With an eye on the popularity of dogs in cartoons, "I thought that cats would be a good idea, there are a lot of cat lovers out there."
And so Garfield was launched on June 19 , 1978.