by zbicyclist

Two-door Cat

I get “Tudor Cat” out of this, but are Tudor Cats a thing?

A quick search pulls up this gruesome information:

“Cats were not a popular Tudor pet due to their association with the Devil and witchcraft. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII decreed in his bull against witches that cats were unholy creatures and were to be burned along with the witches that owned them, although I haven’t been able to find that instruction in the bull myself. When witches were burned at the stake it was often said that a black cat leapt out of the flames.

“At the coronation of Elizabeth I in January 1559, a dozen or so cats were stuffed into a wickerwork effigy of the Pope and paraded through the streets of London before being burned on a bonfire. Their dying shrieks were said to be the devils inhabiting the Pope’s body. Horrible!”

On a more positive note, that same web page notes this history of having a cat at 10 Downing Street.

“The resident cat, used as a “mouser” today, in 10 Downing Street, the British Prime Minister’s residence in London, is thought to date back to the time when Cardinal Thomas Wolsey placed his pet cat by his side, on a cushioned chair, while undertaking his duties as Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor. A bronze statue of Wolsey in his hometown of Ipswich in Suffolk features a cat peering out from behind his chair and clinging to his robes. It’s a beautiful feature of his statue.”

Larry, the current cat at 10 Downing Street, has served since 2011, through several prime ministers: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, and likely Burnham soon.

Still, it seems quite a stretch for Nate Fakes to be referring to these cats of Elizabethan times. Is there something closer to the 21st century I’m missing?

11 Comments

  1. Unknown's avatar

    I don’t get the joke but I feel like the pun is based on a “two-door car,” which is also a thing pictured in the comic.

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  2. Unknown's avatar

    I see car/cat typos so often online (since the r and t are right next to each other), that I wonder if the writer saw a typo and it gave them the inspiration for this comic.

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  3. Unknown's avatar

    In line with the previous comments, I also remember that pattern from long ago, but not with generic “car”: rather, one would say “I’ve got a Tudor Ford”.

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  4. Unknown's avatar

    I’ve seen a number of YouTube listings where the word “car” is used to describe a cat video, such as “Car wants to be held and petted” and so on. (Once I realized I was not going to see a car in that situation, I mostly stopped clicking on those videos.)

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Unknown's avatar

    Yes, on Cat Reddit, “car” for “cat” is a running joke, as in, “What model is my car?” when someone asks what breed their cat is, which people do constantly (and is itself a running semi-gag, since there’s also a flowchart that asks ‘Is your cat purebred?’; the YES branch says ‘Then that’s its breed’ and the NO branch says ‘Then it’s a cat’).

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  6. Unknown's avatar

    I thought it might be inspired by a common typo – the T and R keys are next to each other on the standard keyboard. “I bought a two-door cat yesterday” would not be fixed by autocorrect (at least not in the era before AI).

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