by Unknown visitor and added to by Michael (Admin)
(UK)
Simon's Cat book cover. Reproduced under fair use adopting the arguments presented by Wikipedia authors.
Simon's Cat was created by English Animator Simon Tofield and is said by the creator to be based on his own cat, "Hugh" despite the cat not being named in the cartoons. His website www.simonscat.com features films about a basic black line drawn cat in a variety of situations causing pure havoc and annoyance to his owner.
The great charm and hilarity that comes from watching the videos of Simon's cat is that Simon Tofield has captured the essence of domestic cat behavior and exaggerated it in true cartoon cat style.
Anyone who looks after a cat will instantly recognise their cat's behavior in Simon's cat.
Food plays a big part in the series of videos, which incidentally have been turned into a book, released on 1 October 2009, published by Canongate. The cover of the book has this famous cat pointing at a empty food bowl asking in no uncertain terms, "Put the food in there and quickly.." (see heading picture). We all know that situation. Of course food plays a central role in the life of a domestic cat so this is totally understandable. Simon's cat does a bit of food catching himself (I think he is a "he" by the nature of his behavior!). He tries to catch Simon's koi fish from the pond and he preys on mice and birds although I have not seen these episodes.
Other than the cat miaowing no other dialogue is used. And should it ever be, it would detract from Simon's Cat.
Simon's Cat was used to promote the UK's Animal Welfare Charity RSPCA. I highly recommend viewing whether you're cat owner or not, never fails to make me smile!
Simon's cat is probably the most well known of all cat cartoon characters as it is a huge success and in polls people tend to have shortish memories! It is, though, as good as, if not better than, any other cat cartoon character.
His popularity has allowed for spin offs such as the cut out cat that is available in the book (see this page online: Cut Outs).
The above image is published under fair use as it is too small for actual use and it promotes the book and character. Update December 2012: Things have moved on at Simon's website since this page was built about three years ago. The cut appears not be available any more. Sorry.
Below you can see how a Flickr photographer, Jennifer Lamb, has used the cut out character:
Below I present a couple of classic Simon's cat videos. These are hosted on YouTube and should remain there indefinitely but sometimes videos are removed without notice, which would leave the screen black.
"Cat Man Do" - as at 25th Jan 2011 the video below has been seem a staggering 21,548,857 times! This is the first video released on YouTube winning "Best Comedy" award at the British Animation Awards 2008 :
Here is another. The classic, "Let Me In"...
Thanks for this. I’ll fix it — couldn’t fix it because the Simon’s cat website have moved the page or deleted the page. It may be available in one of the Simon’s books. But I don’t know.
The link to the cutout doesn’t work anymore ;(.