Pusheen is a female, gray tabby, cartoon cat. There is no indication that she is a purebred cat. I will take it, therefore, that she is a random-bred cat or moggy, which is apt because she is meant to represent cats in general. She does things that, in general, young people like to do such as blogging, snacking and going on adventures. She is the creation of Claire Belton and Andrew Duff. Pusheen was based upon Belton and Duff’s gray, short-haired tabby of the same name and was first aired to the public in May 2010 in a comic strip titled “Pusheen Things”.
You can tell that Pusheen is a gray tabby cat even though the drawings of her are exaggerated as she is very obese (‘chubby’ is a kinder word). I guess this is to make her look cuter. I am not sure though that it was a good idea as it might encourage feline obesity, a genuine problem in the real world.
You can see the striped tabby tail and a couple of spots on her back. There is a hint at the classic tabby “M” forehead marking which designates a tabby cat. In this instance it is reduced to three straight vertical lines going down the forehead. In short, there is a hint in the cartoon drawing that we are looking at a tabby cat. And if you weren’t sure about that Wikipedia tells you!
THERE ARE MANY MORE CARTOON CAT ARTICLES AT THE BASE OF THE PAGE.
Just to make sure, tabby cats are not a breed of cat. They are cats with a certain type of coat. There are three types of tabby coat: spotted markings, striped markings (mackerel tabby) and the classic tabby markings which are swirls and blotches, the best known of which is the bulls-eye swirl. Click this for lots more on the tabby coat.
Pusheen is highly successful on social media with 8.5 million followers. She also has Instagram and YouTube accounts. There are three TikTok Pusheen accounts. It appears that these are informal as the following is relatively small compared to those on Instagram and Facebook. They are focused on showing off Pusheen products.
Here is an example:
Claire Belton is an illustrator and entrepreneur best known for her popular cartoon cat, Pusheen. She has created other related cartoon characters. She is president of Pusheen Corp in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was born on December 7, 1991 in Japan. After she created the Pusheen website she appears to have deleted all information about herself and become incognito. She deleted her personal website clairebelton.com. I am speculating but she probably did it because of the popularity of Pusheen and she wanted to avoid being harassed and hounded by Pusheen fans.
At one stage she managed cute-plush.com, a website/shop selling Pusheen products and accessories. It was closed down and another one was opened namely everydaycute.com. That one was also closed. It appears that the official website is now simply: pusheen.com. It features a Pusheen shop with clothes and other products based around Pusheen.
“Pusheen” is a name which apparently stems from the word ‘puisin’. This means kitten in Irish. Pusheen has a sister, Stormy. Pusheen’s popularity is based on cuteness. The Japanese have a name for it: kawaii. It is a success business concept. It targets girls.
Below are some more articles on cartoon cats.
