Whatever happens tomorrow, maybe this certainty will keep us going: Cathy will live to have another cow. Rogers’ famous (now clichéd) advice for reassuring children in scary times, telling them to “look for the helpers.” A similar principle applies with Cathy: look for the AACK!s. It is Cathy’s whole job and most pure state to be a basket case, and at that she is an essential worker. ![]() In fact, when Cathy does have a moment of pure positivity-such as in finding a new appreciation of the outside or wishing us a happy Easter-it feels actively disconcerting. In a time when we can count on little, we know for sure that Cathy will continue to catastrophize and will probably give off a bunch of cartoon sweat droplets while doing so. Perhaps the apt analogy is: Chocolate is to Cathy as comfort and stability are to us. ![]() It’s grim out there, and we’re all grieving how can Cathy freak out about her dog making off with one of her coveted rolls of toilet paper at a time like this? But you can also choose to see Cathy’s unwavering mania as soothing, reliable. She wanted to spend time with her parents, who were getting older, and her then-teenage daughter, and after 34 years of cramming her thoughts into word bubbles, she was feeling stifled by the form. One could say that Cathy trivializes the crisis. She was 60 years old, divorced, and financially secure as a result of Cathy-mania. Since mid-March, all of the strips have dealt with life in quarantine and carried the label “Scenes From Isolation.” So when self-isolation began for most of us, it began for Cathy, too. It will be months or years before we find out if the coronavirus existed in other fictional characters like the Simpsons’ or James Bond’s universes, but the comic strip, unlike other art or story forms, has the rare ability to reflect this crisis as it’s happening. Perhaps sensing our neediness, Guisewite has gone from putting out new panels sporadically to regularly posting a few a week. (I suppose technically these posts might not count as canon, but let’s just assume they do.) Each one is drawn on a little white paper, neatly torn into a square and charmingly, fastidiously mounted on a piece of colorful construction paper. ![]() Though the syndicated newspaper comic strip she starred in ended in 2010, these days you can find Cathy on Instagram, where her creator and namesake, Cathy Guisewite, has been posting original one-panel strips for the past couple of years. Comics Read Cathy Classics from the Beginning You Might Also Like Cathy Commiserations Cathy Guisewite More from Cathy Classics Get the comics you want, your way. Cathy was an American comic strip, drawn by Cathy Guisewite from 1976 until 2010. A post shared by Cathy Guisewite on at 8:27am PDT
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