Purr-fect memories of a wonderful cat
On 1960s Saturday mornings, the grinning feline Felix the Cat enchanted a boy and his brother
In a new weekly series, we look back at our first pop-culture loves. Here’s how vividly I remember the theme song to Felix the Cat, my fondest memory of a childhood happily wasted by staring at Saturday morning TV.
You could wake me up from a deep sleep and I could sing it upon command: Felix the Cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat! Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks
Felix the Cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat! You’ll laugh so much, your sides will ache Your heart will go pitter-pat Watching Felix, Felix the wonderful cat! I didn’t need to Google it. The song is forever imprinted upon my brain, the result of having heard and sung along with it countless times.
Beginning about 1964, when I was 8 years old, I watched Felix the Cat with my younger brother Mike every Saturday morning at 8 a.m. on Buffalo’s WGRZ Channel 2.
It was the only station broadcasting at that hour in pre-cable Toronto and, as I recall, Felix was the first cartoon show of the day, the first of many that Mike and I would watch right through to noon.
It came on after Agriculture U.S.A., a farm-themed quiz show that we’d also watch, being so desperate for TV of any kind.
Mike and I viewed Felix the Cat on the old black-and-white Electrohome my family owned. No big deal, because Felix himself was also black-and-white. I didn’t realize until I played old shows on YouTube for this story that the cartoon at that time was actually in colour, although Felix’s origins go back to the time of silent film in the 1920s. Felix the Cat Childhood rating: (out of 4) Adult rating: Strange 1960s Saturday morning cartoon
(He had a rodent rival named Mickey, whom you may have heard of. Mickey has had a slightly more successful career.)
We’d sit cross-legged on the floor in our pyjamas, with big bowls of Cocoa Puffs or Cap’n Crunch balanced on our laps. Saturday was the only day the Howell kids were allowed to have sweet breakfast cereals.
Felix was the cool kitty of my childhood, a grinning feline with a squeaky voice and a cheery “Righty-O!” to greet any occasion. He was cocky without being a smartass. He got up to all kinds of wacky and dangerous adventures, including flying to the moon in a spaceship shaped like a tea kettle.
Nothing seemed to bother him. He’d often punctuate an episode with a hearty laugh.
Part of his charm was that he existed in an absurd two-dimensional world of hand-drawn animation, where nothing was really scary, even when it was meant to be.
Modern TV creations like South Park and “The Itchy & Scratchy Show” (a regular gag on The Simpsons) owe a debt to Felix the Cat, it seems to me. So does Homestar Runner on the Internet.
Felix walked upright, carrying a magical “bag of tricks” that looked like it was made out of carpet remnants. It could morph into incredible things. A canoe. A picnic table. Even an escalator.
Bad people wanted to steal it from him. There was an evil professor named the Professor (duh), who plotted against Felix the way Wile E. Coyote plots against the Road Runner.
There was also a nasty cyborg named Master Cylinder, shaped like an old water heater with a TV screen for a face. I think Master Cylinder was the first villain I ever heard use the “Mwah hah hah” evil laugh. He had a squidlike stooge named General Clang, who looked like he could walk right into the frame of a SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon.
Felix’s sidekick was brainiac nerd Poindexter, who sported Coke-bottle glasses and a white gown with an “on” button attached to it.
Poindexter was forever inventing things such as levitation ray guns and the like. Felix the Cat was every bit as weird as all this sounds. And speaking of sound, the show’s music came from the realm of 1950s sci-fi, with crazy organ and theremin noises. Far out, man.
I loved Felix the Cat as a kid and would have rated it four out of four stars at the time. It was my gateway drug, so to speak, to all the cartoon memories of many happy childhood Saturdays. As the morning wore on, Mike and I would take in a succession of shows: Wacky Races, Davey and Goliath, Rocky and Bullwinkle (which included Dudley Do-Right and Fractured Fairy Tales), plus series featuring Spider-Man, Pinocchio, the Beatles and the Wizard of Oz in cartoon guise. Good times.
As an adult, revisiting Felix the Cat a half-century later on YouTube (who knew Felix’s bag of tricks was yellow?), I’d probably give the show three out of four stars. My sides no longer ache from laughing and my heart doesn’t go pitter-pat watching Felix, Felix the wonderful cat.
DreamWorks Animation last year announced it had purchased the rights to Felix the Cat, with an eye to returning him to the big screen (there have been many Felix the Cat short films and a failed 1988 feature made in Hungary.)
I wonder if this is a good idea. Felix seemed to inhabit the world of the tiny screen and the whimsical villain. Would he fit into this modern age of IMAX screens and super creeps?
I also wonder i f I’ve l ost some of my childhood sense of wonder.
But do I still smile at Felix and even more so at the memories of watching him with my bro? Righty-O!
Felix got up to all kinds of wacky and dangerous adventures, including flying to the moon in a spaceship shaped like a tea kettle