Oh dear, this may be taking furry a _little_ far...
Scrapper, Black Dragon, who's found a TV show he won't be
tuning in to. Read on...
Television Show for Cats Set to Debut
May 29, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:55 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- Balls of yarn, little plastic toys with
bells inside and the occasional whiff of catnip simply
aren't enough to satisfy the entertainment
needs of today's aophisticated, high-tech felines.
Cats need television. And now they have it.
``Meow TV,'' which bills itself as being for cats ``and the
people they tolerate,'' debuts at 7:30 p.m. EDT Friday on
the Oxygen network.
The tongue-in-furry-cheek comedy mixes video of squirrels
and fish with segments titled ``Cat Yoga'' and ``Cat
Haiku.''
An interminably perky host on ``The House Cat Shopping
Network'' urges kitties to ``use those paws -- you've seen
your owners do it, you know how to dial a phone.''
And an ad for a collection of favorite feline songs
includes ``Spay You, Spay Me'' and ``Mice, Mice Baby.''
Lazy, lasagna-loving Garfield had his own animated series
for a while. So did the cranky comic-strip cat Heathcliff
and the animated troublemaker Felix. Then there was Salem,
the spooky animatronic talking cat on ``Sabrina the
Teenage Witch.'' And of course, there was the ``Toonces
the Driving Cat'' sketch on ``Saturday Night Live.''
``Meow TV'' executive producer Elyse Roth likened her show
to ``Cat-urday Night Live,'' and said at least two more
episodes are in the works. Actress Annabelle Gurwitch,
formerly of TBS' ``Dinner and a Movie,'' plays host while
sitting on the couch with her 9-year-old black cat, Stinky.
``The artistic mission was to create programming you could
watch with your cat,'' Roth said. ``I don't know that
you're going to park your cat and do whatever.''
(A recent advance showing of ``Meow TV'' at a Brooklyn
loft, however, failed to hold the attention of a certain
pair of overfed 11-year-old cats. Cali, the calico, licked
herself the whole time, while Silver, who's gray and white,
stared blankly out the window, then slinked away for food
about halfway through.)
But some cats really do watch television, insisted Pat
Marengo as she cuddled her brown-and-orange Persian,
Maggie.
``She watches anything that's fast. She likes sports, she
likes cartoons. She likes to see other cats on TV,'' said
Marengo, who lives on Long Island with her husband and a
family of cats who act and model. ``We have a cat perch
near the television, and she goes up, looks at it and tries
to touch it.''
Marengo and Maggie were at the ``Meow TV'' launch party on
Tuesday night. Also in attendance was Vincent Pastore, who
starred in ``The Sopranos'' as Big Pussy.
On the Net: `Meow TV'' Web site:
http://www.meowtv.com/
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Received on Mon Jul 07 2003 - 20:07:07 CDT