Stick Cat

Funny counts for something

Hello Team Snarf,

I’m still getting this off on a Wednesday unless you’re on the East Coast, so I’ll count that as a win. Let’s hop right into:

The Series: Stick Cat
The Author and Illustrator: Tom Watson
Length/Picture Density: 200ish pages, but they go by quick. Pictures on every spread.

I have decided I’m okay with the Lucky Charms of kids media. I came to this … revelation feels too strong, but I started feeling this way one day when my kids were watching Grizzly and the Lemmings, which is a show with no dialogue about the ongoing struggle over a Nutella-like substance (or whatever else has caught their attention) between, you guessed it, a grizzly bear and a bunch of lemmings. No lessons are attempted, imparted or learned, and there are no particular values guiding the show that I can recognize.

But the slapstick is pretty good and Leo (7) and Lyra (3) laugh a lot when they watch. That’s honestly enough for me. Laughter is good for the soul, and the show can produce mini bonding moments between the two of them. I wouldn’t want it to be all they consume, but it’s not. Their television diet is a lot more wholesome than what I was watching at their age, which was mostly He Man and Thundercats. I watched plenty of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote when I was a kid and Grizzly and the Lemmings is basically the same thing.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I’m not categorically against Stick Cat. It’s kind of the Grizzly and the Lemmings of chapter books. That comparison will only get us so far, but it’s low on wholesome content and, in Leo’s case, very high on laughs.

The stories revolve around two neighboring cats, Stick Cat and Edith, who live on the 23rd floor of an apartment building with their respective owners.

The problems that drive the plots are pleasantly small: Edith’s owners have a baby and she has to compete for attention; Stick Cat notices a neighbor across the way whose arms are stuck in a piano and tries to help, etc. The action stretches out as the two cats try to formulate plans, misunderstand each other, and get distracted. The stories are weighted more toward their interactions than the plot stuff, which I like.

But that gets me to my major problem here. The humor and much of the relationship between the two cats is driven by Edith being crazy and unreasonable. Stick Cat is the “straight guy” in their comedy duo, while Edith makes absurd suggestions and does unhelpful things. She’s vain and wants to fix her hair before doing anything. She insists on being listened too while ignoring some major problem Stick Cat is trying to handle. Stick Cat often resorts to telling her she’s right and stroking her ego as a path to least resistance in getting things done. He feels too much like an emasculated sitcom husband for my tastes.

Also — and I’m pretty sure I’m overreacting to this — the books always start with a note about how the author wrote these books for Mary, the girl he has a crush on. By themselves, these intros are funny and sweet, and short enough to not be much of a distraction from the rest of the stories. But combined with the Stick Cat-Edith relationship, I get an overarching vibe of men who love their partners in a way that makes them cowed and controlled by them. Or is this just a charming series about two silly cats and I’m way off base?

The stories work because Stick Cat does love Edith, and doesn’t get frustrated with her ego-fueled behavior, but if he were a real person, you would worry about him just as much as her, and you’d probably be relieved if they broke up (they’re not romantic in the books, but they’re very much a pair).

They also work because they are super digestible. The action and dialogue is easy to follow, and the illustrations are basically stylized stick figure drawings. The books are formatted to look like notebooks, as if the entire books were written and illustrated by hand one day.

All of that’s not enough for me to try to dissuade Leo from these books entirely. Again, it’s not like he doesn’t read anything else. And hey, they’re less picture-driven than a lot of other books I have mixed feelings about. They’re not great. They’re not terrible. Leo loves them and ultimately I’m fine with that.

Oh, and there’s also an entire Stick Dog series. I haven’t read it, but I’m guessing it’s got a similar vibe.