Get Fuzzy

Get Fuzzy
	; Logo for Get Fuzzy comic strip.
Author(s)	Darby Conley
Website	Get Fuzzy Website
Current status / schedule	Running
Launch date	September 1999
Syndicate(s)	United Feature Syndicate
Publisher(s)	Andrews McMeel Publishing
Genre(s)	Humor, Pets, Family

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Get Fuzzy is an American daily comic strip written and drawn by Darby Conley. The strip features the adventures of Boston advertising executive Rob Wilco and his two anthropomorphic pets: dog Satchel Pooch and cat Bucky Katt. Get Fuzzy has been published by United Feature Syndicate since September 1999. It appears in over 200 newspapers worldwide.

The strip's humor comes from the conflict between Bucky's and Satchel's personalities, which are extreme stereotypes of cats and dogs. Sweet, trusting, naïve Satchel is routinely subjected to the exploitation of cruel, self-centered Bucky, who is always torturing the poor canine. Rob, the middleman, is often frazzled from dealing with them, or more specifically, from dealing with Bucky's destructive nature and overall nastiness. The three characters live in an apartment on Boston's Longwood Avenue.

[edit] Main characters

Bucky Katt

[edit] Bucky B. Katt

A twisted Siamese cat (Conley felt that tabbies were overrepresented in cartoons^[1]), Bucky Katt is selfish, cynical, and "lazy". His ears are nearly always drawn laid back flat on his head in a defiant, aggressive and unfriendly manner, unless he is forced to have them up or has a bedhead. In certain color pictures of Bucky, his eyes seem to be a mix of sky blue and wisteria purple, rather than a plain sky blue. He is a cat in that he does not understand everything that humans (or just about any other animal) do. This, along with being unfriendly, is a bad combination. According to Rob's friend, Joe Doman, Bucky is named after Negro League baseball player Buck O'Neil (a teammate of Satchel Paige in the 1930s and 1940s). However, Rob has mentioned that Bucky was given his name in reference to his fang (which Bucky has referred to as his "pointy"), which protrudes from his mouth much like a buck tooth, but is more or less a "fang". Bucky thinks it is because he is such a "young buck". In several strips Bucky goes by his nickname "Shirley". Bucky has only one upper cuspid, having knocked out the other one in a fight. Rather than having his own room, as his "roommate" Satchel Pooch does, Bucky lives in a dresser located in the hall closet of Rob Wilco's apartment, because he refuses to share a room with Satchel. It has also been mentioned that when they moved to that apartment, Bucky chose the closet because "it was the safest place in case of assault". Much of the storyline has Bucky continually finding ways to antagonize and annoy Rob and Satchel. Bucky also has an inexplicable fear of mice.

In one storyline, when Bucky has his "pointy" knocked out by Fungo Squiggly, they immediately go to the vets office. When a nurse calls the trio in, Rob asks Satchel for the glass of milk the tooth was in. Satchel had drank it, but they recover the tooth with some Ipecac. While in the waiting room, Rob says that Bucky has never actually been in a real fight and that when he finally attempts to get into one, he gets his tooth knocked out. Satchel says that Bucky has won a fight before. When Rob questions him, Satchel says, "Well, to be fair, Mittens was 20 years old, declawed and toothless, and she still managed to get a few good gummings on Bucky's arm. But yeah...yeah, I think technically Bucky won when Mittens fell asleep." Bucky wound up losing two teeth and having the missing his lower right posterior molar replaced by a gold tooth. Following the vet's office fiasco, Bucky sued Fungo and the story sent them to the Judge Judy show.

Bucky is frequently depicted as possessing an abundance of rather disagreeable feline traits, such as anti-social tendencies, delight in random destruction (at times bordering on vandalism) and violence, hostility, and selfishness at a much higher level. Most of this is directed at Satchel, as he endeavors to wreck Satchel's optimistic outlook of life, but usually fails, because Satchel does not have enough intelligence for his rude sarcasm and is often unaware that he is being insulted. In one story arc, however, he gets angry at Bucky in response to Bucky calling Satchel's dog friends "a bunch of Eurotrash", resulting in meek and kinder behavior from Bucky for a period of time. In a mild display of insubordination, Bucky calls Rob "Pinky", referring to Rob's (in Bucky's eyes) shameful lack of fur and skin color. At other times he calls him "Robert","Robbo","Wilco","Bob","Miss","Seniorita","Pinko","Chickless", and "Cracker", rarely using his preferred name, "Rob". Bucky has had two girlfriends, a Persian named Le Beutifal and a Siamese called Darcy.

Three obsessions dominate Bucky's life: The Death of Fungo Squiggly, the ferret who lives next door, his desire to eat a monkey (including Chucky Chimp, an ape at a zoo who mistook him for a rather large banana, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim's "Rally Monkey", and Hartlepool United F.C. simian mascot H'Angus), and wanting a movie made about him. None of these goals has any reasonable rationale behind it, and he fails brilliantly in his repeated attempts to fulfill these obsessions. Fungo routinely disrupts Bucky's schemes, the single encounter he had with a monkey (at a zoo) resulted in the chimp trying to peel Bucky (thinking he was a banana), and his movie schemes always end with a lack of funding after initial rejection by Rob to "invest" into the movie project. Bucky is often shown to be highly prejudiced against members of the weasel family, which may explain his obsession with Fungo.

His attempts at intellectual superiority are undermined by his constant malapropisms and his habit of making ridiculous claims, which he never admits as being factually incorrect, such as saying that owls, locomotives, England and Canada do not exist, even though Bucky has visited the latter. Bucky is furthermore frequently depicted as believing in absurd conspiracy theories, or absurd theories in general.

Bucky owns a miniature teddy bear named "Smacky", obtained by his refusing to exchange toys with Satchel at a McDoodles restaurant even though each had the toy the other wanted. It is one of the few objects Bucky seems to care for. An instance of such affection occurred within one story arc, as Fungo Squiggly demanded possession of Smacky to guarantee the safe return of Bucky's autobiography, which the ferret had stolen. Furthermore, as Christmas gifts, Bucky received two other bears which he named "Cracker" (because the bear was white) and "Punk", but they do not appear as often as Smacky. Satchel's response to the three bears, "Smack, Cracker, and Punk", a play on Kellogg's Rice Krispies' characters Snap, Crackle and Pop. Bucky also owns a rag doll named "Ms. Pretty", similar to Barbie. She has only been seen once, but is occasionally mentioned. Bucky carries the doll in a backpack when he goes outside.She has one arm and rather frazzled hair. Despite his lack of sensitivity, Bucky cares deeply for Smacky and Ms. Pretty. He was also distressed when Rob washed his blanket.

Despite "talk[ing] a lot of smack", Bucky is often shown to be a very poor fighter physically. After working out to look more "buff" for his then girlfriend persian, he asks Rob and Satchel how he looks and if they can tell if he's been working up. Satchel says, "Well...no...you're real fuzzy though; its sort of hard to tell." Rob tells him, "You've focused on your tooth for so long as your main form of intimidation that your body got sort of...flabby."Oddly enough, when Bucky does fight, his weapon of choice is a spork. He also claims to be able to "swing a mean sock of legos".

Bucky claims to be a fan of the "Yankers", even wearing a Yankees hat throughout the series, only because Rob wouldn't let him wear the "'B' is for 'Bucky'" hat. He taunts Rob when the Red Sox play poorly, but knows little about baseball. Bucky's one acknowledgment to Rob's obsession with Rugby Union football came when he inexplicably performed the Ka Mate haka made famous by Rob's favorite national team, the All Blacks of New Zealand.

Bucky spends much of his time watching television, especially early in the comic strip. Early on, it was said that Bucky spent at least half of his day watching television, though this was faded out as the author decided to make Bucky's schedule more nap-oriented. For more than a week at one point in the strip, Bucky pretended that his life was a television show, pretending to be a soda spokesman, a news anchor, and a character he "invented", Dolly Persian. This phase came to an abrupt end as Rob pointed to Bucky, and made a clicking noise, claiming that he had "turned the Bucky Channel off".

Although he professes a lack of interest in the Harry Potter series, Bucky took part in a spoiler-filled discussion of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with Rob regarding the allegiance of potions master Severus Snape, and also uses the series' fictionality as the basis for his afformentioned claims about trains, owls, England and Canada. At one point Rob asked him if he wanted to listen to him read Harry Potter, but Bucky left the room, and was listening through a crack in the door. Bucky seems to like Slytherin because Satchel is a fan of Hufflepuff House. In addition, Bucky fits the house qualifications of being an ambitious and cunning pure-blooded (and evil) animal.

On most outdoor excursions, when Rob is present, Bucky is carried in a strap-on "Bundle-O-Joy" baby carrier, referenced as a way of keeping the cat out of trouble. Rob has also been known to use a harness leash on him for the same purpose.

Bucky has been shown to hold extremely conservative political viewpoints throughout the strip, but these may not stem from actual convictions as much as a desire to antagonize Rob and Satchel, both apparent liberals. Bucky is also frequently shown to have francophobic and Anti-Quebec sentiments (he regularly says words like frog and canuck, although these, like his politics, appear not to stem from racism or nativism but from the desire to antagonize Satchel for his background). He also has no visible sense of pride as an American.

Darby Conley has made gradual revelations about Bucky's birth and early life. Rob once mentioned that he found Bucky huddled on a trash can, while the cat was only five ounces and a few weeks old, in Hackensack, New Jersey. Though Bucky believes himself to be a Leo, he is revealed by Rob to be a Capricorn. (Rob also called Bucky "a Cancer" when he told Satchel, who had been reading the Sagittarius horoscope, that he was a Leo- although it was probably more a testament to his anger and annoyance towards Bucky than his actual astrological sign.) While Bucky's father has never been mentioned, Bucky gave his mother's maiden name on a credit card application as "Tricky Woo", possibly after a canine character in All Creatures Great and Small. One Sunday comic strip shows early "baby pictures" of a young Bucky clinging to Satchel. Interestingly, this is the only strip that shows Bucky with both upper cuspids.

Starting in September 2006, Bucky's cousin from Manchester, Mac Manc McManx, arrived at Rob's apartment, and subsequently revealed that Bucky's hatred of and desire to eat monkeys is apparently genetic. Bucky ran for President of the United States in 2008, supposedly as an Independent.

Although he feels the need to maintain an "alley cat" image, Bucky occasionally reveals a kitten-like nature. He has also once voluntarily fixed Satchel's watch, and after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Bucky was badly shaken; while Rob and Satchel left to donate blood, he decorated the apartment with thankful balloons and signs, and baked some cookies for them to show his appreciation.

[edit] Satchel Pooch

An overweight (in one strip, it was mentioned he was on the atkins diet), naïve, friendly, and easily amused dog. His father, named Copernicus, a Labrador Retriever and retired guide dog, and his mother, a Shar Pei, live in Cheticamp, Nova Scotia. His father, one of a long line of guard dogs and Army dogs, was disappointed that Satchel had changed his name from "Number 8" to Satchel and also that he had become a "house dog." He has been alleged by Joe, a friend of his sports fanatic "owner" Rob Wilco, to be named after baseball player Satchel Paige.

Satchel is kind, gentle, and sympathetic. These traits, coupled with his naïvete and gullibility, make him a natural target for the scheming Bucky Katt. Although he often seems oblivious to his own exploitation (Bucky once sold Satchel his own Nerf football by writing "Sooper[sic]" above "Nerf" to make it a "Sooper Nerf", and Bucky also once sold him his own moon pie for $5,) Satchel occasionally expresses frustration towards Bucky and his hostile attitude. He seems to have forgotten that dogs are traditionally the natural aggressor in relationships between dogs and cats, and in fact, intimidation appears to be completely alien to the affable and easygoing dog. He has only threatened Bucky with violence once, and it was due to Bucky insulting Satchel's friends, rather than anything aimed at Satchel directly. Satchel did forcibly grab Bucky once after Bucky had turned on every light in the house (as well as putting a sock in the toaster oven) in an effort to force Bucky to turn the unused lights off due to Satchel's concern over global warming. Satchel is normally unilaterally nice to Bucky, and usually receives no consideration whatsoever from the cat in return; rare exceptions to this lopsided relationship include Satchel's gift of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream to Bucky on his birthday, which elicited an unprecedented display of gratitude from Bucky (who apparently believed it contained actual monkeys).

Bucky Katt thinks Satchel is stupid. When they were deciding where to go for a vacation, Bucky tells Rob to just leave Satchel at home and tell him he's in New Zealand. Rob tells Bucky Satchel isn't that stupid. Then Conley shows Satchel sitting in a chair looking at a sign that said "Welcome to Italy", with hin saying, "Wow, this chair is in ITALY!" Satchel's jokes tend to deliver either a pun comment or the strip's punch line. Both are usually preceded by his laughter. His jokes often involve him not fully understanding an idea. Often, a punchline provided by another character is followed by Satchel delivering a second punchline.

Satchel's personality serves as foil to that of Bucky's: easy to please, optimistic to the extreme, and perfectly content to peacefully coexist with everyone. He is good friends with Bucky's nemesis, Fungo Squiggly, much to Bucky's dismay. In fact, they are such good friends that Rob had a ferret flap installed in Satchel's room so Fungo could come into the apartment and leave as he pleased (much to Bucky's chagrin, who broke Satchel's piggy bank out of spite when he found the flap).

True to his character, Satchel takes a neutral position in the ongoing sports feud between professed New York Yankees fan Bucky and rabid Boston Red Sox fan Rob. Satchel says he likes the Chicago Cubs. Satchel is also very proud of his Canadian heritage, taking the time to watch Queen Elizabeth II whenever the royal figure is on television. He is a Harry Potter enthusiast, and was once the flustered victim of a spoiler-filled conversation between Rob and Bucky regarding Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. As a fan of the Harry Potter series, Satchel displays a Hufflepuff poster in his room, a house affiliation that naturally suits the loyal and friendly dog. Naturally, Satchel is also a supporter of animal rights. He asked Rob if he gave him some coins if he could write a check to "Peter" for him. (He meant the P.E.T.A)

When Bucky forced him and Rob to recite scenes from "the greatest comic strip ever", his guess as to what the strip was Garfield.

Although Satchel cannot tell time, he wears a watch he calls "Handy." Though the watch was destroyed in an accident with a bicycle, it was later found and repaired by Bucky, who then gave it back to him as a Christmas present. Satchel also received a digital watch on the same Christmas morning that he named "Dingy" (later "Beepy"), though he is still unable to tell time with it. In addition to the watch, Satchel names everything from the carpet ("Rugger Green") to a television ("World B. Shiny") to a lamp ("Lampy") after what they are. Rob was slightly put off when Satchel told Beepy (Rob was on the couch) "Oop! Rob's sitting on Blue McCushy!"

He was mentioned in one strip as liking the music of Ray Charles.

Satchel was implied to be Christian on one occasion when Bucky got trapped in the apartments ductwork. Satchel assumed Bucky was God, and appeared very humble in "His" presence. When Bucky shouted at him that he wasn't God and calling Satchel a "filthy, stupid moron", Satchel assumed he was Satan, and held two pencils up in the shape of a cross, telling him "BEGONE! POSSESS MY DUCTWORK NO MORE, FOUL DEMON!"

Satchel's sexual orientation has been jokingly questioned several times throughout the strip's run. One strip in a series of "rejected storylines" was titled "Doggie Civil Unions?" and illustrated with a sketch of Satchel with his arm around the eponymous main character of the well-known comic strip Marmaduke. Satchel once said that he would have to "come out of the closet" he was hiding in to fulfill some demand of Bucky's, whereupon Bucky began to declare that he had been waiting "three years" for this to happen before being cut off by Rob. Bucky also stated that he believed that Satchel could be gay because of his feminine response of "It's faaaaabulous!" to how he liked his Barbara Streisand CD. Satchel has also appeared wearing a sweatband that reads "Lady Foot Locker", as well as his referring to himself as a woman after receiving a copy of InStyle magazine in the mail and reading it cover to cover. However, this aspect of Satchel's personality has never been treated as anything other than a mild amusement, and is counterbalanced by his occasional tendency to fall in love with both human (mostly people on TV) and canine females. In the latter case, Satchel's primary female friend/crush is a black and white dog named Oreo, who has known him since they were puppies. However, apparently Oreo is more interested in a bomb-sniffing dog named Chaser who has joined their playgroup, and Satchel doesn't like it. (This eventually ended in humorous results, as Bucky sprayed spray adhesive under Satchel's "arms" (front legs) thinking it was Rob's deodorant. (See Oreo under "Supporting Dog Characters") Satchel has started his own chat with shar - pei avatars, icons, and photos to his own MySpace Profile but he changed the name to MyHowl.

Throughout the strip, Satchel has been portrayed as a character who is taken advantage of by Bucky. Satchel sticking up for himself was a rare event, encouraged by Rob. Recent strips (May 2007) show Satchel becoming increasingly aggressive, and often fighting back to Bucky's relentless insults. In some cases, Satchel reacts physically to Bucky, and in a current story where Satchel attempts to write his own comic book, he creates a character called "Wack the Kitty", who meets some kind of physical violence on every page probably based on Bucky; Rob comments that Satchel "may have a bit of passive aggression goin' on...". No explanation has been given for Satchel's sudden change, though he still is portrayed in the strip as friendly and good-natured. As evidenced by his actions when he talks about the "voices" in his head that say "Kill them both Satchel", he is unaware that he is upsetting Rob and Bucky and thinks it's funny.

Satchel was a guest at the 75th anniversary party of Blondie and Dagwood in 2005.

[edit] Rob Wilco

Rob is the "owner" of Satchel and Bucky. He works in advertising but is not proud of it. Rob is a vegetarian, friend of Joe Doman, Leo Kottke fan, and a Boston Red Sox fanatic. He is also a rugby union fan, a sport relatively obscure in the U.S. Rob bears an un-rugby-like physique (Joe claimed that he wasn't "big enough to warm the bench effectively" in High School) and personality. Rob also enjoys video games. He serves as the straight man between Satchel's goofy naïveté and Bucky's cynical hostility, observing their antics and those of their various animal friends with bemusement, amusement, or both. In the Get Fuzzy universe, virtually all animals (with the possible exception of a few farm animals) talk, a situation that no one seems to find odd.

Rob is portrayed as a bit of an everyman: a mediocre performer in a job he dislikes, not successful romantically, and an all-around relatively quiet guy with chronic lower back pain (several story arcs have revolved around his back going out). His passions, which often border on obsessions, include sports (particularly the Boston Red Sox and the New Zealand All Blacks), video games, and books. Rob is often shown reading, usually while in bed. He is also a vegetarian due to what he feels are too cruel methods of killing the animals (he occasionally lapses from time to time, often being tricked by Bucky, and he ate meat much more often in the beginning of the strip). He seems to particularly like the Harry Potter series, as does Satchel. According to Bucky, Rob once shoved a nine-year-old girl out of the way in order to obtain the last copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at a midnight release party, although the accuracy of this is questionable. Rob is occasionally seen wearing Gryffindor House colors and gear, contrasting the house affiliations of his pets.

Many of Rob's interests are displayed visually rather than mentioned. From the t-shirts, hats, posters, statements, and books variously seen and heard in the strip, it can be assumed that Rob also likes the New Zealand rugby union team, South Doyle High School Track-and-field team (Conley's high school in Knoxville, Tennessee), Irish Rugby Team, Québec Nordiques (specifically Michel Goulet), St. Louis Cardinals (with a memorial to Darryl Kile inscribed on his hat), Manchester United F.C. (and, oddly, also archrivals Manchester City F.C.), Otago, New Zealand NPC rugby team, Belgian comic character Tintin, MXC, The Da Vinci Code, Dilbert, South Park, The Simpsons, science fiction, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Peanuts, Dungeons & Dragons, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Weta Workshop, Family Guy, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the BBC television program Top Gear, the Marine Corps, the Evil Dead series, and the music of Leo Kottke, The Ramones, Green Day, Dropkick Murphys, Ween, Pink Floyd, Sum 41 (as shown in a few strips where he wheres a shirt which has Sum 41 across it,) John Lennon, R.E.M., Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Regina Spektor, Radiohead, The Strokes, and Sprouts (a reference to Conley's brother's band).

At one time, Bucky, obsessed with a Persian who was living in the building, attempted to grow his hair out with a bottle of Rogaine. After two bottles were used and Rob flipped at the long tufts of hair that sprouted from the cat's head and chest, Bucky mixed some "no hair cream" with Rob's shampoo that he intended to use later. However, Rob got to the shampoo first, and as a result was bald for several weeks.

Although he cares about both Bucky and Satchel, they often irritate him (Satchel with his wimpiness and Bucky with his aggression). At one point in the strip, he was called for jury duty, and when asked if it would be of any hardship to him, he replied that it would actually be "quite relaxing."

Rob's back has put him out of commission for three extended periods in the strip's history. On all three occasions, Bucky used the opportunity to steal Rob's wallet and establish his own dominion over the household.

Despite having love troubles of his own, Rob has helped Satchel deal with his own love problems.

Rob is a sports fan, and it is alleged by his friend that he named both pets after stars of baseball's Negro Leagues – Buck O'Neil and Satchel Paige. Coincidentally, Bucky also has only a single fang, his "buck" tooth. An alternate theory (probably untrue) is that Bucky is named after late-1970s New York Yankees outfielder Bucky Dent who hit a game-winning home run against the Boston Red Sox in a tie-breaking playoff game to determine the American League Eastern Division champion in 1978. This would make sense, since Rob is a Boston Red Sox fanatic and Bucky is an alleged Yankees fan. However, this has not been explored in the strip, but it should be noted that at one point Bucky damaged a Taylor guitar, causing what Bucky called a "Bucky dent". Rob responded by angrily ordering Bucky to "never, NEVER say those words in this house"; naturally, Bucky responded by shouting "Bucky Dent" repeatedly. There is also a strip in which Satchel is seen holding a bat with the inscription "Lowell Slugger", instead of the famous Louisville kind (Lowell is a city in Massachusetts, and is where the Red Sox Class A affiliate plays.). Fungo Squiggly is even once seen with a cup of coffee with the CBS 4 Sports logo (the former branding of CBS' Boston station, WBZ-TV Channel 4). Rob is named after two friends of Conley's graduating class at Doyle High School (now South-Doyle High School) in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Rob's t-shirts often carry messages of a political nature. In the July 3, 2007 strip, soon after the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in the Bong hits 4 Jesus case, Rob was portrayed with a shirt that read "Dumb Hits 4 Judges". The Sunday before this, July 1, Rob's t-shirt displayed the flag of the Republic of Vermont. Political activists at the time of the strip were making headlines by renewing awareness of the effort to have Vermont secede from the United States.

His religion was only mentioned once, and he said (when asked if he minded saying what his religion was) was that he "kind of did mind".

[edit] "Antagonists"

[edit] Fungo Squiggly

A neighboring 2-year-old- ferret whom Bucky intensely hates (Fungo is Bucky's nemesis). The two frequently engage in fights which leave Satchel, Fungo's friend, in the middle. Fungo also smokes cigars, a habit which angers Bucky and annoys Rob. At one point Rob finally asked Satchel to ask Fungo to put his cigar out. Satchel happily reported to Rob that he had done so, avoiding to tell Rob that Fungo had put the cigar out on the carpet and promptly lit up another cigar.

When a new family moved into the apartment next door to Rob, they introduced Fungo as their pet. The amiable Satchel made friends with the newcomer easily, but Bucky immediately regarded Fungo as a mortal enemy. Although he whispers in Satchel's ear on occasion, Fungo does not speak audibly.

Bucky's attempts to defeat and/or humiliate Fungo almost invariably backfire, and often badly. For example, Bucky once tried to trap Fungo in a crude snare trap. Fungo yanked on the rope, causing Bucky to smack into a wall, loosing two teeth: his trademark cuspid and lower right prosterior moler. The fang was reattached at great expense by Rob, who said "I paid $525 to put that thing back in your mouth" and a gold tooth replaced the small one. Bucky sued Fungo (although he was the aggresor) and took him to the Judge Judy show, where he inevitably lost. To add insult to injury, Fungo was seen wearing the smaller tooth on a necklace. When Bucky saw that, he charged at Fungo, only to be tackled by Satchel and have his fang break off yet again. Fungo still wears the small tooth around his neck to this day. Other plots have had similarly unintended consequences, such as Fungo's kidnapping of Bucky's beloved toy Smacky (twice). Another instance was when Bucky testroyed a large portion of a wall in (presumably Satchel's room) attempt to get Fungo once and for all. However, all that Bucky got was two hours in his closet and a small chunk of plaster to the head, thrown by Fungo. Bucky once attempted to booby trap Fungo's pet door to Satchel's room, but Rob discovered him in the act and stopped him. One memorably misguided attempt involved Bucky throwing a baseball at the ferret he took to be Fungo; the ball struck Fungo's mother and knocked her down a garbage chute. The two had a pie fight afterwards, though Rob broke it up as Fungo had filled his pie with tools. Another involved Bucky challenging Fungo to a duel using a Ms. Pretty prom glove (which Fungo ate), only to have the duel broken up by Chubby Huggs (see Chubby Huggs' article below for reason why). He is very rough and borderline thuggish, often turning Bucky's plans to ignominious defeats (similar to the relationship between Calvin and Susie Derkins, minus the thuggishness) and his hobby is allegedly chewing metal. No explanation is ever given to Bucky's intense hatred for Fungo, save that Fungo seemed a bit aggressive in their first meeting, Bucky may mistake the mustelid for some sort of rodent, or the enmity may be as inexplicable as his desire to eat a monkey. Perhaps it is simply another by-product of Bucky's boundless hostility towards the world in general. In any case, many (but not all) of Fungo's aggressions toward Bucky are simply reactions to the cat's attempted assaults, as Fungo does not seem to go looking for trouble. Strangely enough, both Bucky and Rob on occasion reffer to Fungo as a weasel (Bucky said "weasel" more often in the earlier strips"). This, and several other strips point towards the fact that Bucky hates mustelids in general aswell as rodents.

[edit] Supporting Human Characters

[edit] Joe Doman

Rob's friend and co-worker, one of the few people who gets along reasonably well with Bucky. He has also pet-sat Bucky and Satchel a few times. He also comments on the strange eating habits of the Wilco household when he is over for dinner. He also stated that Bucky is sort of a feline traithlete because of the reckless disctuction Bucky had caused. He is African-American. His name may be a parody on the phrase "you da man". Although for a period of time Joe was popularly cast throughout the strip he has not been seen much recently, because he got a job in France (although he made a reappearance in early 2008) Joe used to shave his head (which he told Rob while he was trying to cheer him up after the incident early in the strip where Rob lost his hair). Joe is also a likely fan of rugby, having worn a jersey of the Scottish national team on a golf outing. Joe was originally drawn with beady eyes, but was later drawn with more detailed eyes (with a pupil and sclera).

[edit] Francis Wilco

Rob's father, who is a retired firefighter and former member of the United States Marine Corps (1969-1974) who reluctantly pet sits Bucky and Satchel from time to time. Francis does not like Bucky, and is willing to do a fair amount to keep him out of his hair. He has thinning hair and is usually pictured with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Like Bucky, he generally calls Rob "Robert".

[edit] Mrs. Wilco

Rob's mother, who has not yet been given a name. She live in an indetermiate place with her cat, Buttercup, and a dog named Chewie (although he has been mentioned before living in Francis' apartment, so he may not belong to her). Rob has visited her apartment on two seperate occasions, once for Thanksgiving and once for Easter. The first time (Thanksgiving) Rob had to fly there, but the second time he was able to drive, implying she might have moved. She has joined Rob in adopting a vegetarian diet, and has gone further, though, than Rob has with it. (See Buttercup's article below in Minor Cat Characters)

[edit] Roger Wilco

Rob's "idiot brother" (according to Francis), who visited shortly in 2005. He made a previous, silent appearance at a memorial service to honor the firefighters killed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001 shown shortly after the attacks. He also made an appearance alongside Joe Doman and Rob, in which Rob allowed himself to be attacked by Bucky. His appearance in this one consists of him laughing at Rob's misfortune. His name is a pun on "roger, wilco", a phrase from 1940's naval radio code meaning "message recieved, will comply".

[edit] William (Wilco?)

Rob's Marine cousin, called "Willie" by Satchel, who lost a leg in the Iraq War. An uncharacteristically serious story arc showed Rob meeting Willaim's plane when he returned home. Like Satchel, he was saddened by the fact Dunkin' Donuts no longer made crullers. He also missed Guinness and The Simpsons.

[edit] Cat Minor Characters

Contributing feline characters:

[edit] Mac Manc McManx

In a sequence that began September 19th, 2006, Bucky met his cousin, Mac Manc McManx, otherwise known as Mac, M3, or M&M&M.

Mac lives in Manchester, England, but uses a considerable amount of rhyming slang and other speech patterns typical of Britan. He explained that he and Bucky shared a common grandmother. Mac's father, Bucky's uncle, arrived in England turing the First Gulf War from a place Mac only remembers being called "Otis". There is an Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Codradar site formerly operating on F-15 Eagles. Upon hearing this, Rob suggested that Bucky's family was therefore from Massachusetts, to which Bucky replies "Curses! I am a dratted communist!" In addition, despite Mac's generally cheery demeanor, his ears are laid back flat on his head like Bucky's which may indicate aggression runs in the McManx/Katt bloodlines. It was thought that Mac teturned to England on December 12, 2006, after living in Rob's kitchen and using Rob's sweater drawer (disconcertingly) as a litter box (to no ones knowledge) for the previous few weeks. However, he was really waiting at the airport for over a month, having been detained by Homeland Security because he lost his ticket and no one could understand him. He revealed he either has a dinner plate or a teacup embedded in his head, the result of an argument with his girlfriend Julie over which football team was better, Manchester United or Manchester City They may have also detained him after it was revealed he had been recently given a cell phone from his friend Al, which was marked "Property of Al Kayda". During Rob's reclaiming of his apartment of his apartment in late March, 2007, Rob had bought Mac tickets to see Manchester United in a FA Cup game in attempt to get him out of the apartment. However, Mac turned up several days later on the sofa, much to Rob's surprise and/or chagrin. Since then he has become a recurring character, appearing off and on for about seven months. He had not been featured in a Sunday strip until June 10th, 2009.

Mac's most recent story had Bucky trying to convince him to run for President of the United States so Bucky, who had recently seceded from America to form "Buckyvania", would have a voice in government. (Although it was oblivious to the fact that Mac was unable to run for President for a multitude of reasons, most obviously that Mac wasn't a citizen.

[edit] Chubby Huggs

A portly cat who believes positive reinforcement (mostly through hugging) solves all problems, and is reffered to by rob as the Dalai Lama of cats because of his peacemaking abilities. Chubby is also a cat Bucky dislikes the most, or was his second nemesis (Fungo Squiggly ranking as the first). Once Chubby is locked in his hug position, he is unable to move for 10 minutes-a fact Rob used against him by tricking Chubby into hugging a teddy bear tightly so Satchel could carry him home. He once had a "little mouse friend" named Fowly Mouse (whom Bucky was forced to baby sit once because Chubby doesn't allow Fowly outside and Chubby was going to be out for a few hours) who hated him and was vicious towards him even though Chubby would take the threats as words of kindness. Bucky later attempted to kill Folwy by giving him a used gerbil cage with a mouse trap buried under sawdust with a "leaky can of Cheez Whiz in it". Bucky passed it off as a "dairy themed adventure park."

Chubby is one of the few creatures Fungo Squiggly and Bucky are afraid of, as referenced during the attempted duel and an attempted cage fight in the hallway Fungo and Bucky had which Chubby broke up by hugging both of them and refusing to let go until they made up.

[edit] Buttercup

Rob's mother's cat, who is very shy and is also violent and aggressive (referenced where she said to Bucky, quote,"Now you listen here, you foreign flea factory, you stink up any part of my house and I'll turn you into tender vittles. Capise?"). After Rob's mother followed him by taking up a vegetarian lifestyle, she took it to a level where Rob hadn't with Bucky and started feeding Buttercup vegetarian cat food. Buttercup doesn't like it, resorting to ask Satchel to kill her while he was over at their house for late Easter dinner. Buttercup latched onto Rob as he was leaving, begging him to give her tuna. To pacify her, Rob gave her $400 and a barbecue take out menu, from which she ordered " 15 #5's with extra pig."

[edit] Frodo Cattins

A black cat who lives twenty miles away from Rob's apartment. He had been missing for weeks when he arrived at Rob's apartment. Frodo's explanation for being there was that he had "been charged with the burden of being the ring bearer, through the fear I have failed in in my quest to destroy it", "it" as in Bucky's collar. He was going to throw Bucky's collar into a furnace because Bucky had hired him to do so. Rob said to Bucky, "I would have just handed you another one, dude."

[edit] Cat Cat

Cat Cat is an eight year old cat who was originally named "Kitty Kitty", but he switched it to "Cat Cat" because "Kitty Kitty" wasn't dignified anymore. He met Bucky in an alley while Bucky was diggin in a trash can looking for Smacky, who had been in a paper bag Satchel had accidentally thrown away. Bucky told Cat Cat he was looking for his toy, and Cat Cat told Bucky that when he was a kitten, they had to play with dead rats and that he was thankful enough for them not to put them in the trash, thinkin Bucky had put Smacky in the garbage on purpouse. He continued to tell him, "We didn't have all those fancy springy traps, either! If we wanted a rat toy, we had to catch the filthy buggers ourselves!" Then he lectured Bucky by telling him "Look at ya! Rummaging through the trash like a dog!" and that he didn't have trash to rummage through when he was Bucky's age (four years old) and that he had to rummage through gravel. He continued to lecture Bucky that they didn't have all that fancy anti-plaque food and that they had to chew on steel wool. After Bucky told Cat Cat he's only five years his senior, Cat Cat ignored this and continued to say, "Boy, I rembmer when you couldn't buy cat food in pouches! It cam in what we called 'cans'!" Cat lives in apartment 1B next to Chubby Huggs and considers him "good people".

[edit] Snatch Limelight

Snatch is a tall "cat comedian" whom Bucky says is, "the biggest thing to happen to cat comedy since Steve Martin's cat wore the arrow-through-the-head." Snatch wears a small hat and rather large bowtie. It is unclear if Snatch is perhaps married, because of a joke Snatch told that went "Thank you thank you thank you. Take my wifes...FLEAS!" Snatch told one joke inparticular that went "Ok, ok, ok. what do you have when you have a thousand dogs buried up to their necks in sand?.....Not enough sand! Ba dum bump!" Bucky calls the joke gold, but Rob tells him, "Thats not gold...its not even original." Snatch is working on a few T.V. show concepts for Fox17. One concept was for MTV called Puke'd, where "I vomit in the laps of different celebrities in every episode." Some of his working titles are " Touched By An Angora, The Jerry Springer Spaniel Show, and Survivor: Dumpster Out Back. Bucky also gave Snatch the working title Everybody Loves Rabies.

[edit] Minor Dog Characters

Some of Satchel's friends, family, and pets in the family.

[edit] Chewie Wilco

First Portrayed at, as Bucky calls it, "the little table" at Thanksgiving at Rob's mother's apartment with Buttercup, Satchel, and Bucky. Satchel asked him if he was going to eat, and Chewie told him that he would wait for the other three to finish up so he could eat all the bones and gristle.

[edit] Copernicus Pooch

Copernicus is Satchel's father,a retired guide dog, who lives in Cheticamp, Nova Scotia. He is a yellow lab. Satchel visited him on their Canada vacation. Copernicus first didn't recognise Satchel because he had called himself "Satchel". (Copernicus had named him "Number Eight") Copernicus is disappointed in Satchel because he didnt' really "amount" to anything and that he was living as a pet dog because when he was Satchel's age, he was guiding people around 2 major cities unassisted. Copernicus once bit their neighbor's cat and had to go to a Feline Cooperation Unit as Rob compared him to Satchel, who lives with Bucky and is his friend while no one else is. Copernicus comes from a long line of Army Dogs and Mine Rescue Dogs.

[edit] Mrs. Pooch

Satchel's mom, who doesn't have a name yet.

[edit] Smokey

An old, old friend of Satchel's. He has been his friend since they were in Obedience School together. He used to chase alot of cars, but is "really into smells now." Once Satchel rode around in a Ford Pickup Truck with Smokey for hours. Smokey and Satchel don't usually agree. Smokey appears to be a weiner dog with a black smoked pattern on his fur.

[edit] Motor

Another friend of Satchel's. He is 3/4 Belgian Tervuren and is very, very offended to be called a German Shepard. He was one of the dogs at Satchel's dog conference, who was probably there to represent German dogs.

[edit] I. Chihuahua

Ira is a small, white chihuahua with a collar too big to properly fit around his neck with a bell on it. I. stands for "Ira", so he is usually called I. Chihuahua, mostelikely a pun on "Ay, Chihuahua".

[edit] Oreo

An old, old, old friend and love interest of Satchel's. She has the fur patterns of a Border Collie but is more terrier sized. Although she is Satchel's love interest, she is more interested in a bomb dog called Chaser. One time Satchel though Oreo thought he smelled "really rancid", so Bucky told him to put some of Rob's deodorant on and that then he'd "be gold". Not realizing he was using spray adhesive, Bucky sprayed the spray adhesive under Satchel's arms, gluing his arms to his sides. Rob had to take Satchel to the vet where they had to shave the fur off of Satchel's arms, chest, and upper back, resulting in him havin to wear his "OBEDIENCE COLLEGE" sweater.

[edit] Chaser Bomb Dog

Chaser's full name is "George's Master of Fear Red Chaser", but he tells Satchel and Oreo to call him by "Chaser Bomb-Dog". He works for the FBI as a bomb dog "responding to specific threats against the U.S. interests by searching for powder, ammonia, gel, and plastic-based explosives with the capacity to harm dozens of people and dogs...cats too, I suppose." He has detected 23 devices. He once assisted in the neutralization of a rouge bomber at a government check point.

[edit] Negative reactions

[edit] Pittsburgh

Many residents of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania reacted angrily to an October 30, 2003 strip. When Bucky asks a travel agent for suggested destinations "based primarily on smell", the agent promptly produces a brochure from the Pittsburgh board of tourism. This was originally intended as an "in-joke" jab at a friend who lives in the Pittsburgh area. Conley later confessed shock over the large volume of hate mail and even death threats he received in response,^[2] and Pittsburgh city officials publicly denounced the strip.

An apology promised by Conley took a rather unexpected form. The 2003-11-17 strip questions why the Pittsburgh joke caused such an uproar and archly notes that several protesters rather hypocritically stated that New Jersey smelled worse than Pittsburgh. Satchel closes the strip by explaining that the original strip "should have made it more clear that it was [nearby borough] Sewickley Heights that smells", coupled with a post-it note advertising an apology to Sewickly Heights.^[3] Unsurprisingly, this "apology" failed to appease many of those who had complained.

Conley took things a step further in the next three strips, the first of which showed a survey in which voters ranked the five smelliest places in the United States. In order, they were ranked Cleveland, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Darby Conley's "@##", and New Orleans.

The second showed apparent greeting signs/tourism slogans for people that come into Pittsburgh. Featured were "Pittsburgh: Turn Left at Erie", "Pittsburgh: If You Smell Anything, It's Coming from Ohio", and "Pittsburgh: Gateway to Cleveland!"

The third and final one showed Satchel and Bucky as trading cards, with Satchel being "Mario Lepooch" (a parody of Pittsburgh Penguins owner and star Mario Lemieux) and Bucky being "Buck Tekulve" (after former Pirates reliever Kent Tekulve). The last panel showed Satchel wearing a Cleveland Browns hat and Bucky in a LeBron James jersey in a final insult to Pittsburghers.

At the time of the controversy, Get Fuzzy did not run in any Pittsburgh newspapers. However, the strip now runs in the city's Post Gazette and Tribune-Review papers.

[edit] Bob Lobel

A strip published on May 13, 2005 resulted in legal action. In the original strip, Rob, Bucky and Satchel are watching television. Satchel asks "Is this sportscaster... drunk?" Rob replies "Lobel? Who knows. He's like some TV outreach program or something." Lobel has been reported as having appeared on air in an intoxicated state which Lobel denies.^[4]^[5]

Less than a week later, Boston sportscaster Bob Lobel filed a libel lawsuit against Conley, United Features Syndicate, and the New Bedford Standard-Times newspaper. The New Bedford paper was named specifically because it did not censor the strip as several other Boston-area papers did, including The Boston Globe; most either refused to run the strip or substituted "Him?" in place of Lobel's name. The lawsuit claimed that the strip was both personally and professionally damaging, especially given that his contract was under negotiation for renewal at the time.^[4]^[5]

On November 16, 2005, a brief article in the Boston Herald reported that Lobel and Conley had settled the suit out of court.^[6]^{[dead link]} Conley made a public apology to Lobel, saying the strip was not intended to imply that he had been drunk on the air. Further details of the settlement were confidential, but the Herald quoted an unnamed source as saying Conley had made a substantial donation to charity.

The strip was left out of the Get Fuzzy collection Take Our Cat, Please.

[edit] Collections

Title	Publication Date	ISBN	Strips collected
The Dog Is Not a Toy: House Rule #4	April 15, 2001	ISBN 0-7407-1392-2
Fuzzy Logic	April 1, 2002	ISBN 0-7407-2198-4
The Get Fuzzy Experience	April 2, 2003	ISBN 0-7407-3300-1
Blueprint for Disaster	October 1, 2003	ISBN 0-7407-3808-9
Say Cheesy	May 28, 2005	ISBN 0-7407-4663-4	2002-11-17 - 2003-08-31
Scrum Bums	September 1, 2006	ISBN 0-7407-5001-1	2003-09-01 - 2004-06-13
I'm Ready for My Movie Contract	September 1, 2007	ISBN 978-0-7407-6922-1	2004-06-14 - 2005-03-26
Take Our Cat, Please	May 1, 2008	ISBN 978-0-7407-7095-1
Ignorance, Thy Name Is Bucky	March 2009	ISBN 978-0-7407-8098-1

[edit] Treasuries

Treasuries contain two books in one binding with some color strips.

Title	Date	ISBN	Notes
Groovitude	September 2, 2002	ISBN 0-7407-2894-6	Contains The Dog Is Not a Toy and Fuzzy Logic
Bucky Katt's Big Book of Fun	April 2004	ISBN 0-7407-4136-5	Contains The Get Fuzzy Experience and Blueprint for Disaster
Loserpalooza	May 7, 2007	ISBN 978-0-7407-5709-9	Contains Say Cheesy and Scrum Bums
The Potpourrific Great Big Grab Bag of Get Fuzzy	September 1, 2008	ISBN 978-0-7407-7367-9	Contains I'm Ready for My Movie Contract and Take Our Cat, Please

[edit] Reception and awards

Initially appearing in 75 newspapers nationally, the strip grew in popularity very quickly.

Conley received the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award in 2002 for his work on Get Fuzzy.

[edit] References

^ supplemental material in Groovitude anthology
^ Pittsburgh Not Laughing At Smelly Joke - Travel News Story - KCRA Sacramento
^ Comic strip apology to really isn't
^ ^a ^b Head Games - Boston Magazine
^ ^a ^b WGBH: Greater Boston
^ Error - BostonHerald.com

[edit] External links

[0] supplemental material in Groovitude anthology

[1] Pittsburgh Not Laughing At Smelly Joke - Travel News Story - KCRA Sacramento

[2] Comic strip apology to really isn't

[head-3] Head Games - Boston Magazine

[btp-4] WGBH: Greater Boston

[5] Error - BostonHerald.com

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

Get Fuzzy
Logo for Get Fuzzy comic strip.
Author(s)	Darby Conley
Website	Get Fuzzy Website
Current status / schedule	Running
Launch date	September 1999
Syndicate(s)	United Feature Syndicate
Publisher(s)	Andrews McMeel Publishing
Genre(s)	Humor, Pets, Family