George Booth, New Yorker Cartoonist of Sublime Zaniness, Dies at 96

George Booth, the New Yorker cartoonist who created a world of oddballs sharing life’s chaos with a pointy-eared bull terrier that once barked a flower to death died on Tuesday at his home in Brooklyn.

So, I could have shown him a thing or two about: zany, oddball, barking, and especially cats. 

The New Yorker? Sometimes they line my cage with old issues, so I've seen dog and cat cartoons over the years. Most of them are not all that funny in my opinion. 

Booth owned a few cats but no dogs, as he explained he “doesn’t much care for them" — which is a surprise considering how well he captures them in his cartoons. 

Whatever. I'm not so sure he and I would have gotten along anyhow. But, I would have let him draw my portrait. I'm good at posing and you can bet your life I'm good at looking fierce. 

Some Booth pets had fine tastes in music, and ankles. A naughty cat is carried off by its mistress in an inglorious neck-and-bottom hold. An angry saxophone player rubs his wounded ankle. And the man of the house, holding his violin bow after an interrupted duet, leans over solicitously, and says: “I do apologize, Rinehart. The cat has never bitten anyone previously.”

Listen, says Mikey, you damn well bet if I'd been there, that would have been the last time that cat bit anything. Just saying.