Cats and Stand-Up: George Carlin Talks Felines

Our previous posts on cat-related stand-up featured Zoltan Kaszas and Corey Rodrigues from Dry Bar Comedy, which is a comedy channel that specializes in “clean” sets without vulgarities or obscenities.

This time around we’re checking in with George Carlin, so fair warning: There will be bad language, and Carlin pokes fun at cuteness aggression in a way that probably won’t go over well by people who take it literally.

It’s 100 percent Carlin. After all, we’re talking about the man who was pretty much single-handedly responsible for a 1978 Supreme Court decision on the government’s authority to censor public broadcasts after his now-legendary “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television” bit.

George Carlin
George Carlin in the 1960s.

It’s obvious Carlin’s spent a lot of time around cats, as he’s got their behavior down and he finds humor in the feline tendency to be relentlessly one-minded. He laughs at the way cats make biscuits — “looks like they’re into some bad drug!” he says as he imitates a cat’s ecstatic kneading — and how quickly they become whirling tornadoes of claws and teeth as kittens.

“You take a baby baby — that is, a human — a baby dog and a baby cat, and you attack all three of them, which I try never to do if I can help it,” he says, drawing laughs. “You’ll get three different results. You attack a baby, he cries. You attack a puppy, he cowers. You attack a kitty cat, he fights!”

Carlin makes a meowing sound, swiping one hand like an annoyed cat.

“One day old and they’re looking for some sh–! They don’t even got their eyes open, they’ll get right in. Nasty cute little thing. Cute little nasty guy! Oh, they’re wonderful, God love ’em.”

While dogs love pets and never want you to stop, Carlin points out that with a cat “you just put your hand out and he’ll do all the work.”

Cats love rubbing against people so much that they’ll start to rub against your leg “even if you’re not there yet,” Carlin observes, imitating the way the little ones change their body language the instant they decide it’s rubbing time.

“They love to rub on you. If you’ve got a leg and a cat, whew, you’ve got a party! ‘Oh boy, oh boy, I’m rubbing on his leg!’ If you’ve got two legs, sh–, jubilee celebration time! ‘Oh boy, two legs! Hot sh–, I can do the figure eight! Oh boy!’” Carlin says, stalking across the stage.

“There’s one other quality cats have that I admire. Cats don’t accept blame and they don’t embarrass, at all. A cat does something dumb, you’ll never know it by lookin’ at him. Dog knocks over a lamp, you can tell who did it just by looking at the dog. Not the cat. Cat doesn’t accept any blame, cat moves along to the next activity. ‘What’s that? Not me, f— that, I’m a cat! Something break? Ask the dog.’

5 thoughts on “Cats and Stand-Up: George Carlin Talks Felines”

    1. Yet another reason why cats are so awesome. Buddy certainly has no qualms about making his displeasure known if I’ve offended him by, for example, being a minute late with his dinner. 🙂

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    1. Growing up I only knew him as the “controversial” comedian famous for challenging the FCC, but I’ve come to appreciate him and the pioneering work he did. Recently I discovered a long-form interview Carlin did with the late Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM back in the 90s, and it’s fantastic. Coast to Coast AM was an overnight national radio show famous for discussions about aliens, the paranormal, science, strange experiences and so on. At its height, millions of people tuned in every night. Discovering that Carlin had appeared on that show was an awesome surprise.

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