Tabby's recent appearance on Larry King Live.
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Tabby Cat Larry King Interview
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LARRY KING, CNN HOST: Tonight, exclusive, the controversial blog everyone is talking about, "Tabby Cat Gamespace" The biggest online sensation of the last year. But is it some kind of fraud. Now, author Tabby Cat's first interview on the sensational claims against his astral advice blog. He's here for the hour. We'll take your calls too, it's next on LARRY KING LIVE.
This is a story getting world-wide attention since Tabby Cat's recent nomination as United States National Poet Laureate, primarily, according to poetic professionals contacted by CNN, on the strength of his magnum-force epic poetic cycle, Tabby and the Three Travelers, as well as the more elegiacally lyrical masterwork The Ballad of Tabby Cat. But that nomination also quickly became controversial, with opponents pointing out that while admittedly Tabby's darkly comic verse has been a revolutionary sensation in academic literary circles, it has never really caught on with the general public, outside the ivory tower. His blog went on to be the top rated blog last year. Here's an update before we talk with Tabby Cat, from Kelly Wallace.
[video intro segment omitted]
KING: Tonight we have a special guest, the premier astral advice animal of the internet age, a zoological phenomenon and, whether you love or hate him, definitely a scourge to civilization as we've come to know it. Welcome to the show Tabby, always great to have you here.
CAT: My pleasure as ever Larry.
KING: Let's get right into it with some of the dirt. Your enemies have claimed that you are a foul-mouthed megalomaniac, that you exaggerate and play fast and loose with facts, that you are violent, hostile, paranoid, and a species-schizophrenic, that your ideas are incoherent, and that your writing is riddled with cheesy cliches. How do you respond to these kinds of accusations?
CAT: Larry, there's not a word of truth to it, not any of it. Just the opposite, in fact. See Larry, my life is an open book. I welcome my enemies, those who seek to bring me down, to go over me with a fine-tooth comb. You think I give a fuck what some shill is paid three dollars an hour to say? When you operate at my level you are bound to make enemies - goes with the territory like flies on shit. I've repeatedly issued my standard challenge to any detractor: if you don't like Tabby Cat Gamespace, then let's put on the gloves. Climb in the ring with me. But none of them has the guts to go even one round. They say they don't want to be seen abusing an animal, worried I'll sic the SPCA on them. Well fine I say. Afraid of my claws and fangs? Then I'll fight you as a human being, bring it the fuck on! Essentially Larry, bottom-line, end of day? All those major league assholes are just pissing into the wind.
KING: Alright, glad you were able to put that to rest. Now what I have here, my research people turned up, is a photo of you addressing a rally of radical youth and students, and they seem to be chanting something and holding up signs with a slogan: "THERE IS NO CAT BUT TABBY". Are you trying to start some kind of a cult?
CAT: Larry, just one word back at you - Photoshop.
KING: You've been called out numerous times for apparent forgery of your column letters. Many psychologists, textual analysts, and other experts have suggested that that there's no way the reader letters you publish, those supposedly asking for advice, can possibly be real. What do you say?
CAT: 100% false. I mean, those charges. I plead innocent. Yes some of them may look bizarre to an average person, who hasn't seen as much of life as I have. But when you've evolved up to my level of astral advancement, there's one thing you really come to understand, and that's in fact our motto over on the blog - "Truth isn't stranger than fiction, truth is fiction".
KING: OK I guess there really are a lot of genuine weirdos out there facing serious issues....
CAT: Larry, if I may, I'd like to ask you to show some consideration, and some respect, referring to the entity population I'm working with, show some compassion for their struggles. And try to have some appreciation for what we've accomplished with the Gamespace Astral Advice service. We are in business for one reason and one reason only. And I'm sure I don't need to spell out what that reason is.
KING: Not sure I totally follow you there, Tabby. But in the interests of time let's move along.
What exactly qualifies you to give advice? I mean, do you have a degree in family counseling or psychology or something?
CAT: Oh sure, yeah you bet, I have degrees, practically coming out the wazoo. But let me tell you something Larry, those diplomas aren't worth the toilet paper they're printed on. Face it, any huckster can order up a PhD these days with nothing more than a mouse click. What matters most in the end Larry, is that one thing money can't buy: natural marketing genius. And I've got that in spades.
KING: The people writing in to you are a wild mix but it seems that a high proportion of them are disembodied entities, spirits, or spooks living on the Other Side. Why are so many of these types attracted to your service?
CAT: It's not that Larry, it's my own editorial policy. I've instructed my screeners that embodied humans already down in the soup so to speak, or on the Earth Plane if you will, are so impossibly screwed up that they are beyond even my help. The embodied humans all have their heads so far up their assholes, present company excepted of course, that I've told my screeners to reject most of the human letters unread, they never even cross my desk. Triage, if you will. Got to focus myself where I can do the most good. I'm sure you're quite familiar with this problem, all kinds of nuts and screwballs calling into this show every night, am I right?
KING: Can't deny there's truth in what you say, Tabby. Now, your blog gets incredible reviews like this recent example: "A frenzied electrifying description of astral experience. We finish reading "Tabby Cat Gamespace" each day like miners lifted out of a collapsed shaft: exhausted, blackened, oxygen-starved but alive...incredible, mesmerizing, heart-rending. An intimate, vivid and heartfelt blog. Can Tabby Cat be the greatest writer of his species?" That must blow your mind to see all that and yet have the eruption of recent controversy over your nomination as Poet Laureate.
CAT: Frankly Larry, I never cared about the Laureate shtick That was just a political thing, the administration trying to shuck its anti-intellectual image by exploiting a prominent artist, using me as a shield and a shill. Well it won't work with me. Sorry I'm just not that kind of animal. They picked the wrong cat this time. Why, at this point, I wouldn't accept it even if they begged me, unless they paid me enough.
KING: Tabby, when we had Madonna on the show last week, we asked her to sing something for the home audience. I wonder if, as Poet Laureate nominee, you'd be willing to grace us with some of your uniquely profound, deeply spiritual poetry, compose something for us right here in the studio? An originnal composition, just for the Larry King Live viewers?
CAT: My pleasure Larry.
Violets are blue.
If you reincarnate,
You'll be no telling who.
KING: *cough* uh... well... thank you Tabby... uh... when you hear poetry like that, you think "Tabby Cat". Moving along, now I need to ask you, why the false mask, why pretend to be a feline, when you are obviously a human? Why carry on a pretense?
CAT: Larry, I understand why you think you need to ask the, you're doing your job and God love you for it man. But frankly I dispute the premise of your question. I am in fact a cat, I'm 110% feline, not a human bone or gene in my body, and no offense to your viewers Larry but frankly I'm proud of that. Gives me some authorial distance on your problems. It's my basic cat identity, the fact that I've honored my zoological roots, and well that... that's precisely what makes me the most effective astral advice animal out there. I dispute anybody, whosoever, who charges that I am infeline and I dare them to come right here on your show with me. Bring on your so-called proof, you ask and let me answer the slander to your face with my claws and fangs out. I say to those who skulk in the woodwork and wish me ill - bring it on.
KING: Alright we're in danger of running over here, but in the time we have left, what does the future hold for Tabby Cat?
CAT: Larry I'm going to announce this for the first time right here on your show, right now. This is quite an honor for you, you lucky dog (no offense). Fact is, I've been thinking of dipping my paw back into physical. Yep, Earth Plane existence, the whole shebang.And more than that, I'm thinking of going human this time. I've been every other kind of animal, and since so many of my readers seem to be focused on human incarnation for whatever reason, well it's time for me to see what the big fuss is all about, get the inside scoop.
KING: Well I'm sure it'll be a privilege for the human race to host you.
CAT: I know you feel that way personally Larry, but you'd be surprised. Not everyone appreciates the honor. My office has already started getting human hate mail. But they shouldn't fret, I won't come to a good end down there. In fact, I already know how I'll die in that human life - my left palm will be bitten by a poison snake and I'll croak within seconds.
KING: My goodness, well, we're all sorry to hear that.
CAT: You won't be. A little of me goes a very long way.
