Annie and the Ten Cats – The Purrington Post

There’s a delightful comic strip series we recently found called called Ten Cats. Here’s the premise…ten abandoned cats live in an old warehouse where they are looked after by a young girl named Annie. The cats include Chesney, the ringleader, Jack, his sidekick, and Oliver —a wide-eyed kitten.

The warehouse contains a boardroom on the very top floor, where, unbeknownst to Annie the kitties conduct the world’s business through the eyes of a cat. Oh the paw-sibilities! >^..^<

Graham started the comic strip in 2010. In 2013, Ten Cats won the National Cartoonist’s Society Award for the Best Online Comics—Short Form division. It’s currently in repeats on GoComics and appears daily in the Vancouver Sun.

We caught up with creator and cartoonist Graham Harrop to find out a little more behind the scenes of Ten Cats.

Graham told us that the inspiration behind the comic was an actual friend of his that owns 10 cats. We then asked him to tell us a bit more about his characters. Here’s what he shared:

“Annie lives with her grandmother and grandfather. She came upon the ten strays living together in a warehouse and took it upon herself to take care of them. Her protagonist is Chesney. Their relationship is almost the crux of the strip. She loves all of the ten cats, but has an especially soft spot for Oliver – who is still a kitten.”

In answer to the question, ‘why 10 cats?’, Graham responded, “Ten cats seemed like the right number – don’t know why, but it does.” Oh, and we also found out that there is indeed a real person named Annie that his character is based on.

The inspiration from the strip comes from real-life interactions – people – not cats. Graham added, “Although some of the cats that I know have personalities similar to those in the strip.“

We even asked Graham where he sees himself in 5 years from now. He succinctly replied, “Hopefully syndicated.” We hope so too!

Finally we asked if he had any special message he wanted to send out to his many, many fans. Graham responded, “Thanks for hanging in there! New strips will be coming out this August – around the time Oliver’s own book: ‘Oliver: My Own … um … Book’ comes out.“