Quadra Cats

When Earth cats Tux, Jazz, and Scatcat encounter a friendly, takeout-obsessed Alien Cat with entrepreneurial designs on their world, they are swept into his wild plans to make Earth the tourist destination spot of the feline galaxy. But there’s one hitch — he thinks they are in charge, and the Large Bipedal Primates are their pets! If the Quadra Cats can’t maintain their roles of impromptu ambassadors for their planet and all who live on it without involving the humans, it’s No More Tuna Pâté, Ever…

In 2014, a friend who works on a local neighbourhood newspaper did an interview about me for the paper, and asked if I would be willing to draw a comic for the paper, which comes out quarterly. I said yes, and the Quadra Cats were born. The first strips were all in pen and ink, and I eventually gathered them together, stitched together with some extra panels and whole pages, to form a continuous narrative which became Takeout Planet. There are now two books in print, a third in the works, and a webcomic. They also have their own Facebook page, and are starting to receive fan art!

In 2016, I continued the saga with a story intended from the beginning to be the next book, and changed the style a bit, continuing to draw them in ink, but using digital greyscale for the shading. In this book, the cats go for a ride in space with Alien Cat — kind-of-sort-of accidentally.

I had been waffling for a while over offering the stories as a webcomic, and in February 2017 I was in a fey mood and just decided to do it. The two books were done and ready to post, so why not? Weeeellllll… maybe because I already had another webcomic going? Obviously, cooler heads did not prevail here! It’s been an adventure trying to keep up with them both, but both stories are growing. The next book (already in progress on the webcomic site) will be a direct sequel of Spaced Out, wherein the Cats encounter the joys of interstellar bureaucracy: The Feline Federation. I’ll be doing a Kickstarter in early 2018 to crowdfund the printing of this one. Stay tuned!

Here are the original strips from the newspaper, in case you’d like to compare them to the webcomic/books — there is one that was omitted from the book because I couldn’t fit it in the narrative, and a couple that I’ve done since then. My style of drawing the cats has evolved a lot since the first early strips — this is vintage Quadra Cats!