The Time My Cat Appeared On Cat Idol

… except there’s no such thing as Cat Idol. For some reason they stopped with American Idol.

This left us in a pickle. Here we had a cat, Boo, who loves performing, but she had no creative outlet.

Enter Cat Idol.

With a video camera, a cardboard box, three pictures of cat heads and a snapshot of the Idol judges we were able to create an award-winning show. Except it didn’t win awards.

We simply took a picture of Simon, Paula and Randy and then photoshopped three cat heads over their faces.

Then we got recordings of their voices so they could “speak” to Boo before and after her performance. Here’s my star girl on her birthday last year:

Sorry I don’t have a picture of her during production. I’ll explain more on that in a minute.

If you are wondering where the cardboard box comes in, have you thought about how Boo was going to get to the audition? We did. We shot a scene of Boo rolling down the highway in her box car and rocking out to 38 Special’s Hold On Loosely. To make it look like the cat is rocking out all you need to do is shake the box a little.

Don’t worry, if she didn’t like it she could walk away!

Unfortunately production came to a halt because I moved to England. Perhaps my sister Karen can release the unedited footage of Boo’s Cat Idol audition. Either that, or when I finally move back to the US we can finish production. I don’t think that’s as likely, considering her kidneys have started to fail and she probably has only another year of life in her before Dr. McKenzie recommends she be put down.

People talk about needing a creative outlet. Well, let me tell you something I’ve discovered over the years. There’s no better way to foster creativity than to not have many friends. You also need to make sure that the friends you do have are as weird, if not weirder, than you. That way you can do weird things with/around other people and not feel like too much of a loser.  Luckily I have Karen as a sister! This is Karen and her baby at my wedding party last year. Boo is in her pink bridesmaid dress.

As for the weird friends, take my friend who sleeps only in a sleeping bag and refuses to wipe his butt with anything other than Cottonelle wet wipes, which he describes as “a moist adult wipe so refreshing, it transformed each act of defecation into a cause for celebration.” Or my friend who spends her time finding ways to make apples “talk,” making graphs analyzing her coolness level, or making tiny paper Doctor Who fez hats.

If my other friends had an online presence, I’d make fun of them as well.

These friends may make fun of my sister and me for loving Boo, but they are the ones who occasionally get back to me with songs they have created about Boo (they got the idea from us and it stuck with them).

Here is a recent Facebook wall post I received from my sleeping bag friend:

Your stupid cat themed parodies struck me again today, in the form of “Doctor, Doctor, give me the news, I gotta bad case of lovin’ Boo.” Highly inaccurate!

He also claims we ruined his favorite song because now every time he hears it he thinks of replacing the words with Boo.

You can do it with any song. One of my favorites is “Boo Turn,” based on Usher’s U-Turn.

Put your paws up, bend your knees
Bounce around in the potty, get down with me
Oh come on, come on
It’s not hard to learn
Come on, come on
It’s called the Boo-Turn

Go ahead, give it a try! You can simply substitute the word “you” with Boo, or if you are really creative you can make the whole song about Boo.