Anthropomorphic

Chartreux Cat 

Character Portrait

Clém de la Crème

It is said that there exists only two kinds of music: absolute bangers, and the other stuff. At the time the anthropomorphic Chartreux cat, Clém de la Crème, entered the scene, there was only the other stuff; with Anthroxville’s public long deprived of having the faintest notion of what an absolute banger was, sounded like, or even, if such a thing really existed out there in the ether. They boogied it up and busted it down, but their souls remained motionless. Having spent many a year in secret search of summoning the dark-arts of this mystical je ne sais quoi, Clém had produced ear-flappers, head-boppers, toe-tappers, and joint-poppers, but never the ever elusive, bangous absolutum. It wasn’t enough, he needed that sockdolager, that chef-d'oeuvre, that lollapalooza. Where was the stuff the other was other to? The cat’s meow? Clém was meowing, but the universe wasn’t returning his calls. Perhaps it didn’t exist after all; or maybe the quixotic pursuit of the ineffable was the reward in and of itself? After all, how can one’s reach ever hope of exceeding one's grasp? Should he admit defeat and simply suppose the other stuff was actually alright? 

At his wits’ ends, Clém was on the brink of going completely crackers, so decided to spend one last weekend thrashing it out in search of his impossible dream before pulling the plug on the whole charade. It was bangers or bust. Aided with several gallons of Gilbert Jitterbug’s illicit gear-cranking Jitterbug Coffee, a dozen wheelbarrow's worth of Jackson Jiffy’s dimension-warping Zulu Zeitgeist super-skunk, and a consignment of the juju-inducing Face-Pegger amber nectar, courtesy of Erm Wotsischops, he descended to his studio, drowning in chemical-fueled inspiration.

"Ouh là là," he murmured, as the sun rose on the Monday morning of a brave new epoch, "Ouh là là." That was all he was able to muster as he drowsily shuckled back and forth in his chair, drooling down his front. His vision was a spinning kaleidoscope of fractals and quartz; whilst his internal organs felt as though they had been fed through some cosmic meatblender several thousand times. All he could smell was the singed tips of his waxed mustache, which had spontaneously ignited during the course of his maniacal mixing mayhem, and now hung like defeated conscripts of the other stuff, casualties of his nocturnal frenzy that had set the room ablaze with sonic insanity.

Fortunately, the anthro Chartreux cat had the foresight to strap-in and buckle-up into a military-grade restraint chair, before, with a silent prayer to his lord and savior, Quentin Marmalade muttered under his breath, hitting play on a remote control device. But even that audacious move seemed like child's play as the chair threatened to break orbit, spurred on by Clém's berserk hip-thrusting gyrations as the gravity-jolting music blasted out. Obliterating the very concept of rhythm and time, it was an intergalactic symphony; each beat a supernova, every drop a collapse into a neural black hole that contorted the fabric of reality itself. And that tempo. How does one even begin to...? What he had created here was more than an absolute banger: it was a détonation of the métaphysique; a radioactive shape-throwing atomic funkbomb. "Mon Dieu," he wheezed, trying to get a grip of his senses, "I am become Disco, destroyer of dancefloors."

Rather than revel in his creation, a looming dread overshadowed the initial euphoria. Clém's mind, frazzled and flickering like a malfunctioning strobe light, wrestled with the ethical maze he had somehow conjured from the cosmos. What in the name of all that's terrestrial does one do with such a tune? Not just any tune, but rather, what appeared on first impressions at least, could very well be the party anthem of the universe itself. He needed to consult Mitzi Midriff, Oskar Knullrufs, and Rupert Taboo, about this most perplexing and potentially perilous sonic revelation. But the problem was that...