There was a syndicated comic strip called The Fat Cats, that these guys were a parody of. It had just launched at the time. My issue was that here were webcomics doing all these interesting things, and this bland, inoffensive thing came along. And back then, almost everyone in webcomics had a pile of rejection letters from the syndicates - we all wanted to be the next Calvin & Hobbes. The Fat Cats never really caught on, which is kind of a shame. If it had, I would've gotten in on the ground floor. Of making fun of it.
In The Fat Cats, the characters were Leo and Bobcat Fatcat. I looked at it and said "Bobcat? That's not a name. That's hardly even trying". That's why the younger brother is named Civet in mine. I regret that I didn't mention his name more. If I had it to do over again, I would've had him say "and his younger brother, Civet" about twice a week. That would've been his only line.
Charles Podrebarac, the guy who did Fat Cats, was a greeting card designer, hence the jab. There are a lot of comics that are done by former greeting card writers; most of them tend to be reliable, consistent, and lukewarm.
The Fat Cats is in perpetual reruns here. I have three cats and all of them keep their tongues in their mouths. I specified "tongues lolling out of their mouths" in the character sheet for the Brothers Hevisett, because it was in the character design for the Fat Cats.
I believe that turtles says "Save the Humans". I actually was on a classical music kick at the time. The tricky bit isn't naming a classical song without guitars; it's naming one that people would recognize as not having guitars. I don't believe the event planner had any kind of character design and was made up pretty much entirely by Dave.
The Fat Cats pt 2 drawn by Dave Cousens