Felix The Punk

Vying for merch at the stores of post punk or shoegaze bands might turn up a familiar face: a plain, tired, wide-eyed cartoon cat. It looks like the ever-timeless Felix, a figure that embodies much of early 20th-century pop culture, long before that term even existed.

Felix slouches on The Soft Moon’s Sad World tee and struts across Nothing’s new Cannibal World shirt, cleaver in hand. One is worn down, jaded, existentially wrecked; the other exudes a sense of threat and heavy irony.

Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in 1919 by Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan during the silent film era. His name was partially derived from the Latin word for 'happy,' and his image has perpetually turned into an undying symbol.

The character has appeared in countless aspects of culture since his creation, aided by the fact that many versions of Felix have long entered the public domain. One of the first adaptations came when jazz bandleader Paul Whiteman popularized songs about him, starting with 1923’s Felix Kept on Walking and others in a similar style soon after.

From the silent film era, Felix transitioned into sound shorts and starred in a long-running comic strip. His cartoons made their American television debut in 1953, followed by feature films.

In Feline Follies, the 1919 silent short marking Felix’s first appearance, the story takes a surprisingly dark turn. Felix, then known as 'Master Tom', is a male black cat living in Pussyville. He meets a white female cat, serenades her, and vows to devote his nine lives to her. Back home, a group of mice devours all his food. When his owner returns to find the mess, she throws Felix out, unaware the mice were to blame. Homeless, Felix seeks refuge with his love, only to discover she’s the mother and he’s the father of a large litter of kittens. In despair, Felix runs to the local gasworks and commits suicide by inhaling coal gas.


There’s something special about Felix. He carries the innocence of a children’s cartoon, yet also embodies darker qualities tied to the era in which he was created; qualities that can be projected onto newer times, or really, any time at all.

The pop punk band The Queers also embraced Felix, using him as a recurring mascot. Another notable case is American DJ Felix da Housecat, who clearly drew inspiration from the character for his stage name.

Another intersection of underground music and Felix appears in the work of Brazilian artist Butcher Billy, who included the cat in an illustration titled Robbie & Suzie Love Cats as part of his Post-Punk Paperbacks series, reimagining Robert Smith of The Cure and Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees.

On The Soft Moon’s Sad World t-shirt, Felix slumps over, eyes half-shut, embodying the project’s themes of alienation and inner collapse. Nothing’s Cannibal World version inverts that energy, as their Felix still smiles, but it’s the grin of someone sprinting through catastrophe with a blade in hand. Both acts draw from the same underground visual lexicon, yet use the cat to express distinct artistic identities.

Felix endures because he’s recognizable and at the same time can be used as a cultural blank slate. His graphic face becomes a vessel for sadness, irony, rage or anything else the remixer imagines. He also stands as a relic of America’s first wave of consumer imagery, a reminder of a time when the world was transforming through rapid technological change.



Top photo: Children with Felix the Cat toy, Nielsen Park Beach, Sydney, NSW, 1926



ZR