In 2017, I began writing my first novel, Alienable Rights, addressing unsavory aspects of humanity on full display when the news breaks about extraterrestrial aliens among us. It helped me to process a particularly difficult personal life during a time that both decimated my faith in humankind and seemingly destroyed my sense of humor.
Nine years and six more novels of my Other Worldly series later, we humans are unfortunately once again grappling with a lack of human decency. Struggling to find anything funny in what amounts to daily inhumane atrocities even worse than those occurring from the 2016 presidential election cycle to the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021.
Social media often magnifies this constant and demoralizing inhumane news reel, aggravating angst to the point where many of us want to give up hope and succumb to despair and despondency. This was no more evident than a mere three days into this new year.
That’s when I realized I’d recently adopted a coping mechanism on a surprising source, Facebook aka Meta, via two stellar accounts out of the United Kingdom. Fact is, British humor to the rescue makes so much sense when dealing with a near complete loss of both humor and human decency in the US.
The first much-needed comedic offering that I latched onto by decidedly brilliant British humans seems straight out of Alienable Rights, which features my beloved otters of Monterey Bay.
In Otter News offers tickle-your-funny-bone snark covering the antics of a perpetual pub-crawling otter named Steve. “The life and times of Steve the Otter” was actually created back in 2013, but I can’t think of a better year for me to discover it than 2025. For obvious reasons, the first humorous tidbit catching my attention and admiration was Steve musing the following : “If you identify a UFO as a UFO, then it becomes an FO. Unless it has landed, then it is simply an O.”
I’ve found the appealing wit of these otter cartoons worth sharing with friends and family, because we can all laugh at Steve—and greatly need to do so—in his adorable and highly understandable state of inebriation. In reality, this kind of relatable humor numbs the pain far better than a pub crawl, because who doesn’t love otters? As Rowan Layne comments in Alienable Rights, aren’t otters everyone’s favorite critter in the wild?
Next up, cats in all of their cantankerous, conniving, and capricious cleverness, as noted by some pretty darned clever humans from a Facebook account called “Felixbellawillow.” It features Felix, the “sharply dressed Tuxedo,” aged 10, and Willow, the “feisty Torby,” aged 11, described as ,“Two seasoned pros in the art of mischief, sass, and chaos.”
The true artists are those comprising the British family (Mom, Dad, kids and teenager) that has observed its rescue cats with such unerringly accurate and tears-streaming-funny narrative. Nothing short of hilarious genius is generated in these extensive kitty dialogues offering feline framing on human behavior.
From a cat’s perspective, we humans are seriously flawed. Can’t argue with that.
Felix the family cat-monster is intimidated by fierce Willow, who spent her first five years working for a goat barn. Bella also lived in this barn and was rescued with Willow after the barn closed, but she was in poor health and died in 2022.
Some favorite takes from Felix, who is in a perpetual state of starvation and, like my orange tabby Morris, has a habit of force awakenings for feeding at 5 a.m., but does not himself appreciate being roused at any other hour of the day during naptimes:
“Why do humans insist on doing things around me. Not with me. Not for me. Just loudly around me?!”
“It ought to be illegal, humans arranging things while I’m on them.”
Then there are the descriptions of humans and their foibles themselves, which defy paraphrasing but definitely invoke guffaws. One Felix commentary I could particularly relate to was how he “stepped across her hair,” (at 5 a.m. of course) “leaving loose strands like souvenirs.”
Felix and Willow definitely make me feel like many of us are all in the same boat—or same bed at 5 a.m.—in this human experiment called life. A life in which critters can make it more challenging but infinitely better.
That’s why my precious pair, Bodie dog and Morris the kitty, are featured in my Other Worldly novels as themselves, where they are also alien beings—a bit of literary license I will never be convinced is not actually a truth. As Rowan Layne notes in Alienable Rights, most cat owners had probably already deduced that felines hail from an entirely different world.
Like Felix the cat, my Bodie dog is intimidated by Morris, an orange tabby who was once a champion mouser when we lived in rural Nevada where I adopted him. And Morris, like Felix, also does not like to be disturbed. I had to move him from my lap to jot down notes for this post, and Morris was not amused. He stood like a sentry on an end table, watching me as if his feline self somehow knew I was engaging in the ultimate betrayal—writing about other cats.
I snapped the photo appearing above early this morning in a moment of warm coziness when both critters consented to share space with me on the couch. They, along with Steve the Otter and clever Felix and Willow from the UK, keep me laughing. And remind me that humans might not be so bad after all, a redeeming factor being our love and appreciation of critters.