"I'm married, which means that instead of occasionally wondering about men from afar, I actually live with one and can be constantly astounded by the strange male brain." -- Cathy Guisewite
Cathy Lee Guisewite (born September 5, 1950) is the cartoonist who created the comic strip Cathy in 1976. Her main cartoon character (Cathy) is a career woman faced with the issues and challenges of work, relationships, her mother and food, or as Guisewite herself put it in one of her strips, "The four basic guilt groups."
Guisewite was born in Dayton, Ohio, grew up in Midland, Michigan, and graduated from Midland High School with the class of 1968. She started writing comic strips at the urging of her mother and was first published in 1976 by Kansas City-based Universal Press Syndicate, now Universal Uclick. She attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority. Guisewite received her bachelor's degree in English in 1972. She also holds seven honorary degrees.
In 1993, Guisewite received the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society. In 1987, she received an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program for the TV special Cathy, which aired on CBS. Guisewite was a frequent guest in the latter years of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Guisewite and her husband Chris Wilkinson reside in Los Angeles. She has a daughter and a stepson.
One of Guisewite's classmates at University of Michigan was Lawrence Kasdan. When Kasdan's movie The Big Chill opened, Guisewite devoted an entire week of Cathy strips to this movie, with her character Cathy and Cathy's co-workers all enthusing over the film and seeing it repeatedly.
On August 11, 2010, Guisewite announced the comic strip's retirement. It came to an end with the Sunday strip on October 3, 2010.
"A lot of married people certainly have wonderful relationships with their dogs, but when you're single and your dog is the only other living thing in your house, it's a really special relationship which I wanted CATHY to have.""All parents believe their children can do the impossible. They thought it the minute we were born, and no matter how hard we've tried to prove them wrong, they all think it about us now. And the really annoying thing is, they're probably right.""Animal welfare issues have always been important to me.""Because the majority of my readers are women, I feel that one public service I can provide to them is to spread the message of regular mammograms and early detection within the strip.""Cartooning is a wonderful career, and I'd like more women to get to have it. I can't think of any reason why we won't see more syndicated female cartoonists in the future.""Cathy was the first widely syndicated humor strip created by a woman. The strip was pretty revolutionary at the time not only because it starred a female, but also because it was so emotionally honest about all the conflicting feelings many women had in 1976.""Defy your own group. Rebel against yourself.""Every time I get something under control in my own life, the world provides more material.""Food, love, career, and mothers, the four major guilt groups.""I had such a close relationship with my dog, and my dog so filled the need in my life to have children that I just wanted Cathy to have that experience.""I have an office in my house and one about five minutes from my house. I worked solely out of my house for many years, but find, with children, that I have to be in a different ZIP code to think.""I never thought Cathy would get married in the comic strip. And I also thought I would never get married.""I'd love to see more equal representation of female and male cartoonists on the comics page.""I'm lucky that my real-life Mom has both a great sense of humor about herself and an amazing ability to slip into complete denial if the subject matter gets a little too close to home.""I'm more financially successful, but it just means the shopping blunders I make are bigger now.""I'm most proud of having created something that men never completely get.""Imagine my surprise when, after a lifetime of teaching me to keep personal things to myself, Mom insisted my drawings were the start of a comic strip for millions of people to enjoy.""In 1976 I wrote a lot about women trying to claim the right to work.""Mothers send strips to daughters to make a point. Daughters smack strips down on the breakfast table to make a point. My own mom sometimes cuts a strip out and sends it to me to make sure I understand her.""My dog was with me all the time. I talked to my dog. She was my best buddy. I shared all my secrets with her, but I don't think I every really tried jokes out with the dog.""My mother had always taught me to write about my feelings instead of sharing really personal things with others, so I spent many evenings writing in my diary, eating everything in the kitchen and waiting for Mr. Wrong to call.""Otherwise, my whole career has just been flinging myself at whatever is most overdue first and letting everything else stack up.""The biggest change in my life is that I now have to apologize for being thin.""The relationship between Cathy and Mom in the strip is the one relationship drawn from real life that I have proudly never even tried to disguise.""The specific story line that people have responded to the most has been the horror of bathing suit shopping.""The specifics of Cathy?s and my life are different now, but the basic life challenges are exactly the same."