Top Cat: The Lost Episode
If you stop and think about it and reach deep into your memory banks, you might remember an old cartoon called Top Cat. Top Cat is not remembered by too many people these days, but it was a popular cartoon back in its 1970s heyday. Starring a cat who wore a hat and lived out of a trash can, Top Cat resembled former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, and the Civil War. I myself served in the Civil War, and my name is Grant S. Ulysses. I also once ran a convenience store. Well... I'd rather not remember those memories, but those memories are stuck in my brain and I'm going to tell you all about them right now.
One day I was selling a soft pretzel and a large Magush Berry Slurpee to a kid with a skateboard and a backwards hat and an eyepatch, and a bright orange Atari t-shirt that reminded me of painful memories trying to break Billy Mitchell's Space Invaders record. When I saw in the corner of the store a customer... a customer who I personally remembered. My least favorite customer.
The Richmeister! Oh, I considered closing shop for the day and just accepting I'd lose thousands of dollars of business, but no. I decided to check out the current customer before closing the store. Then I went to close the store. I picked up the 'Closed' sign to close the store. I walked up to the front of the store... and then he said it.
"Eyyyy! Top Cat! The Top Cat Meister! Making Copies!", said the Richmeister. Well, that didn't make any sense. I wasn't making any copies. "Richmeister, can you shut the hell up and get the fuck out of my store.", I remarked. Though... in my native accent, it would've sounded more like [insert East Indian pronunciation of the last quote here]. Sorry if that offends you. "Noooo!", he said, actually giving me a coherent response for the first time in his very life.
Well, that was worthy of something. I went to the cash register and picked out some LeBron James Lemonade Bubbleyum (keep in mind this was the 90s) and I also got him his very own Magookleberry Slurpee (I added a lemon to the top, and a festive piece of lime right in the middle). Little did he know that the festive lime was poisonous! A-ha heh, a-ha heh, a-ha heh heh heh!
Sorry. That was just a little joke. So, I gave him the festive lime and the Slurpee. He passed out. Oh, crap. I didn't realize Richmeister had a lime allergy! I didn't know what to do. Did I hide the body in the freezer? Did I hide the body in the dumpster? Did I hide the body in the dirt behind the store? Did I hide the body in the trunk of my car?
No. I had an even better idea. I took the body and I put it behind the counter. I didn't hide it, no sir. I took the body and I put my clothes on it and I had it ring up customers (quote, unquote). Ah, self-service. I smiled to myself, and a let out a large, enormous belch.
I was about to leave the store, actually, but then I looked over to the copy machine. I wondered what the Richmeister was copying. At this point, since he was dead and I'd never hear it again who gave a shit if I ended up thinking about 'making copies', even if it ended up looping in my head (well, I do have an anxiety disorder, but that's beside the point). I looked on top of the copy machine, and there it was: a VHS tape! 'The Lost Episode of Top Cat'. Ahhh, so that's why he called me 'Top Cat' earlier. He had Top Cat on the brain. And who could have blamed him? (By the way, anagram: if you rearrange the letters in 'Top Cat', you'll get 'Taco Cat'.)
I took the VHS tape and went home. My apartment is not a very impressive apartment. It's a simple studio apartment and all I have is a television, an old CRT TV, mind you... and a VCR. I looked at the cokes cables (by that, I mean I have straws that I use for beverages that are flavoured like coca cola and they look like cables... don't... you know what, stop asking questions). I went and got myself a beverage with a cokes cable straw, and then I hooked up the VCR to my television. I didn't even have a refrigerator. I was used to eating musty old crumbs off the floor from Doritos years ago. (You didn't need to know that. Why am I telling you this?)
I put the tape into the VCR, and I was ready to watch some quality entertainment. Oh, Top Cat. I remembered him from when I was a lad. The usual theme song played. It went a little something like this: "Top Cat/He's a top cat/He's the toppest cat around/With a top hat/Top Cat/Top Cat/He loves to eat out of the trash!/Top Cat/Top Cat/He most certainly is not into scat!/Top Cat/Top Cat/Did you know that when the male cat fucks a female cat it hurts the female cat because the male cat's boner is very bony and it hurts and it cuts into..."
Wait a minute... what the hell was that? What the... hell? That was not the usual Top Cat theme song, and that was not even the slight bit 'family friendly'. I went to eject the tape, but the tape got stuck and the tape kept going in and out and in and out. Well, shit. I tried taking the tape out with my hands, but then my hands got stuck. As it turned out, the label was not glued on very well and the glue was not yet glued to be glued permanently... so my hand got stuck on the tape. Eughh... must have been industrial strength gorilla glue: the strongest glue known to man.
Well, I wasn't going anywhere. I couldn't get the tape out. I considered trying to use my tongue or my teeth to try to take the tape out, but there was the fear that I might get the glue on my tongue, and if so I was as good as dead. It wasn't like I was going to drag the VCR and my television and the cokes cables all the way out of the apartment. Besides, I have no family and no friends... it would be several weeks after my body decomposed that they would ever find me. That's... whatever, we don't need to talk about that right now (we'll talk about that later, actually).
So, what else could I do? I was able to put the VHS tape back in, and to be honest with you I would rather watch a horrible VHS tape than be alone with my thoughts (I have an anxiety disorder). The tape continued. It showed Top Cat living inside of a trash can, as normal. He poked out of the trash can and then he stared directly at me, the viewer! Well, that was a little weird, but then again, breaking the fourth wall wasn't all that strange in cartoons (I wish my apartment had a fourth wall, though. I'm poor).
"Hey, kids! It's me, Top Cat!", said Top Cat. That wasn't his normal voice! Top Cat was supposed to sound refined and dignified, and he was supposed to resemble a mobster. Now that I think about it, this cartoon never was family friendly. I wonder how it get approved back in the 1970s. "I have explosive diarrhea!!!". We didn't need to know that. I considered ejecting the VHS tape again, but now the tape was permanently stuck inside, and so was my jaw. "Just kidding! If I did, I couldn't live in this trash can anymore", said Top Cat, his voice becoming progressively more and more... I don't know, he sounded like he needed help. "I'm going to smoke a [F-SLUR]!", said Top Cat. What the hell? That was highly offensive. Then I remembered it was common for Top Cat to smoke cigars on the 'Top Cat' television cartoon, and that's what he did, and you could get away with that back then (seriously, if you look it up on YouTube, you can see that The Flintstones used to advertise for Winston cigarettes and beer and shit like that, so... this way was actually acceptabl--I'm sorry for saying shit. I'm sorry for cursing. Oh, I said it again. Sorry).
The scene cut to black and I was starting to wonder if the whole episode was just Top Cat smoking a... cigarette, and after that terrible theme song I had PTSD (and I just got triggered thinking about it).
I wondered if that was the entire tape, but then it cut to another scene. It was Top Cat outside. It was a full moon. I shrieked in horror when I looked closely, as the moon then panned in, as if there was a camera. It was a blood moon! The moon was blood red. It also looked HD. They didn't have HD back in the 1970s! What a shitload of fuck (ah, I cursed again...).
Top Cat was playing a ukulele. "I'm going to predict the future!", said Top Cat. "All the hipsters of the future will play ukuleles and think they're cool. And wear fedoras and have My Little Pony dolls underneath their armpits." Well, thank you, Top Cat!
A chill went down my spine. My spine, that may as well have been stuck inside the VHS player. ... How did Top Cat know the future? There was something sinister about this tape. "La, la, la la! I am the Frito Bandito!", sang Top Cat. Maybe that was the product placement for this episode. The Frito Bandito was a highly offensive Mexican stereotype that used to appear in cartoons and commercials years ago, and he would steal delicious Frito-Lay corn snacks from the children, but then he's gone now (kind of like Speedy Gonzales, for being a stereotype... of me. Whatever). Top Cat continued playing his ukulele, though it sounded a lot like a banjo, to my horror.
Then a female cat appeared. A female cat wearing pink, with a beautiful bowtie in her hair. Well this was curious! Was this episode going to get cute all of a sudden, because so far, it was just vulgar. "Hello there, Top Cat.", said the nameless female cat. "Hello there, Mrs. Cat!", said Top Cat.
Suddenly, the tape turned to work... shit, I left that corpse at work... more on that later. Suddenly, the tape turned to worse. Even worse than before... even worse than the theme song! Top Cat took out his ukulele and he smashed the female cat on the fucking head with it. "I am the King of the Jungle!", yelled Top Cat. No, he wasn't! He wasn't a damned lion! He was a... housecat. Trashcan cat.
I was ready to turn off the tape. I closed my eyes, and pretended I was in a faraway land somewhere, but that didn't work. I fell asleep (thank god for working really hard). When I woke up several hours later, the tape was still going. Could this tape have truly been several hours long? I tried pressing rewind with my tongue, but that didn't work (shit, I always knew I had a stubby little tongue). I continued watching the tape.
Top Cat was eating out of the trash, except this time it was footage of an actual cat eating out of the trash. He was eating... fishbones and expired cat food. Purina chow. And also, a Bob Uecker baseball card. This did not make sense! I didn't know what to do. I just didn't know what to do.
However, it was approaching morning and it was time for work, so I tried really, really hard to rip myself away from the VHS player.
It wasn't working. I couldn't budge a muscle! I tried again, and again, and again. It didn't work.
Finally... I noticed something. My only way out. My old nail filer was sitting on the floor. I bent down, with great strategy to pick up the nail filer with my teeth... and to my horror, I knocked over the television and the VHS player. Suddenly... I was zapped by the electrical outburst. Smoke went up into the air. But it was too late for me. Because I was now zapped... into a skeleton...
I woke up in hell. Satan was there. He was wearing a McDonald's uniform for some reason, but that's okay. "Can I take your order?", Satan said. He sounded an awful lot like Batman. Maybe Christian Bale was Satan all along. "Yeah, I'd like a Big Mac and a large Arch Deluxe.", I responded. "No, stop, you're in hell."
Suddenly, the McDonald's uniform changed. Satan, right before my very eyes, metamorphosed... that wasn't at all. It was... ! ... it was... !... it was... !... no! It couldn't be! It couldn't be!
The Richmeister was Satan all along.
"Hey, Mr. Top Cat, making copies! Leaving the corpse, inside of 7-11!"... he stated. "I don't know what you're talking about, I just want to go back home!", I responded in my East Indian accent. "No, Top Cat Meister! You leave corpse in 7-11, now I leave you here in hell! Your soul, in hell, making copies!"
Well friends, I'm going to make a long story short. I now work in 7-11 in hell. I eat fish bones out of the garbage, and I play the ukulele. I make copies in the copy machine in the corner. Copies of 50 Shades of Grey. Which I am destined to create for the rest of eternity and give out to morbidly obese middle-aged housewives.
You know, I didn't expect us to actually be judged for our misdeeds in life, but it turns out that we do. Up until that point, I was regarded as a straightforward, good-hearted Protestant man. But now I'm in hell. I'll always be in hell.
I guess the moral of the story is, if you ever come across something strange, like a VHS tape or any other sort of residuals from the dead... respect the property of the dead.
Because greed... does not turn you into a Top Cat.
YouTube reading
Credited to DaveTheUseless
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