What is the comic/cartoon connection?

May 27, 2013 9:04 PM

My neighbors' outdoor cats, whom I catsit occasionally and interact with regularly, have names that I cannot quite parse, even though my neighbor has repeated them for me on several occasions. Both cats are male. One cat is "Dillon" or "Dylan." The other cat's name sounds like "Sits" or "Zits" or "Sitz." When I looked confused at some point, my neighbor said the names were "from a comic" or "from a cartoon."

Neighbor and his wife are late 30s or early 40s, and they have a 16-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son, so "comics" or "cartoons" could be in any of those age ranges. He made it sound like both names were from the same source. Does this strike any bells?

posted by jaguar to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (11 answers total)

Why haven't you just asked, "Which comic/cartoon? It must be one I'm not familiar with. Also, could you spell their names for me? I've been curious as to how to spell each of their names."
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 9:18 PM on May 27, 2013 [3 favorites]

Zits? Or maybe the name is Fitz?
posted by gusandrews at 9:18 PM on May 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I'm embarrassed at the number of times I've already asked. I'm willing to ask again, but I'd prefer to see if I can figure it out without their help first.
posted by jaguar at 9:48 PM on May 27, 2013

Fritz the Cat starred in both a comic and an animated movie. I have a Fritz collection around here somewhere. The movie isn't a good intro to the character.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:53 PM on May 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Dylan would make sense for a dog.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 10:30 PM on May 27, 2013

Longshot: Dillon and Ziggy (shortened to "Zigs"?) from Power Rangers RPM (though technically not a cartoon).
posted by paperback version at 11:05 PM on May 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

How old are the cats as that may give an idea of what was popular when they arrived?
posted by stuartmm at 11:24 PM on May 27, 2013

Well, Jim Borgman, one of the creators of Zits, has a real-life son named Dylan. There's no male character with that name in the strip, though (the main character is called Jeremy).

There's also a meme about cats who "sitz" wherever they "fitz". One version.
posted by dhartung at 1:29 AM on May 28, 2013

This is a total longshot, the result of idle googling, but there's a comic series called The Spirit in which there is a character named Commissioner Dolan and and a villain known as "The Octopus" whose given name is Zitzbath Zark.
posted by amyms at 1:32 AM on May 28, 2013

Forgive me if this is too obvious to warrant mentioning, but I can totally imagine mishearing "Lilo and Stitch" as "Dillon and Sitz."
posted by Mothlight at 5:50 AM on May 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I think the cats are probably around four or five years old, but they may be shelter adoptees, so I'm not sure when they actually arrived here. (I moved in recently and the cats were already here.)

The one cat is definitely Dylan/Dillon. I asked the neighbor about that one right before posting the question.

The cheeseburger cat "sitz" idea is interesting, and would totally fit this family's sense of humor, and the cat's happiness at curling up just about anywhere. I hadn't considered that maybe just the one cat's name was from a comic/cartoon.
posted by jaguar at 7:16 AM on May 28, 2013