🪦 Deceased Kit n' Kay Boodle and the late Albert Temple / Gene Catlow / Richard Katellis

[FrickleMyPickle]

I know this is basically a dead thread but I can’t help but think we still have a groovy mystery on our hands, gang.

We have Polph/Tet/Ryan Dewalt assuring us via his FA that there totes was a memorial service. No details or offer of ‘friends email me for details so you can attend’ though.

And no obituaries, funeral notices or other news available online.

Every other mention I can find where a furry mourns Temples passing refers back to Dewalts post. No other info sources.

I just have this, feeling, there is a interesting story here and we’re not getting all of it....

Jinkies!

Actually, Ryan Dewalt did post a couple of "friends note me for the details so you can make travel arrangements" posts publicly on his FA. One went as far as to specify the date, time and that the memorial was in Vallejo, California. So I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that this guy actually died and they had a funeral for him.

Not saying we don't have an interesting story or a groovy mystery on our hands, though. To me, the question of why a nice, genuine, actually kind of bland (by furry standards) person did this and kept it up for so long is more fascinating than whether or not he's really dead.

(Can't remember if it was someone online or just someone I was talking to IRL, but one of the theories is that he had DID.)

 

[billydero]

Jinkies!

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Actually, Ryan Dewalt did post a couple of "friends note me for the details so you can make travel arrangements" posts publicly on his FA. One went as far as to specify the date, time and that the memorial was in Vallejo, California. So I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that this guy actually died and they had a funeral for him.

Not saying we don't have an interesting story or a groovy mystery on our hands, though. To me, the question of why a nice, genuine, actually kind of bland (by furry standards) person did this and kept it up for so long is more fascinating than whether or not he's really dead.

(Can't remember if it was someone online or just someone I was talking to IRL, but one of the theories is that he had DID.)

Well that's good info and makes sense. I still want to see a actual obit or other notice in a news outlet, though; on the Internet in general (and with furries in particular) I've found that people can say pretty much anything they want, true or not, with little care about it. That Tet's part of Kage's Anthrocon mob doesn't help matters, though truly, I can't see how Tet would gain in any way by faking this.

And I do agree. The essential mystery of Temple and his completely imaginary girlfriend is one that's intriguing.... I wonder if anyone had known, which leads me to say this:

I was reading Trixi/Vinci's FA journal on Temple's death, and she mentions how sad it is that Albert will never be able to be with Catswhisker. That just adds to the mystery and the skepticism I have over this whole matter because -

If she knew the truth about Catswhisker, she's lying to everyone, and perpetuating the myth that no longer serves a purpose.

But if she DIDN'T know, that means Temple - a trusted, loved friend of hers - was lying to her.

Neither seems a very good thing. But very furry, somehow.

(What's DID, again?)

 

[Roach]

Couldn't have said it better myself!



Well that's good info and makes sense. I still want to see a actual obit or other notice in a news outlet, though; on the Internet in general (and with furries in particular) I've found that people can say pretty much anything they want, true or not, with little care about it. That Tet's part of Kage's Anthrocon mob doesn't help matters, though truly, I can't see how Tet would gain in any way by faking this.

And I do agree. The essential mystery of Temple and his completely imaginary girlfriend is one that's intriguing.... I wonder if anyone had known, which leads me to say this:

I was reading Trixi/Vinci's FA journal on Temple's death, and she mentions how sad it is that Albert will never be able to be with Catswhisker. That just adds to the mystery and the skepticism I have over this whole matter because -

If she knew the truth about Catswhisker, she's lying to everyone, and perpetuating the myth that no longer serves a purpose.

But if she DIDN'T know, that means Temple - a trusted, loved friend of hers - was lying to her.

Neither seems a very good thing. But very furry, somehow.

(What's DID, again?)

Dissociative identity disorder. I'm not too familiar with it, but it seems like the theory may be that with Temple all the people he made up were actually real to him. Maybe that could also explain the multiple computers he had? I'm no expert though.

 

[FrickleMyPickle]

Couldn't have said it better myself!



Well that's good info and makes sense. I still want to see a actual obit or other notice in a news outlet, though; on the Internet in general (and with furries in particular) I've found that people can say pretty much anything they want, true or not, with little care about it. That Tet's part of Kage's Anthrocon mob doesn't help matters, though truly, I can't see how Tet would gain in any way by faking this.

And I do agree. The essential mystery of Temple and his completely imaginary girlfriend is one that's intriguing.... I wonder if anyone had known, which leads me to say this:

I was reading Trixi/Vinci's FA journal on Temple's death, and she mentions how sad it is that Albert will never be able to be with Catswhisker. That just adds to the mystery and the skepticism I have over this whole matter because -

If she knew the truth about Catswhisker, she's lying to everyone, and perpetuating the myth that no longer serves a purpose.

But if she DIDN'T know, that means Temple - a trusted, loved friend of hers - was lying to her.

Neither seems a very good thing. But very furry, somehow.

(What's DID, again?)

Yeah, the "he never got to be with Catswhisker" thing was right after his death, before anyone knew about all of this. Even when they found the computers and realized he was Katellis and Shirlee, I remember there was a brief window of everyone sort of hoping that at least Catswhisker would turn out to be real. But apparently no one ever actually met her in person, and she was one of the bigger holes in the whole charade. I didn't even know him and I wondered why the hell they weren't living together after all those years of being such a fandom power couple.

For someone who made such a big deal out of "deception, even innocent deception, is bad" in his comics, he did an awful lot of lying to the people closest to him. And they all took him at this word, even when he made them go "Wait, what?"

 

[I'm Sorry Ms Pac Man]

From conversations I've had, friends of them all had suspicions that Gene was Catswhisker/KatEllis/Shirlee/and all their sundry relatives. Gene was the only one anyone ever met in person at cons. They asked him about certain oddities but he'd make excuses. For the most part they never pried more than that because, well... dude was a nice person. They never knew why he did this. Nobody ever will now. It's very weird but at the end of the day he didn't really do anything sinister with it. It's actually kind of amazing he kept up the ruse for so long. I've never seen anything like it.

ETA: Repeating what someone else already said I guess, but also just verifying I've heard much the same.

ETA2: Sorry for a second edit but as I was lying in bed trying to sleep I remembered something from over a decade ago.

Stefanescu was an artist who appeared seemingly out of nowhere on FA in 2006. His style was like a more primitive version of KatEllis's but I think most people assumed it was just some rando aping it. Long story short they were suspended because their work primarily showed Stefanescu's fursona (an adult rabbit) in suggestive situations with a child rabbit named 'Tumbles'. The commentary on said images implied they were based on online RP with a real person, and the distinction was never made if said real person was an adult RPing as a child or an actual child.

If the reason for the multiple personas was based on not attaching problematic fetishes to his real self, there's a possibility Stefanescu was also an example of this. But again, no way to know now.

 

[FrickleMyPickle]

From conversations I've had, friends of them all had suspicions that Gene was Catswhisker/KatEllis/Shirlee/and all their sundry relatives. Gene was the only one anyone ever met in person at cons. They asked him about certain oddities but he'd make excuses. For the most part they never pried more than that because, well... dude was a nice person. They never knew why he did this. Nobody ever will now. It's very weird but at the end of the day he didn't really do anything sinister with it. It's actually kind of amazing he kept up the ruse for so long. I've never seen anything like it.

ETA: Repeating what someone else already said I guess, but also just verifying I've heard much the same.

ETA2: Sorry for a second edit but as I was lying in bed trying to sleep I remembered something from over a decade ago.

Stefanescu was an artist who appeared seemingly out of nowhere on FA in 2006. His style was like a more primitive version of KatEllis's but I think most people assumed it was just some rando aping it. Long story short they were suspended because their work primarily showed Stefanescu's fursona (an adult rabbit) in suggestive situations with a child rabbit named 'Tumbles'. The commentary on said images implied they were based on online RP with a real person, and the distinction was never made if said real person was an adult RPing as a child or an actual child.

If the reason for the multiple personas was based on not attaching problematic fetishes to his real self, there's a possibility Stefanescu was also an example of this. But again, no way to know now.

One of the last things he did was have Wolf Dad start up a relationship with his "new son", the hamster fursona of someone (not an actual child) who's into small, chubby, toddler-esque characters. Between this and that, yeah, pretty safe to assume this was a Thing he was into.

I hope it was your typical, run-of-the-mill, socially unacceptable kink, because if not, holy shit.

 

[billydero]

Yeah, the "he never got to be with Catswhisker" thing was right after his death, before anyone knew about all of this. Even when they found the computers and realized he was Katellis and Shirlee, I remember there was a brief window of everyone sort of hoping that at least Catswhisker would turn out to be real. But apparently no one ever actually met her in person, and she was one of the bigger holes in the whole charade. I didn't even know him and I wondered why the hell they weren't living together after all those years of being such a fandom power couple.

For someone who made such a big deal out of "deception, even innocent deception, is bad" in his comics, he did an awful lot of lying to the people closest to him. And they all took him at this word, even when he made them go "Wait, what?"

From conversations I've had, friends of them all had suspicions that Gene was Catswhisker/KatEllis/Shirlee/and all their sundry relatives. Gene was the only one anyone ever met in person at cons. They asked him about certain oddities but he'd make excuses. For the most part they never pried more than that because, well... dude was a nice person. They never knew why he did this. Nobody ever will now. It's very weird but at the end of the day he didn't really do anything sinister with it. It's actually kind of amazing he kept up the ruse for so long. I've never seen anything like it.

ETA: Repeating what someone else already said I guess, but also just verifying I've heard much the same.

ETA2: Sorry for a second edit but as I was lying in bed trying to sleep I remembered something from over a decade ago.

Stefanescu was an artist who appeared seemingly out of nowhere on FA in 2006. His style was like a more primitive version of KatEllis's but I think most people assumed it was just some rando aping it. Long story short they were suspended because their work primarily showed Stefanescu's fursona (an adult rabbit) in suggestive situations with a child rabbit named 'Tumbles'. The commentary on said images implied they were based on online RP with a real person, and the distinction was never made if said real person was an adult RPing as a child or an actual child.

If the reason for the multiple personas was based on not attaching problematic fetishes to his real self, there's a possibility Stefanescu was also an example of this. But again, no way to know now.

“Power couple” says it quite well. I remember furries pointing at Temple and his mythical Catswhiker and holding them up as an example that normal, happy relationships do happen between furries. That it was all a myth must be a major blow to some.

And that it seems many already knew of the deception just make me wonder more about Temples ‘very close friend’ Trixi. Either she’s utterly naive, has an incredible talent for self deception, or she’s got that same “we gotta make this furry thing look good or we’re just a bunch of weirdos hiding with other weirdos” thing going on preached by guys like Sam Conway.

(Sidebar - when I read Trixi’s journal on Temple, she went into the obligatory tale of her bad childhood and how talking cartoon animals saved her. Tip - if you DON’T want furry to sound like the dumping ground for the very broken, and want it to be accepted? Keep those stories to yourself.)

Personally I thinks it’s a combination of all three of my theories above. That her husband is part of the Conway mob makes me think the third option is the leading one; God knows I’ve heard other flimsy stories about furry couples (eg Susan Deer and Bennie) that seem to be intended to whitewash the swingers club the fandom really is.

 

[Computery Guy]

Man I opened this thread to reflect on some early internet traumas and then this shit happens.

I have never been caught so off-guard in all my life.

 

[NobleGreyHorse]

Sidebar - when I read Trixi’s journal on Temple, she went into the obligatory tale of her bad childhood and how talking cartoon animals saved her.

Word is that she's never fully recovered -- to this day, as a mum of three kids -- from her dad's suicide when she was little. I obviously have no idea how much professional therapy she had at any point afterward, but my educated guess is "not enough." I've read some of her "Vinci & Arty" webcomic and its bizarre crossovers with Dave Hopkins's "Jack" -- and soap opera from V&A meets bad theology from Jack: Arty eventually dies saving people from a fire; Vinci can't live without him or whatever, necks himself, and is damned to Hopkins's hell, which is really super-awkward because Arty has, in the meantime, become an angel. So she's already shown a tendency to append her autobiography to seemingly unrelated tragedies in fantastically messed-up ways.

 

[FrickleMyPickle]

Word is that she's never fully recovered -- to this day, as a mum of three kids -- from her dad's suicide when she was little. I obviously have no idea how much professional therapy she had at any point afterward, but my educated guess is "not enough." I've read some of her "Vinci & Arty" webcomic and its bizarre crossovers with Dave Hopkins's "Jack" -- and soap opera from V&A meets bad theology from Jack: Arty eventually dies saving people from a fire; Vinci can't live without him or whatever, necks himself, and is damned to Hopkins's hell, which is really super-awkward because Arty has, in the meantime, become an angel. So she's already shown a tendency to append her autobiography to seemingly unrelated tragedies in fantastically messed-up ways.

I remember she got really angry when people were suggesting that maybe, just maybe Vinci didn't deserve hell for committing suicide after being told the cancer had returned and spread to his brain and spine (and not wanting his adult daughter to become his new caretaker.) It was jarring because honestly, she's the anti-lolcow -- just kind of hangs around her corner of the internet being pleasant and drawing cartoons, but never porn.

 

[billydero]

I remember she got really angry when people were suggesting that maybe, just maybe Vinci didn't deserve hell for committing suicide after being told the cancer had returned and spread to his brain and spine (and not wanting his adult daughter to become his new caretaker.) It was jarring because honestly, she's the anti-lolcow -- just kind of hangs around her corner of the internet being pleasant and drawing cartoons, but never porn.

Word is that she's never fully recovered -- to this day, as a mum of three kids -- from her dad's suicide when she was little. I obviously have no idea how much professional therapy she had at any point afterward, but my educated guess is "not enough." I've read some of her "Vinci & Arty" webcomic and its bizarre crossovers with Dave Hopkins's "Jack" -- and soap opera from V&A meets bad theology from Jack: Arty eventually dies saving people from a fire; Vinci can't live without him or whatever, necks himself, and is damned to Hopkins's hell, which is really super-awkward because Arty has, in the meantime, become an angel. So she's already shown a tendency to append her autobiography to seemingly unrelated tragedies in fantastically messed-up ways.

As someone who’s been... exposed, to Hopkins Jack comic I can rightfully say you couldn’t pay me to do a crossover with it. Even if it weren’t for the bizarre, repellent philosophy and ideas he puts into it, the art is hideous.

That said, I feel really bad for Trixi, now. I had no idea. And that’s yet another thing about furry that bothers me — furries treat it as a method of cheap therapy, and are indiscriminate in what personal things and inner thoughts they express thru it; and when they do it thru art it never goes away, and they never heal.

 

[NobleGreyHorse]

That said, I feel really bad for Trixi, now. I had no idea. And that’s yet another thing about furry that bothers me — furries treat it as a method of cheap therapy, and are indiscriminate in what personal things and inner thoughts they express thru it; and when they do it thru art it never goes away, and they never heal.

I feel bad for her too, having met her a couple of times and finding her, as @Got2Hands mentions, really quite pleasant. I fully believe that she and her husband are probably one of the most stable couples in the fandom, not that that's a high bar to clear. But casting her secondary fursona as literally cancerous and her husband's as a literal savior figure (because in the Hopkins Hell, which angels can apparently just drop into at random, Vinci initially doesn't remember Arty and much angst is had all around, but eventually Arty gets Vinci to snap out of it IIRC because he's a fucking angel and all that) is just... eeh. You could armchair-psych that for days. (Bad Webcomics Wiki, back in the day, had an article on "Jack" that mentioned the original storyline in which Vinci and his cancer appear, and it turns out that he got cancer because... wait for it... Arty is too angry at homophobes, including his father, and the only way he can stop Vinci's cancer is by posthumously forgiving his own dad. Yeah, nothing wrong with that load of WTFery at all.) I also note that the daughter they adopted in the comic was born with only one eye. V&A-land: where even the innocent are defective.

And clearly, to wrench the thread back onto topic, whatever caused Albert Temple to hide from his closest friends the fact that his beloved fiancée was a figment of his imagination was absolutely not healed via art therapy. I mean, again, by all accounts, he was this super-nice guy, and creating the Katellis pseudonym is totally understandable if he wanted to keep his fetishist life separate from his PG-rated comic. It all starts to break down, though, when you realize that people spent years believing in "Shirlee Mouse" and her MS Paint-tier doodles also. And her mother. And Katellis's father... so much so that he supposedly put a disclaimer in the comic at one point stating that all of these quasi-incest goings on were fiction/fap fantasy added to the comic with full permission of Shirlee's mother.

tl;dr Kids, if you have awful shit buried in your psyche, no matter how good you may be at sequential art, see a real therapist too. I don't know much about real art therapy when not used on little kids on Law & Order: SVU, but I would bet it doesn't involve uploading a steaming pile of incest and voyeurism to the web.

 

[Some Manajerk]

Kiwifarms: where the subject of a thread can go from being poked fun at to sympathized with in the span of a page.

That said, did the family come around before or after the comic. Did he create them after the comic started to sort of give voices, however imaginary, to what he was drawing? I mean, artists do get attached to thier creations top some degree or another, maybe in his loneliness he just started trying to bring them more to life?

 

[dookerbewitt]

Sorry to necro a necro'd negro thread but, this little mystery has stuck with me ever since I found out about the dude's death. Just to brush up on the players involved I explored the pages of Albert's different aliases earlier today, and someone recently posted as Catswhisker on her furaffinity page.

Spoiler: Can't screengrab atm

CatsWhisker
Posted: 2 months ago

And what I say to one,
I say to all-
Believe.

Take care, my friends

Real person? Cheeky hacker? Computer holding Tawana's personality on it becoming sentient in storage somewhere??

 

[FrickleMyPickle]

Sorry to necro a necro'd negro thread but, this little mystery has stuck with me ever since I found out about the dude's death. Just to brush up on the players involved I explored the pages of Albert's different aliases earlier today, and someone recently posted as Catswhisker on her furaffinity page.

Spoiler: Can't screengrab atm

CatsWhisker
Posted: 2 months ago

And what I say to one,
I say to all-
Believe.

Take care, my friends

Real person? Cheeky hacker? Computer holding Tawana's personality on it becoming sentient in storage somewhere??

The ghost of Albert Temple, just in time for a spooky, spooky Halloween appearance (or gunning for a Christmas miracle and overshooting it by a couple of months.)

 

[Scind]

Real person? Cheeky hacker? Computer holding Tawana's personality on it becoming sentient in storage somewhere??

As was said by others in here, Al's cohorts have been quite active in keeping this on the quiet. I'd bet on 'they found the password and wanted to put a line under this in the lowest-drama way possible'.

 

[psychoparrot]

Ok. I hate to appear callous or something, but I can't be the only one who doesn't buy the whole "oh he was just such a great guy and people aren't giving any clear answers because of respect and that's why nobody can find any confirmation on this guy's death or any information about him at all" theme going on in this thread. Was this a tragedy? Probably. Does this guy deserve to be ridiculed for his obvious mental problems? Obviously not. That doesn't make him a "great person". We're talking about a man who drew twisted ideological orgy comics for 17 years in the style of a children's book, whose closest friends were apparently relatively big kahunas at furry conventions. This is a man who openly saw sexual discretion and monogamy as evils, if he understood them at all.

The biggest question here is very obviously not "why would he have these false personas, how sad was he", but "what was this guy up to"? All of the testimonials in his favor in this thread are from other furries, a demographic which if this thread is to be believed couldn't find their way out of a room with no walls. If I hear a convention-regular furry say that someone's a "great guy", I leave my pets at the shelter before I let him into my house. We've got multiple posts describing weird father/son stuff as well as eerily similar cub artists, as well as a moral philosophy shared by every Inkbunny user this side of the nearest Libertarian convention. His house was full of how many computers? What the hell?

Maybe it's true and this person tragically died and his friends are just keeping it quiet out of some odd sense of respect, but there's absolutely no reason for that to be the first thing to believe. Rate me :autism: or :dumb: all you want, but something seriously smells here.

 

[billydero]

Ok. I hate to appear callous or something, but I can't be the only one who doesn't buy the whole "oh he was just such a great guy and people aren't giving any clear answers because of respect and that's why nobody can find any confirmation on this guy's death or any information about him at all" theme going on in this thread. Was this a tragedy? Probably. Does this guy deserve to be ridiculed for his obvious mental problems? Obviously not. That doesn't make him a "great person". We're talking about a man who drew twisted ideological orgy comics for 17 years in the style of a children's book, whose closest friends were apparently relatively big kahunas at furry conventions. This is a man who openly saw sexual discretion and monogamy as evils, if he understood them at all.

The biggest question here is very obviously not "why would he have these false personas, how sad was he", but "what was this guy up to"? All of the testimonials in his favor in this thread are from other furries, a demographic which if this thread is to be believed couldn't find their way out of a room with no walls. If I hear a convention-regular furry say that someone's a "great guy", I leave my pets at the shelter before I let him into my house. We've got multiple posts describing weird father/son stuff as well as eerily similar cub artists, as well as a moral philosophy shared by every Inkbunny user this side of the nearest Libertarian convention. His house was full of how many computers? What the hell?

Maybe it's true and this person tragically died and his friends are just keeping it quiet out of some odd sense of respect, but there's absolutely no reason for that to be the first thing to believe. Rate me :autism: or :dumb: all you want, but something seriously smells here.

I do agree the whole story just doesn’t add up with Albert here.

Also, I admit I don’t know how these things work, but I think it odd that the Dewalts apparently just walked into Alberts home and started ‘cleaning up’ and ‘handling things’. Perhaps they had a key, but there’s implications they didnt see him on a regular basis; when someone passes away is all you have to do is tell police and family and who ever else ‘it’s totes ok, we’re furries to so we can handle the deceased’s property’?

And did anyone ever find an obituary?

 

[MuuMuu Bunnylips]

I do agree the whole story just doesn’t add up with Albert here.

Also, I admit I don’t know how these things work, but I think it odd that the Dewalts apparently just walked into Alberts home and started ‘cleaning up’ and ‘handling things’. Perhaps they had a key, but there’s implications they didnt see him on a regular basis; when someone passes away is all you have to do is tell police and family and who ever else ‘it’s totes ok, we’re furries to so we can handle the deceased’s property’?

And did anyone ever find an obituary?

All I'm reading here is "Dead furry is dead". That's good enough for me.

 

[dookerbewitt]

And did anyone ever find an obituary?

As far as I can tell there is none, all references to his passing link back to DeWalt's post about it on FA.

There definitely feels like some weird piece is missing to all of this. I wonder if people are protective of him because they did know he lived alone and was pulling a Sybil. I can't understand the logic of one of them posting under Catswhisker's account if they wanted to let dude's memory pass quietly, though I also wouldn't doubt they were behind it.