Damn those greedy, lazy millionaire cats

Posted by Maggie December 12th, 2006 at 10:30am In Jon Stewart SNL Special Events

The Hater points out that SNL's digital shorts have suspiciously resembled other viral videos the past couple of months. What struck me as suspicious on Saturday wasn't the videos, though — it was the final-minutes sketch about a law firm for cats whose crazy owners left them millionaires of dollars when they died.

That sketch, if you happen to watch anything with Jon Stewart as obsessively as we here at TiFaux do, will immediately bring to mind Comedy Central's recent autism benefit show. Steve Carrell did a pre-taped segment where he urged millionaire inheritance cats to give to the autism charity. He spoke in "cat," directly to the kitties. Oscar translated into "Spanish cat."

Granted, these are two totally different approaches to the millionaire cat premise. But… did you just read that sentence? The millionaire cat premise. 

Do we live in a world so overrun with millionaire cats that there are actually multiple ways of mocking them? Is the problem of crazy-inheritance pets so widespread that it deserves two different sketches?

Basically what I'm asking is, what are the odds that both Steve Carrell and the writers at SNL both independently thought to themselves, Millionaire cats! Genius!, and that SNL didn't — subconsciously or not — rip off the autism benefit? Pretty slim, I think. 

Just because it's an autism benefit on Comedy Central doesn't mean nobody's watching. In fact, I'd venture to say that it's pretty likely the same people watch both SNL and the CC benefit. I did, at least. 

And now I've just spent an hour trying to find evidence that anyone, anywhere actually left money to their pets in their will. All I've found is this short film from 1932, which probably means "cat" in the "he's a hep cat, dig?" type of way. Major points to whoever can link to a Crazy Cat Lady Will.