Politics Opinion

Vale Chimpy, the anti-fascist feline hero

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Sadly, Chimpy has taken his final bow from social media stardom (Screenshot via YouTube)

Chimpy the cat, beloved friend of Tom Tanuki and champion of the anti-fascist cause, has sadly passed away. Tom explains why he was such a notable feline.

CHIMPY MAY NOT have sailed the world like Matthew Flinders' cat, nor did he have a video game starring his likeness as former U.S. President Bill Clinton's cat Socks did. But in his own way, he is a Notable Cat and not merely some personal concern of mine.

One matter of public significance was his accumulation of some fame through repeated casting in my videos about the pandemic-era anti-lockdown movement. He'd sit there and suffer manhandling, misrepresentations and accusations of mildly fascist populist tendencies from me, lying limp in my arms while I discussed cookers.

(Screenshot supplied)

People used to ask if I drugged him. He was just very happy to be held.

Over time, he became beloved of my audience. Two beautiful portraits have been painted of him by admirers, which is far better than being cast in an average SNES game.

(Image supplied)

I once had a wad of cash stuffed into my hand from an insistent legend after a live performance. It came with a conditional command: “Treat Chimpy.”

To this day, I am forced to send weekly private updates on Chimpy's health to an army of enduring pro-Chimpy followers. Many of them cheerfully inform me that they are more interested in him than anything I ever have to say and, since he isn't in my videos anymore, they've ceased to watch them. I don't take it personally.

(Image supplied)

Perhaps the most striking item of public note is that Chimpy was the first cat in Australia to have been doxxed by White supremacists. (It’s not a crowded market, but it's true.)

How that happened: in 2016, I was fresh out of Melbourne spoken word nights and creative writing blogging, suddenly thrust into the world of anti-fascism and the far-Right when I started making videos playing a masked fake patriot character to annoy racists. The mask quickly proved a handy obscurant as I discovered how unhinged, precious and violent the patriot movement was.

But I was shit at hiding my identity, as most people unused to having political opponents are. So I was quickly doxxed — by leading Islamophobic talking head “The Great Aussie Patriot” Shermon Burgess, no less. (Times change. He's now a Muslim.)

(Screenshot supplied)

The private information released included my full name, unmasked face, Footscray place of residence... and cat. The first photo they found had me and Chimpy in it, so when my personal identity got shared around the far-Right, Chimpy got doxxed as well.

Among the usual host of death threats aimed at me at that time, I distinctly recall reading comments from patriots threatening to shoot Chimpy as well. I wish I'd screenshotted them. While I was very stressed by the doxxing, this added a ridiculous note to the whole affair. Chimpy didn't appear to mind any of it.

You realise that all this means he's probably in my ASIO file? I know it's a bit twee, but I like to imagine he even has his own one. I'll find out for sure one day. How many cats get to be in big, stupid intelligence files made by time-wasting spooks? That's notable.

While we're on the subject of my doxxing, I recall releasing a video in masked fake patriot character to deny the reveal. In character, I resentfully said I wasn’t “some cat-holding c**t from Footscray”. Technically true, because I was not that character.

I dwell on the minutiae of my now-ancient doxxing not only because it helps illustrate Chimpy's notability, but also because it demonstrates the need for deep privacy in anti-fascist and activist action.

I might put my head in a lot of videos but there's a firm barrier between the information I can release into the world and the things I keep private. Nobody here knows much about my private life. That's a matter of necessity. As I learned in 2016, if I tell you my private information I also hand it to a thousand foaming psychopaths who say they want to shoot me and/or my cat.

I have endured eight years of this shit. Privacy has become a central tenet of my life. Accordingly, I have grown uncomfortable writing about intimate matters. If you don't know me personally and we don't talk directly, you will know nothing about my real life. I put nothing on social media, anywhere.

But I have demonstrated that Chimpy is not just a matter for me. He is a Notable Cat. So let me share some sensitive information about him and me.

Chimpy liked Greek yoghurt, whitebait fish and dangly cat toys. He was shit at catching insects.

He went for long walks in a harness, an activity he perfected as a kitten and mastered over many years. At his height, he could walk a couple of kilometres.

(Image supplied)

In 2014, he went missing for three months. When found, he was on death's door. I had to bring him back from the brink by blending up cat food and injecting it into a hole in his neck.

He was resilient. In 2020, he travelled from Melbourne to Brisbane with me in the front passenger seat of my car. He almost ran me off the road at one point when he got in between my legs.

(Image supplied)

He remained steadfastly loyal and affectionate to me until the end, despite making enemies out of many scratched vets in his later years. Only my presence could keep him calm in the clinic.

I learned to care for people better through caring for Chimpy over many years. I believe I learned that from him, too.

At 16 years of age, Chimpy reached the end stage of a degenerative kidney condition that he survived for nearly three years, longer than most cats.

I was half a world away on personal matters. I am heartbroken that I couldn't be in his company when, at around 3 PM on Tuesday 1 October, Chimpy – a doxxed “seal point” Tonkinese with distinct fat-raccoon qualities developed in his later years – passed quietly on. He was in the company of a vet and my mum, who went a long way to be there in my stead, bless her.

He will perhaps not be missed by a small, strange selection of racists, as discussed. But that's a badge of honour for any being, really, cat or human. And none of them matters enough to keep this one a secret.

He is greatly loved by many others and not only by me. Vale Chimpy.

(Image supplied)

Tom Tanuki is a writer, satirist and anti-fascist activist. Tom does weekly videos on YouTube commenting on the Australian political fringe. You can follow Tom on Twitter @tom_tanuki.

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