I don’t get the whole lolcats phenomenon and I was so sure the love for humorous cat pics would die down, but it’s still going strong. So in the spirit of ‘if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em’, this one goes out to I Can Has Cheezburger enthusiasts. For some reason, cats were big in the eighties, even without hilarious captions. I only had a platonic love for ThunderCats, but our favorite pop icons were really getting it on with some cool cats, if you believe their videos.

The first one that comes to mind when I think ‘cat love’ is Paula Abdul’s biggest hit, “Opposites Attract” from 1989. She has a great dance sequence with MC Skat Kat, an animated, rapping, rebellious, streetwise kitty who knows how to bust a move. Paula and Kat have the obvious different species obstacle working against them, but to make matters worse she’s also neat and he’s messy, she’s got money he’s always broke, she likes it quiet he likes to shout, but when they get together it all works out. Ain’t cat love grand?

Paula Abdul isn’t the only one who had a feline fling in her videos back in the eighties, Gloria Estefan had her share of cat love as well. Miami Sound Machine has two videos for their 1985 hit “Bad Boy”, but I only remember the one they taped with the cast of Cats, for obvious reasons. I’m not a big fan of the musical; large groups of grown-ups singing while dressed up as cats creep me out, but I love the video. Of course the song is pure pop heaven, but the video made it even more memorable. It begins with Gloria Estefan coming home after a date with a preppy guy, then she starts singing that she’d really rather go slummin’ in back alleys with bad-bad-bad-bad-boy … cats. It features some awesome cat humor, like one cat drooling over a kitty centerfold in Playcat and a back street brass band playing for fishies. On top of that, it has a surprise ending M. Night Shyamalan would kill for!