7 reasons why I wouldn’t pull the plug if Thomas O’Malley were my terminally ill father

Remember Thomas O’Malley, the wise-cracking alley cat from 1970’s The Aristocats? Although a complete and utter scoundrel, he was a loving paternal figure for the otherwise fatherless kittens Marie, Berlioz, and Toulouse — something I never had in my own boorish ogre of a father.

And now that my father lies here in his death bed, desperately grasping to every last minute of his miserable life, I am tempted to finally put him out of our misery once and for all — but that would be a different story if he was that lovable Thomas O’Malley the alley cat, for the following reasons:

1. Thomas O’Malley is a hip cat that knows where it’s at, unlike my terminally ill father, whose broken hip has made him completely dependent on me for his daily care.

2. While Thomas O’Malley uses charming anachronistic slang such as “groovy,” “swinging,” and “dames,” the anachronistic slang my father uses toward the nurses cannot be reprinted in this publication.

3. That scruffy lookin’ Tom O’Malley can clean up real nice for a family picture, and so could my father; but afterwards that only meant that he knew he could leave visible bruises on us.

4. Thomas O’Malley is friends with Scat Cat, who’s totally rad and could play a mean horn, unlike my father’s friend Randy, whose troubled history with alcoholism and sexual assault never seemed to stop my father from leaving me alone with him on multiple occasions throughout my childhood.

5. Loyalty to his friends is something Thomas O’Malley didn’t lack, and he always had your back, unlike my father, who once stabbed a friend in the back in a brutal bar room attack.

6. Even after Duchess refused Tom’s initial proposal of marriage, he still returned in just the nick of time to rescue her from the evil butler, unlike my father, whose involvement in the disappearance in my mother was long suspected but never conclusively proven by police.

7. Abraham de Lacy Guiseppe Casey Thomas O’Malley is that alley cat’s full three-name salutation, a name that “covers all of Europe.” My father had six aliases he used across all of Europe, and if Interpol had ever connected them back to my father, he would have certainly wound back up in The Hague.

How about you? Can you think of any other reasons why I’d probably refrain from euthanizing my terrible father, but only if he was that sly cartoon cat? Comment on this website to tell me what you think!