I dreamed they rereleased CATS 2019 with a new song about a cat named Jumbletwunk. He was played by a very confused Channing Tatum and his talent was being aggressively bisexual, then burgling your skeleton.
I now have a CATSona, is what I’m saying.
You died instantly, and left behind this limp, crumpled pelt! It was gross!
Oh god, you nailed it, though. Tugger was the first to go.
There were no skeletons but there SHOULD have been.
He was a longhaired medium brown tabby with tuxedo markings and areas of his coat verging into a dark gold. So, almost a torbie and white? Which would make him either very rare or trans. He had beautiful pale gold and white markings around his eyes, like those tabby eye markings, just very pronounced.
I LOVE Jumbletwunk so much. He doesn’t mean to do the bad things he does! He means well! He’s beautiful! Love him!!!
I don’t think death by Jumbletwunk was permanent, though, because Tugger showed back up in a later sequence trying to seduce Victoria again, and she kinda gave him the sauce for being too nasty. She just, like, punched him. But this version of Victoria was also working for Macavity and was trying to get to the Heavyside Layer to exorcise all the ghost cats up there back to earth to make a cat ghost army, even though that is not how the Heavyside Layer canonically works (nobody actually stays there, they get reborn).
I had no further Jumbletwunk dreams last night and I am devastated.
No! I would like it to be, but it’s fine if he gets around. That’s just what he does, besides steal your bones. If any of y'all have a Jumbletwunk dream, I insist that you share it with me at once!
You understand him, andd my subconscious, PERFECTLY. I like you.
I love you all, you’re brilliant, you made me laugh so very hard.
Bless you all, and bless poor Jumbletwunk, with his hapless dumbass energy and bag of burgled bones….
Here I thought he was burgling people’s skeletons after they died and had a cool palace-lair decorated with like fifty years’ worth of the bones of chosen-to-be-reborn Jellicles plus a bunch he’s just grave-robbed the old-fashioned way.
I suppose technically it still works.
I am picturing the deboned Jellicles being sort of like that prehistoric skunk-badger animal from Ice Age Continental Drift who would run up the flagpole and act as the pirate flag … just sort of ambulatory floppy cloaks. This is reasonable because cats’ natural flexibility is the next best thing to being boneless so they are more used to it than most other animals.
(I meant did the bone you would give him to show up have to be your own, because many of us collect the things and that’s cheaper than deboning yourself. I mean, I’m using all of mine at the moment but I have access to some excellent alternatives if he’s so inclined.)
Because of your excellent suggestions, I have been thinking about Jumbletwunk a lot, and he has evolved significantly in my mind.
He now has a whole character arc.
The tale of his youth as a hapless young singleton kitten whose mother was selected to go to the Heaviside Layer before he was able to fully care for himself.
The story of his troubled and sometimes violent adolescence with Macavity, a simultaneous father figure and subject of romantic yearning, who only kept him around because of his terrifying power to reduce to bones any Jellicle whose third name he knew.
The drama of his adulthood escape from the gang and disillusionment as he realizes that, while magic is obviously real, all the Heaviside ritual offers is death and a deep layer of bones atop an abandoned hotel.
The legend of his maturity as a kind of underworld figure crowned in knucklebones and pop can pull tabs who has reclaimed the Heaviside bones, restored their names, and can speak with and animate them at will, and who tries to spread word of the truth from atop his throne of ribs and skulls and femurs.
He is a rival to both Old Deuteronomy and Macavity, and though he yearns to be part of the proud and fey Jellicle society again, he can no longer stomach its comforting lies or its constant competition for a hollow prize.
Whether you ask for a word with a loved one who has stopped their dancing, seek the answer to the question that burns in you unasked, or crave a night in his arms, the cost to enter his realm and beg a favor is a single feline bone.
Will you offer him one you stole? The bone of an enemy? Of a friend? Or will you offer one of your own, and a single letter of your tail name that he might dance it out of you? Will your sacrifice be payment enough?
What secrets gleam within his moonlit eyes?
I could write CATS 2019 fanfiction with a badass transgender bisexual cat necromancer OC and unnecessarily edgy headcanons is what I’m saying. I am very sorely tempted.
Jumbletwunk the Necromancer patters from his lair
And pitters down the rainswept streets as if without a care
His tabby markings golden in the halo of the lamps
And his pelt forever-fluffed despite the snowflakes and the damps
And his eyes are ever-glowing—he has got the fiercest stares
And, oh, Heaven help you, kitten, should he catch you unawares!
He has got the sweetest purr, my kit, a rumble through your heart
Like the purr your mother gave you, ere you ever walked apart
And his grace can top Mistopheles’ and match Rum-Tum’s hauteur
He sings in seven octaves and his voice is rich and pure
At pranks he is the very best; at mischief he’s the worst
And they say that even Bustopher saluted him once first
He mystifies Macavity, and nobody does that
And yet he does, and even the most grand and wisest cat
Old Deuteronomy of years untold and countless wives
Whose age is yet unhindered by a limit to his lives
Cannot match Jumbletwunk for power, nor does he alone
Keep access to the Heaviside Layer truly quite his own
For Jumbletwunk can there ascend by art and will and whim
And the Old Cat says who goes, but as for who comes back? It’s him
It’s Jumbletwunk who answers that, with arts arcane and odd
A young and restless dandy, a disaster of a god
But he it is that minds the gate, and he that reads the scroll
And he that gives commands unto the bone and ghost and soul
And if you’re living or you’re dead, it makes no difference there
For bones of those yet living help to decorate his lair
And if you’re grieving, desperate or lonely or bewitched
By his golden tabby-markings or the way his tail is twitched
You might follow him back to his den of bones and ghosts and song
And might pay the price to enter—in itself, it isn’t wrong
But it’s costly, in its way—a bone for him—one from a cat
Be it pilfered, stolen, scavenged—if you’re wise, leave it at that
But his gift is more than singing ghosts back down from Heaviside
And he’ll sing a bone out from your tail and tweak it through your hide
And to let him work this magic, a mere letter of your Name
Seems not a heavy price—it’s yours, and secret all the same
And many is the Jellicle who carries one bone less
And the memory of dancing with the dead, or maybe, yes,
With Jumbletwunk himself, who, mind you, dances very well
But only dances with you if you’ve got a bone to sell
And there’s older cats who plead their case at midnight at the ball
Who’ve no bones left within their tail, and Jumble has them all
And they’ve danced their nights with dead cats til the real world fades away
And it’s only thoughts of Heaviside that makes their ball-songs gay
But only one each year can have that blessing for their own
And others wait, and pine, and find for Jumbletwunk a bone
And in his lair they dance again, with loved ones gone beyond
And leading at the dance is Jumble, eyes aglow and fond
For by that time within his head, his heart, his eyes afire
There dwells more than a letter, but one’s secret name entire!
And bone by bone the dead arise, and creep up to his hall
“She won’t miss this,” “he won’t miss that, he’s dead!” excuses, all
And maybe they won’t miss it, but a skeleton, when whole
Can be addressed, and eyesockets are windows to the soul
And even up in Heaviside the cats will heed the call
The promise of a song and dance; the Necromancer’s hall
Will fill itself with music and with souls and for a time
The party is exquisite, and the company sublime
The skeletons will dance and play; the souls will talk and sing
And you’ll find Jumbletwunk’s the cat who’ll give you anything
But anything has got a price, and with the bones you’ve got
Less than a year of nights you’ll buy, and oh, life has a lot
So be you careful, kitten, when a too-sleek form slinks by
You’d be better served to wait, and meet us Heavenside, up high.

















