In a landmark display of canine-feline solidarity, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog has lashed out at professed kitty-hater Clay Aiken in a new ad campaign for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The print ad shows Triumph with a band-aid over his recently neutered doggy-bits and a post-surgery collar, and reads, “Get Neutered: It didn’t hurt Clay Aiken.”
Though the barb was Triumph’s own, PETA went along thanks in part to comments that Aiken made in a recent Rolling Stone article. “I think cats are Satan,” Aiken said. “There’s nothing worse to me than a house cat. When I was about sixteen, I had a kitten and ran over it. Seeing that cat die, I actually think that its spirit has haunted me. I wasn’t afraid of cats before. But now they scare me to death.”
“It’s a stupid statement,” says PETA Vice President Dan Matthews. “We get calls every week from people who throw kittens on barbecues because it’s funny. Or people who light cats on fire, or people who drag cats from cars. It’s so irresponsible that we wrote him after that interview came out and he never got back to us. So we thought, you know, fair game, let’s go for it.”
According to PETA, with animal shelters overflowing, neutering and spaying cats and dogs saves shelter-workers from having to put animals to death when suitable homes cannot be found. Because Triumph’s new album, Come Poop With Me, is full of jokes about losing his private parts, he seemed a perfect spokes-puppet.
“There’s already been a huge response,” says Matthews, whose office has been bombarded by calls from angry Clay-mates. “When we explain why, they understand it a bit better. In the end it’s just funny. If you look at the awful thing Clay said about cats, our ad in response is a pretty lighthearted way to even up the score.”
A spokesman for Clay Aiken had not comment on the ad.