Chris Kelly may have adopted his cat, Oomi, from a shelter, but she reminds him of British aristocracy.
The 6-year-old, black-and-gray tabby has been reserved and snobbish since Kelly, a 49-year-old writer based in Los Angeles, first brought her home from the shelter five-and-a-half years ago. “She does what she wants to do,” he says.
Despite Oomi’s aloofness, Kelly has gone to great lengths to please the cat, fretting about the temperature of the milk he serves her or the fluffiness of her beds.
“Did she want warm, comforting milk, or did she want cold milk?” Kelly says of nursing her as a kitten. “She turned her nose up at both.”
One day this past summer, it occurred to him: She’s just like Lady Mary Crawley from the hit British costume drama “Downton Abbey,” which returns Stateside on PBS on Jan. 5.
And who was he?
“I’m Carson. I’m the butler,” he says. “Carson the butler loves Lady Mary, and she’s not very lovable!”
The revelation inspired Kelly, an Emmy Award-winning television scribe who currently writes for HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher,” to conceive of a book parody of “Downton Abbey,” substituting cats for the British aristocrats. “Downton Tabby” was quickly set in motion.
“It was the easiest book I’ve ever pitched,” says Kelly. “There’s something about cats and there’s something about English people. There’s this sense of reserve.”
The book, which hit shelves last week, humorously uses computer-generated illustrations of cats outfitted like the characters of “Downton Abbey” and divides them into “Upstairs Cats” and “Downstairs Cats.”
“Don’t worry,” says Kelly, chuckling. “No actual cats were dressed in clothes.”
His fictional cats live in the “Yorkshire home of Earl and Catness Grimalkin.” The most laughable character is the shriveled-up old “Dowager Catness Vibrissa.”
“No ones looks more like a hairless cat than Maggie Smith,” jokes Kelly, poking fun at the actress who plays Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham.
The writer, who shares a Malibu house with his wife, two teenage daughters, golden retriever Pete and guinea pig Skittles — in addition to Oomi — originally considered featuring other animals in the book. Ultimately, he decided to keep it to cats.
“A thought I discarded was that the servants would be dogs,” says Kelly. “[But] the more you know the show, the characters resembled cats, and it would be a more complete world if they were all cats.”
Memorable scenes from “Downton Abbey” are comically recreated in the book.
In one spread, Korat Clowder, Countess Cora’s cat counterpart, sits in a shiny claw-foot tub and lathers up with soap suds while, off to the side, Mrs. O’Celot devilishly lays down mousetraps on the tiled floor — just as O’Brien laid soap on the bathroom floor to trip up the countess.
The book also depicts the aftermath of Lady Mary’s infamous, ill-fated dalliance with a handsome Turkish diplomat, who died in the throes of passion.
A pajama-clad Lady Minxy Clowder and her downstairs-cat servant are seen surreptitiously dragging a cat in mouse-covered boxers out of her bedroom.
While Oomi hasn’t had any bedroom scandals, Kelly has gone to great lengths to see that she sleeps well.
“There were a series of cat beds that were all ignored, all different sizes and styles,” he recalls.
Still, Kelly says his cat is his favorite pet in the house, and Skittles and Pete know their place in the pecking order.
“Oomi’s the lady of the house,” he says. “They understand.”
