Cathy Guisewite photo

Cathy Guisewite

Cathy Lee Guisewite is the cartoonist who created the comic strip Cathy in 1976. Her main cartoon character (Cathy) is a career woman faced with the issues and challenges of work, relationships, her mother and food, or as Guisewite herself put it in one of her strips, "The four basic guilt groups."

Guisewite was born in Dayton, Ohio and grew up in Midland, Michigan. She attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority. Guisewite received her bachelor's degree in English in 1972. She also holds seven honorary degrees.

In 1993, Guisewite received the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society. In 1987, she received an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program for the TV special Cathy, which aired on CBS. Guisewite was a frequent guest in the latter years of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Guisewite and her husband Chris Wilkinson reside in Los Angeles. She has a daughter and a stepson.


“My mother had always taught me to write about my feelings instead of sharing really personal things with others, so I spent many evenings writing in my diary, eating everything in the kitchen and waiting for Mr. Wrong to call.”
Cathy Guisewite
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“When you eat a carrot that is nothing but carrot it zooms through your system as a carrot. When you eat a piece of mass-produced carrot cake that contains 32 ingredients, your metabolism screeches to a halt while your body tries to figure out what all those things are that you just swallowed, and what it is supposed to do with them. Therefore, the problem isn’t “fat”, its piles of excess ingredients your body’s stacked on shelves and vowed to sort out later.”
Cathy Guisewite
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“Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens.”
Cathy Guisewite
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“Food, love, career, and mothers, the four major guilt groups.”
Cathy Guisewite
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