In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses Mumm-Ra the Ever Living…
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. Let us now turn our attention to the chief antagonist all of the ThunderCats cartoon franchise, mum Raw. Between and nine eighty nine, the original ThunderCats show ran for a hundred and thirty episodes, chronicling the struggle between the titular ThunderCats and the undying mummified sorcerer mum Raw for control of the planet New Thunder Era. The ThunderCats are, of course, cat people who display the features of various feline species, and our masters of both high technology and martial warfare. Mum Raw is a mummified, desiccated living corpse who serves the ancient spirits of evil from his black pyramid. He must return to his sarcophagus to recharge, but may also transform in a full blown hinge in sequence into the towering muscular warrior dubbed mum Raw the Ever Living, He was quite honestly perfect, a villain almost too awesome for the show he emerged from. Yet, even as a child, in the back of my mind, I always wondered if mum Ra was a cat or not. The thunder Cats are, of course cat human hybrids, and it's hard to deny that Mumra himself is not essentially all of the same species. We see this in his feline facial features especially. But while each thundercat is patterned after a particular terrestrial feline species, what is mum Ra. For starters, His blue gray skin is reminiscent of the Russian blue cat breed. However, he is hairless, which instantly brings to mind the hairless Sphinx cat breed, which was a nineteen sixties product of selective breeding by humans. Both of these are domestic. Meanwhile, with the ThunderCats, Jaga is part jaguar, Lion Oh is part lion, Pantherro is part panther, Tiger is part tiger, Chitara is cheetah, Willie Cat and Willie Kit are both wild cats, and so forth. Is Mamra alone seemingly linked to domesticated cats To some extent, This might seem counterintuitive, because clearly this is Mamra we're talking about. He is the most dangerous and powerful of them all. Why would he be linked to the common house cat. Well, the domesticated cat is a rather powerful species. We have to admit that while it has not lived alongside humans as long as the loyal dog, they have still lurked, hunted, and slept in our domestic shadows for thousands upon thousands of years. During that time, these cats have spread around the world to every continent except Antarctica, though they have visited, and I am told they did not like it. Domestic cats have proven themselves rather destructive as well. They are voracious predators, driving multiple species to extinction and posing a continuing threat to birds, especially In fact, according to the University of Texas at Austin Biodiversity Center, the numbers are pretty staggering. They write that in the u s alone, free arranging domestic cats kill one point three to four billion birds every year, and they kill six point three to twenty two point three billion mammals annually. Amphibians, reptiles, and insects are also impacted. So, yes, our domestic cats are cute, they're amusing, but they're also destroyers and in this perhaps they fitting likeness for Mum Ra. Now, there is some discussion on to what extent cats may have domesticated themselves in our shadow, and certainly cats do not see to see us as a master's in the same way that dogs too. But it brings me back to the ancient spirits of evil that Mumra serves on the show. They're represented by a bore, a vulture, a crocodile, and an ox, and they might well be thought of as great old ones and extra dimensional monster gods. But if Mumra is a domestic cat, then perhaps we humans are the ancient spirits of evil, the true enemy of the various animal human hybrids that populate the ThunderCats universe. In closing, I should also point out that yes, essentially Mumra is a mummified cat, so he is linked to the actual ancient Egyptian practice of mummifying cats, a practice that in short, had connections both to the cat headed god Bastet, as well as their fascination with an affection for the animals in question. Cats have traveled with us everywhere, so why not into the fee old of reads as well. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.