This page is for a show... it got cancelled before it could start, and it really bums me out...
In the planet Katatonia, a fun-loving cat robot named Katbot is sent to an American family in Earth, as part of her schooling, to study tween culture. By using her Hypno-façade, she disguises herself as Katerina Botenski, a foreign exchange student from a small Eastern European country. The only person who knows her secret is her best friend, Junior Lebore, the son of her host family, though his little sister June is suspicious. Her mission upsets her cat "boyfriend" Eddie, who was hoping for her to stay. The show would've also had a Mad Scientist-type villain called Marcella Curd, who also knows of Katbot's secret and tries to expose her.
Katbot is a 2001 web cartoon created by Angela Martini of Funny Garbage fame. In September 2005, the series was to get an Animated Adaptation on Disney Channel, but it was cancelled. Martini later went on record to say that when they were making the show, she got pushed out of her own creation, and was pleased to hear that it got cancelled. The premise of the web series is somewhat different. Katbot is an adult rather than school-aged, her personality is more jaded and cynical, she's sent to Earth as part of her job, her mission is to study adolescent aggression levels in teenage American humans, and she's attending high school rather than junior high. For reference, contemporary news articles compared this version to Daria.
Barely any footage of either the web cartoon or the TV cartoon have (re)surfaced, with only a few scraps from both still remaining.
Katbot provides examples of:
- Canon Immigrant: Marcella was invented for the Disney series.
- Deadpan Snarker: Katbot in the webseries.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Would've likely been affected by this with all the drastic changes it was stated Disney was making. For example, in the pilot, Junior Lebore is taken away for extensive research, but in the show it seems he still gets to stay with his family.
- Expository Theme Tune: There are two versions of the theme for the web cartoon, both with basically the same lyrics that detail how Katbot was sent to Earth, which upsets her boyfriend.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Clothing appears to be optional for Katbot's species. Eddie, for example, wears an unzipped jacket and nothing else.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Until she received her mission, Katbot worked in the office of the Katatonia Security Agency as "Paper Pusher KB-1000-679-067", which, from what we see, involved... sitting at a desk and pushing papers.
- World of Funny Animals: The planet of Katatonia is full of robot cats that act exactly as humans would.
