Webcomic / Nine to Nine

College Catastrophe was a lighthearted Slice of Life comedic Furry Webcomic about college students, inspired by The Class Menagerie and The Suburban Jungle. It started with a single freshman enrolling to college and gradually expanded the main cast to seven. Unlike its inspirations, it neither plunged into the depths of angst and exploration of alternative sexuality, nor there was any Carnivore Confusion. There was no overarching plot, just day-to-day antics. The comic was active in 2000-02, slowed to a halt in 2003, published a total of 5 strips in 2004-2008, but picked up the pace again in 2009. In 2010-11 the author was mainly redrawing and reposting old strips, focusing on his other comic, Swords and Sausages. He decided to end the comic with graduation in 2013, when he ran out of gags accumulated from his time in university.

Nine to Nine continues a year after the graduation. The cast now have day jobs, which happened to bring them all to the same city. They are joined by an artist tigress of the same age. Besides the characters no longer being students and having more money, but less free time, little has changed. If you don't count color and occasional censored nudity.

The main characters are:

• Jan (full name Jan Lion, a lion) — computer science major, art minor, then a programmer. Author Avatar. Often Butt-Monkey.
• Wolf (full name Wolfram Wolf, a wolf) — physics major and computer science minor, then physics postgraduate student. Jan's former roommate in college. Aspires to be a Gadgeteer Genius and a Mad Scientist, but isn't very good at it.
• Phil (a horse) — music minor, then a gym coach and music teacher. Jan's and Wolf's next door neighbor in the dorm. Straight Man and Big Guy.
• Amber (a vixen) — major unknown, later became a stewardess. Jan's girlfriend currently living with him.
• Shiera (a lioness) — Japanese major, then an elementary school teacher. Phil's girlfriend living with him.
• Tor (a tiger) — fine arts major, currently makes a fantasy web video series.
• Andrea (an arctic vixen) — Tor's partner in filmmaking and girlfriend. Cloudcuckoolander and Shrinking Violet.
• Jessie (a tigress) — an artist and a biker with a crush on Tor. Unfortunately, Andrea doesn't want to share.

Contains examples of:

• Acquainted with Emergency Services: Wolf's dorm room is blacklisted by housing services. He is deemed "problematic" for giving repairmen too much extra work.
• Alien Geometries: Right bicicle pedal is to the left of the front wheel, Wolf's leg goes through the wheel. May be an artist's mistake, but with Wolf learning bicicle stunts anything is possible.
• The Alleged House: The affordable house Tor and Andrea bought. The place is picturesque, but the building is falling apart, yet is too sturdy to quickly demolish. Jan describes it in the style of Very False Advertising he encountered earlier:
  Cozy lake-front cabin, hardwood floors, 1 bed 1 bath, creeper damaged.

• Alliterative Family: Wolf(ram) Wolf and his father and sisters all have first names that start with Wolf. Given that mom Caitlyn is apparently part coyote on her father's side one presumes her maiden name was Caitlyn Coyote, or possibly Coywolf.
• Alliterative Title
• All Just a Dream: Professor Durham and Jessie got off Wolf's back. Phil and Jan brought free food. Too god to be true. Must be fever dreams.
• All Men Are Perverts: Just one, but he's a literal pig. Gave Jessie the job despite her only qualification being "hot".
• Atrocious Alias: Superfloofy-rawr-rawr and Sexyleathertigress69. Neither Jan nor Jessie expected anybody to ever say their usernames aloud.
• Audience Participation: The artist occasionally posts a strip without speech bubbles, lets readers fill in the text and then posts the best ones.
  • Wolf is scared. Jan and Phil drag him somewhere and then watch in smug amusement.
  • Tor and Andrea need to redub an embarrassing fragment.
  • Jan asks, Wolf replies, Jan asks apprehensiely, Wolf replies smugly.
  • Steph is gnawing on Wolf's Halloween costume, Wolf screams, others comment.
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal
• Batman Gambit: Wolf's sexist comment provoked Shiera into chasing him with a sledgehammer and inflicting a lot of damage to the walls. Just as Planned. Not enough, though.
• Big Ball of Violence: When Andrea is fed up with Jessie's sexual pranks.
• Big Eater: Jan. He always ate most of the turkey at family Thanksgivings. He also was the first student to finish his meal plan in the university.
• Blessed with Suck: The vixens discover a superpower to loose clothes when nose-booped.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Jessie spent years in the lobby waiting to enter the strip.
• Brick Joke:
  • Wolf made a "surprise" that shot Jan and Amber off the couch 3 months later. Either Phil did not warn them, or they disregarded it.
  • Lika shows up some five strips after being thrown out with the rest of the girls. She was with them the whole time.
• Bungling Inventor: Wolf. He's incredibly smart and knows his way around tech... but should he actually apply his intellect, the results are invariably destructive in some manner.
• Call-Back:
  • In a misguided attempt to cut down costs the dorm installed automatic light shut-off in its toilets. Jan had to feel for toilet paper in the dark. 3 years later he brought a flaslight.
  • Wolf recalls the bed falling apart under Jan and Amber14 years after fixing it.
  • Phil has cymbals. Must remember. Phil has cymbals.
  • Phil learned to use the ejection mechanism wolf built in the couch. To wake hungover girls after a wild party.
• Cats Are Mean: Only Jessie. Like scaring Andrea here.
• Continuity Nod: Here Jan and Wolf recall a wall and a bed they fixed a decade earlier
• Clock Discrepancy: Jan forgot the state of Indiana did not have Daylight Savings Time. And changed his clock. And was late for exam.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Wolf has desensitized his college friends and family to explosions. With his father actually taking a nap during the Tetris-Con pyrotechnics.
• Crazy-Prepared: Wolf has a first aid kit for 75 kinds of injuries. And a waiver in case treatment goes wrong.
• Creator's Show Within a Show: Tor and Andrea create Swords and Sausages as a web video series.
• A Day in the Limelight: A day in the life of... strips. All 8 main characters plus Jessie's supervisor Cheryl.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Jessie was changing clothes in a rarely used stairwell. A group of runners suddenly appeared, causing a pile-up and a lot of improbable damage and injuries.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Wolf not only has a Species Surname, his first name is "Wolfram" as well, making him a wolf named Wolf twice over. While his dad is named Wolfred and his sisters are Wolfina and Wolfelicia (they prefer Fina and Steph), but his mom is named Caitlyn.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Mainly, Amber to Jan.
• Dunce Cap: Amber has to wear one made out of a traffic cone after beating Jan.
• Expy: Early on, Jan and Wolf bear some semblance with Tony and Kevin from The Class Menagerie.
• Furniture Assembly Gag: Starting here. Wolf eventually manages to assemble it and even makes it shoot cushions, calling it "Transformers for adults". Then he made a surprise for when oscillations of Jan and Amber resonate with the couch.
• Fancy Toilet Awe: Tor installs a bidet on the toilet in his and Andrea's new house, unfortunately Andrea discovers that their tap water is ice-cold when she tests it out.
• Furry Reminder: The comic will occasionally bring up various Animal Stereotypes to comedic effect:
  • Canines are reputed to drink from toilets.
  • Dogs chase cats up trees. Even if it's a small wolf and a bigger lion.
  • Predators instinctively hunt fast moving objects. Even if it's a wind-up hare.
  • Flea collars are a common, if optional, accessory.
  • Wolf howls at the moon. As part of "Dissonant Howlers Anonymous".
  • Horses can sleep standing. And if the horse is a tired freshman, that comes closer to narcolepsy.
  • Strings for fiddle bows are made of horsehair. Though, Phil objects using his tail for that.
  • Foxes pounce on their prey. Or boyfriends.
  • Lion's mane doesn't agree with shirt collar.
  • Horses like carrots and running.
  • Canines wag their tails, when they see something nice.
  • Catnip intoxicates cats.
  • Cats chase laser pointers. Apparently, so do foxes, too.
  • Canine snarling and biting enemy's clothes.
  • Coyotes have a reputation.
  • Black cats are bad luck. Or so everybody thinks.
  • Cats like boxes. Which later leads to creation of feline-only "nap boxes".
  • Cats enjoy climbing curtains.
• Girls Have Cooties: Wolf, despite being a grown adult, has a strange phobia of girls with cooties. His sisters might have something to do with it.
• Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter: Hexameter, even. Andrea translating squeaks of a rubber mouse, that psychoanalyzes Jessie. Earlier Jessie scared Andrea so much, she couldn't speak coherently and only squeaked herself. Then other girls join in.
• Grid Puzzle: When Steph transforms into her werewolf form, she not only gets bigger and shaggier but also a thirst for solving Sudoku puzzles. Unfortunately, she also becomes dumber, which makes the aforementioned task harder.
• I Am Not Shazam: In-Universe. A real life example that uninformed managers call professional users of Adobe Illustrator "illustrators" when they mean "graphic designers". Jessie can do both, but she isn't good enough at graphic design.
• Idea Bulb: Invoked, when Wolf gets a questionable idea:
  THIS WAS A WARNING LIGHT, NOT AN IDEA BULB. RETREAT TO A SAFE AREA NOW!
• Innocent Bystander: Lika, the cat thrown out of bar together with partying girls. She joins them in their subsequent antics.
• Intelligible Unintelligible:
  • Andrea often just makes nervous "squeak" sounds thanks to trauma inflicted by Jessie, but others often act like she's saying something intelligible. At one point she has a full conversation with another arctic fox in squeaks, suggesting it might actually be a language.
  • Subverted when Steph orders pizza in werewolf form, the pizzeria has a standing order for if unintelligible noises come from their number.
• Interspecies Romance: Everybody. By the start of Nine to Nine Jan is with Amber (lion-fox), Phil is with Shiera (horse-lion), Tor is with Andrea (tiger-arctic fox). Jessie is frustrated and horny and jumps at every opportunity regardless of species. Wolf turns out to be a quarter-coyote.
• The Jinx: Much of the humor is generated by various home appliances — from doors and beds to clocks and microwaves — not working right. Jan is the primary target. Even though, being a programmer, he's neither a Walking Techbane, nor Hopeless with Tech.
• Motivation on a Stick: Jan, cookies and homework.
• No Can Opener: Phil tried dropping the can from the 4th floor window. It didn't work.
• No OSHA Compliance/Too Dumb to Live: Things Wolf does for fun.
  • As if melting copper on a dining table and splashing the metal around wasn't bad enough, he then tries to clean it off with explosives.
  • Literally "having a blast" disregarding every cooking recipe, every lab safety regulation and common sense. For him it was Saturday.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Wolf's sister Steph undergoes a transformation on full moon nights with lunar eclipse. She becomes bigger, heavier, dumber, unable to speak, hungry, and with an obsessive-compulsive passion to solve sudoku puzzles. The rest of her family is unaffected. During the eclipse she temporarily turns back to normal. Her bite does not infect the delivery people.
• Perpetual Poverty: More or less a running gag in College Catastrophe, somewhat downplayed in the sequel. Students never have enough money for textbooks and supplies, prices in the university town are unreasonable, and everybody's looking for ways to get cheap or free food.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Andrea calls Jessie out on her attempts to insert herself between her and Tor, with help from a rubber mouse.
• Shout-Out:
  • Professor Durham looks a lot like Tony Durham from The Class Menagerie. Although, Tony wanted to be a medic, not teach math/physics/electronics/whatever else Wolf fails.
  • April Fools crossover with Chivalry And Knavery.
  • Tor and Andrea were having fun with sleeping Jessie. Her reaction refers to many "scenes of indescribable carnage" in The Suburban Jungle.
  • Girls painted themselves as Krystal Fox and Ōkami Amaterasu while Phil is Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash.
  • A wardrobe opens to Swords and Sausages just like in The Chronicles of Narnia.
  • Amber breaking attic floor to "Ceiling Cat" memes.
  • Acorns mean Scrat. Who, finally, manages to demolish the house.
  • The Tetri-Con storyline to furry conventions.
  • The webcomics Slack Wyrm, The Suburban Jungle: Rough Housing, Faux Pas, Freefall, The Whiteboard and Curtailed are selling their wares at that convention.
  • The non-human cast of The Fuzzy Princess visiting an IDEA store.
  • Russel and Reg from Transmission deliver pizzas.
  • Shiera becomes co-workers with Lauren Ipsum.
• Show Within a Show: Swords and Sausages is a series of web videos Tor and Andrea are filming. Although, the comic is more like a perfect version of what they wish to make rather than what their budget allows.
• Shrunk in the Wash: Recurring theme in early strips of College Catastrophe. Freshmen don't have that many clothes, and losing them to a dryer is never pleasant. Then, there's a storyline, when Jan got stuck in a suddenly small T-shirt. Thick lion's mane didn't help.
• Slice of Life
• Species Surname: Common, as evidenced from this partial list of Wolf's classmates. Later Jan and Phil discuss that if an elementary school teacher Shiera (lioness) marries Phil Horse, it would be confusing for kids to call her "Mrs. Horse".
• Squashed Flat: Jan by Phil trying to open a stuck door.
• Stalker with a Crush: Jessie to Andrea, then to Wolf.
• Tattoo Sharpie: Drunk girls found some fur dye in a bargain bin and applied some of it to themselves and sleeping Phil. It proved much harder to wash off than expected.
• Thanksgiving Episode: Subverting the meaning of the holiday. Wolf's parents are thankful Wolf is away. And so are Jan's.
• Tropaholics Anonymous: "Dissonant Howlers Anonymous".
• Two Scenes, One Dialogue: Wolf sisters in two different situations in two different places are thinking the same words. Even better, both end up bested by their parents.
• Very False Advertising: Apartment hunting.
  • Including ceilings and walls in "surface area".
    Jan: Should I divide by 6?
  • Humorously invoked for the old house Tor and Andrea bought.
    Jan: Cozy lake-front cabin, hardwood floors, 1 bed 1 bath, creeper damaged.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The "Recap" of Nine to Nine serves as one to College Catastrophe.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Like in many college webcomics of late 1990s-early 2000s Jan visits his parents' home and finds his old room no longer suitable for life. In his case, it's used as a junk storeroom.

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