Luckily for cat lovers and comics readers everywhere, Georgia Dunn quit her day job in banking about seven years ago to focus on her art. As she worked at home on watercolor illustrations for educational magazines and independent publications, she watched the antics of her three cats and tweeted their shenanigans out to her friends.

She turned those tweets of her cats knocking down shelves, eating house plants and sitting on warm pizza boxes into a website, which then became a comic strip called “Breaking Cat News.” Lupin serves as the anchor and Elvis and Puck are reporters in the field, as they broadcast what the Man and the Woman in the house are up to.

The strip was picked up for online distribution by GoComics and is now syndicated to newspapers by Andrews McMeel Syndication. It will debut Monday in about 100 publications, including The Day. In The Day, it will replace two strips about dogs, "Pooch Cafe" Monday through Saturday and "Red and Rover" on Sunday.

Dunn lives in Seattle, Wash., but grew up in Carolina, Rhode Island, and graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 2004. She fondly remembers roaming the woods and shoreline of Rhode Island and coloring in a booth at BeeBee Dairy on Friday nights as she and her mom ordered hot dogs and sodas. She loved reading “Garfield” and “Calvin & Hobbes” and wrote her first comic in first grade. She borrowed from the “Marmalade the Cat” series by Cindy Wilson about a tabby cat who lived on a farm. But Dunn put her own spin on Marmalade, who became “your typical cowboy doctor millionaire space warrior spy, defending the barn and all life as we know it from alien dogs.”

We caught up with her recently by email and asked her a few questions about the strip and her inspirations. 

Q. You hit on several universal truths about cats that many will recognize: cats puke, cats like to sit on computer keyboards, and cats wake up early and want everyone else in the house to be up with them. Are you afraid you’re going to run out of ideas?

Dunn: Cats are always up to something, and thankfully the cats in my life provide constant inspiration. However — I'm a worrier and a planner, and so I keep a notebook with ideas for headlines, and I try to add to it all the time. Constant creative vigilance! Ha! Also, a friend of mine gave me some terrific advice when the comic began, which was basically, "If you make the comic about the characters and their interactions, you'll never run out of material." It's been a good compass. I try to split the comic between universal cat stories — stuff all cats do — and stories that are personal to these particular cats and their world. It's worked so far!

Q. Do you consider yourself a cat lady?

Dunn: Absolutely. I was raised around cats, and I've always adored them. Meeting so many other cat people through the comic has been a great, unexpected plus since this has all begun!

Q. Are there any cat antics you just can’t include in your comic? If so, spill.

Dunn: Haha! Sometimes a cat in my life does something that seems unbelievable, and so even though it's real, it might be a hard sell. Our cat Elvis went through a phase where he guarded our stacks of pancakes while we were making breakfast, for example. We don't know if it was the smell, the warmth, or whatever, but he would always show up and stand guard. I think people would think I was cracking up if I included that, haha! … But maybe one day. And our cat Lupin is AMAZING at breaking lamps/shattering light bulbs. People would accuse me of exaggeration. If there was a light bulb smashing Olympics, Lupin would take home the gold every four years.

Q. The drawings and watercolors really add to the cats’ characters. Do you consider yourself an artist first and then a comic writer, or the other way around?

Dunn: Thank you! I went to college for art with a focus in printmaking and illustrating, and I think I bring that with me when I write. Over the past few years, readers online have told me sometimes the comic feels a bit like a storybook, and I take that as a great compliment.

Q. What does BCN, as some of your fans call “Breaking Cat News,” offer someone who doesn’t like cats?

Dunn: I'm told I owe much of my syndication and newspaper development deal to the fact that the president of my syndicate is not a cat person — and found BCN very funny. The reasoning went that if even someone who is not wild about cats could enjoy cat news, maybe there was something bigger there for everyone. (I like to hope this is solid reasoning!) A lot of readers tell me they were all out against cats before the strip, and I'm proud to say we've had a few folks tell us they adopted cats after becoming fans! So ... side effects could include cats? Some readers are still staunchly not cat folks, though. I think there is enough irksome cat behavior in there for them, too!

Q. What do you think of dogs?

Dunn: I know the Man (my husband Ryan) wishes I was more fond of dogs than I am. I do like dogs! However, more like specific dogs I meet, vs. wanting to have one myself. Ryan hopes to one day rescue a basset hound. He had one as a child, and she left a basset hound-shaped hole in his heart. We will see. Dogs are represented later in the strip! There is a canine correspondent, who is based on my friend Amy's dog Trevor, the beloved mascot of Hopkinton's "Forbes Flowers." I like Trevor immensely. If I could have 10 Trevors, I'd probably open my doors tomorrow. He is a great dog, and later on in the strip, he's a really fun addition to the cast. He's met with suspicion from some cat characters, and acceptance from others. Currently in the web strips, that was still ongoing and unresolved — and, so, will the cats ever come to trust Trevor? That's something we'll all find out together down the road!

Q. Do you have any other pets?

Dunn: We don't at this time, but we've had pet rodents, and we hope to have pet rodents again in the future, when we're settled into a house of our own and our kids are older. Our son would really like an aquarium, too, so there is a possibility of a fish correspondent in the future, Ha!