Credit cards for cats

By John Freeman on 5 January 2007

This surely has to be a theme for a new Really Heavy Greatcoat, when I get time to write some. Reuters reports today that an Australian bank has been forced to apologize after it issued a credit card to a cat after its owner decided to test the bank’s identity security system.

The Bank of Queensland issued a credit card to Messiah the cat when his owner Katherine Campbell applied for a secondary card on her account under its name.

Before Messiah could go mad online and buy enough Go Cat to keep it happy for the next couple of decades (which is what my cat would have done) the bank said the cat’s card had been canceled. Shame.

“We apologize as this should not have happened,” it said in a statement (probably issued by someone called Rover).

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.