Name: Neko
Occupation: Unemployed
Age: Old enough to be surly about it
Religion: Solipsist
Favourite food: Fingers
Hobbies: Antagonism, Staring at things, Extreme Napping
One of a litter of five kittens, Neko was adopted by Alice from an animal shelter when he was a kitten.
He's really quite cheerful about how much he Hates Everything. Neko was neutered following the birth of his litter of kittens with Maisy, and has had a grudge with the world ever since. Neko likes confusing and tormenting people because it's fun and easy to do.
Neko's name is derived from two japanese words. It is spelled the same as the English spelling of the japanese word for 'cat' -'Neko,' and pronounced like the japanese word for 'smile' -Niko (nee-ko). The stripe on his tail became a design feature when, in an early sketch in the margin of a notebook, I drew the tail too short and added on a couple of lines on the end to make it longer. His personality is based on my old cat, Garfield, who had been with the family since I was two years old, and died of old age when I was twenty.

Name: Alice Cooper
Occupation: Unemployed
Age: Mid 20s
Religion: Whatever I finds, I keeps
Favourite food: Beer
Hobbies: Rocking out, reading, getting high, bothering the cats

Alice is presumptuous enough to think of herself as Neko's owner. She adopted him when she was in college, despite the on-campus accommodation's strict 'no pets' policy. Fortunately, nobody particularly cared and it never became an issue. Alice lived with Ellen in college, and they decided to move in together after they graduated. They now share a ground-floor apartment with its own door in the building right beside where Jeff and Gar live.
Alice has a BA in History and English Literature, and several tattoos and piercings that can't be shown in a PG-13 comic strip.
Alice is outgoing and plain-spoken, with a 'shit happens' outlook on life. She used to go out with Jeff, but they broke up a couple of years ago. She's dated and/or fucked a couple of guys since then, but nothing particularly serious.

Name: Gar Molloy
Occupation: Office Drone
Age: Older than Alice
Religion: Likes Spinoza's concept of God
Favourite food: Burgers
Hobbies: Writing, drawing, video games, complaining

Gar was a cynical, embittered, angry young man with self-esteem issues who hit 40 at the age of 17. Since then he's had a couple of girlfriends, had his heart broken a couple of times, fallen in love a couple of times, and gotten a dull-but-stable office job. Now in his late 20s metaphysical 50s, Gar has mellowed somewhat and is now merely Grumpy. His eyesight's worse now, but glasses have gotten cheaper. He was originally an insert-author-here character, but I now deliberately write him as his own man.
Gar fell through a grating in the pavement into a bar cellar a while back and lost about eight months worth of memory. During those eight months he went through a bad breakup and a worse rebound relationship, and witnessed several deaths in the road accident that left his friend Ellen in a wheelchair. He's happy enough the memory never came back.
He does a webcomic called Ridiculously Well Armed Space Vixens from Space, which is a sci-fi comedy about a group of sexy alien androids working for a temp agency in Detroit. It's moderately popular, but isn't viewable from our reality yet. Gar has a Master's degree in Modern English Literature, but can't remember writing his thesis.

Name: Jeff Riverside
Occupation: Student / part-time office worker
Age: About as old as Alice
Religion: Latterday Norse
Favourite food: Peanut M&Ms. Meat. Hobbies: Puzzles, video games, exercise, wandering around
A friend of Gar's since their freshman year at Beckett University, Jeff is the Buzz Lightyear to Gar's Woody. They share an apartment in the building next door to Alice's. Mischievous, cheerful, and deeply, deeply weird, Jeff enjoys coming up with pranks and confusing people.
Jeff often thinks with his stomach, and has gone so far as to declare an international holiday dedicated to eating obscene amounts of meat and washing it all down with gravytinis (International Meat Day - May 23rd). He dated Alice for a little over a year, and broke up with her because he didn't love her. Alice didn't really see him or speak to him for a while after that, but they became friends again after the road accident that put Ellen in a wheelchair and Gar in a coma.
Jeff has recently adopted the supervillain persona of McJefferstein (pronounced McJeffersteen, not McJefferstyne, after he found an All-Marshmallow box of Fat Kid's Double Frosted Choco Crunch and Fizz and for some reason decided to eat it. As McJefferstein, he....wanders around doing pranks and confusing people.

Name: Ellen Brickley
Occupation: Freelance Journalist/Costume Designer
Age: Older than Alice, younger than Gar
Religion: Atheist
Favourite food: Breaded fish fillets
Hobbies: Sewing, reading, writing short fiction, drinking

Alice's room-mate and a self-proclaimed bitch. Ellen has been confined to a wheelchair since she got hit by a truck in a road accident which claimed six lives. She got a generous out-of-court settlement and disability benefit, but has become a much meaner drunk than she used to be. She's dealing with it and moving on, though.
Ellen started making hats and outfits for Neko when she was in college, and this has turned into a small home business where she sells designs for pet clothing and creates outfits for the puppets and animals on a locally-recorded childrens show.

Name: Maisy
Occupation: Unemployed
Age: A little older than Neko
Religion: Buddhist
Hobbies: Hunting, hording shinies, bothering Neko

Neko's de facto best friend and the mother of his kittens, Maisy lives with Alice's upstairs neighbour, Sarah. Sarah keeps forgetting to feed her though, so Maisy has become a pragmatic hunter. Maisy is independent, and disapproves of the laziness cats have succumbed to through domestication. She likes having a warm home and being scratched behind the ears though. Maisy had five kittens by Neko before she was neutered: Aya, Muffin, Poe, Puddles, and Keno. All but Keno were adopted into new homes. When Alice decided to keep Keno, Maisy started teaching him some of her philosophies and hunting techniques.