[1] Bill also appeared in some of Breathed's illustrated children's books, including A Wish for Wings That Work, which was also made into an animated Christmas television special, and also on greeting cards and other sundry merchandise.

Bill was originally capable of speaking English reasonably well, but storylines featuring an automobile accident, repeated periods of drug abuse, and brain surgery have since seen the character transition to a nearly mentally handicapped mute state in which the cat's most frequent spoken sentiments are "Ack!"

On September 30, 1983, Bill was driving his beloved primer-grey 1969 Pontiac GTO on Highway 58 outside of Tehachapi, California, traveling eastbound on the way to Gallup, New Mexico to give a motivational speech to the local Moose Lodge.

According to multiple eyewitness accounts, the GTO was traveling the wrong way down the highway, driving erratically at a high rate of speed when it hit a wild mule, became airborne and ultimately crashed into a Saguaro cactus, impaling Bill on the Hurst shifter and killing him instantly.

Bill spent time as an unintelligible rock star who sang and played "electric tongue" with his heavy metal band Deathtöngue, later Billy and the Boingers.

Although Bill was the front-cat of Billy and the Boingers, the band excluded him and disbanded when it became public that he spent his nights staying up late, reading the Bible with a nun.

Bill the Cat twice won the National Radical Meadow Party's nomination to run for President of the United States, in 1984 and 1988, despite being dead in the first instance, and despite having a vocabulary that mainly consisted of "Aack!"

He lost twice, once because of coughing up a fur ball on Connie Chung, not to mention several scandals, including an unauthorized biography written by Albert Goldman exposing him as a vegesexual, and a Bartles & Jaymes junkie.

In spite of this political affiliation, he embarked on a torrid love affair with Jeane Kirkpatrick, then was later used as the primary source for an illegal cat-sweat-based baldness cure.

Given Bill's ostensible death and revival by tongue cloning (à la Sleeper), his carcass was suggested as the source of the recent BSE (aka "Mad Cow Disease") epidemic.