"Cathy", the comic strip about the dating troubles of a woman without a nose, will end its 34-year run on October 3rd. Creator Cathy Guisewite attributed the decision to her "creative biological clock, which is urging me to try something else while I can." Here's a sampling of the reactions, both snarky and not.

• A Bit Dated  The decision to end the strip was a long time coming, writes Carolyn Kellog in The Los Angeles Times. Guisewite's depiction vision of the "chipper, comic-bound  Mary-Tyler-Moore type" was from another era. "Cathy's heavy thighs," Kellog writes, "didn't have the sass of popular books like 'The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing' by Melissa Bank or 'Good in Bed' by Jennifer Weiner, didn't have the glamor of the 'Sex and the City' girls in their Manolo Blahniks. Despite not needing to age, Cathy was starting to feel a bit old."

• Groudbreaking in Its Time  The Frisky's Jessica Wakeman acknowledges the strip was "stereotypical" but credits Guisewite with setting "a precedent in pop culture: the lives of women — especially single career women — were worth exploring." Without "Cathy", Wakeman contends, there would be no "Sex & the City" or even "30 Rock", shows that followed the cartoon's model of  "reflecting the lives of single ladies back at them."

• The Perfect Finale  Josh Fruhlinger of The Comics Curmudgeon pondered how the strip will conclude. Writes Fruhlinger:

Obviously, a long-running strip like Cathy can’t just go away without a big to-do. But with the strip’s formerly chronically single title character now married off, and the October 3 end date too close for her to finally poop out a baby, we have to ask ourselves what the bang of an ending will be. Since Cathy was a pioneer depiction of a working woman, we suggest that she get with the times: heartless layoff, followed by workplace spree killing, concluding with suicide by cop.

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Ray Gustini