After 34 years Cathy Guisewite is ending her largely autobiographical newspaper comic strip Cathy, which chronicled the frustrations of the modern female from the rigors of dating to the temptations of ice cream and the annual ego-leveling ritual of choosing a new bathing suit.  The final installment of the Cathy strip will appear on October 3rd.

At the height of its popularity the Cathy strip was carried by over 1,400 papers, but that number has been cut in half in recent years as the number of newspapers has shrunk and the remaining papers have trimmed expenses often at the expense of the funny pages.  Andrews McMeel published over 30 collections of Cathy cartoons.  Guisewite won a Reuben Award for Cathy in 1993 and an Emmy for an animated Cathy TV special.