Why Billy Corgan And Anderson Cooper Got Into A Feud Over Cats

The Smashing Pumpkins' brooding and moody frontman Billy Corgan is no stranger to online cat fights. The grunge rocker can Twitter rage and then shamefully deletes tweets with the best of the people half his age, as we've seen with his snarls with Courtney Love, Marilyn Manson, and even his own bassist, D'arcy Wretzky. Neither does he shy away from being a complete weirdo, like the time did a commercial for a furniture store to promote his wrestling company, a confusing 30 seconds surreally titled Billy Corgan's Musical Chairs (watch it on YouTube) that is decidedly not rock and roll, but perfectly cheesy enough for pro wrestling. (Billy, we gladly await your angry tweet.)

Yes, any time anyone says anything remotely negative about the oh-so-sensitive little cue ball, he just can't, and he's moved to vent all his endlessly replenished pent-up teenage angst on the person who dared to cast aspersions on his gloomy reputation. So it was no surprise that when CNN's Anderson Cooper had something to say about Corgan's love of cute little kitties, pumpkins had to be smashed, figuratively speaking.

Yes, you're probably thinking, "Wait, Corgan and kittens?" Sure, it sounds incongruous. Exactly how do fuzzy little felines fit into the infinite sadness? Don't ask questions like that unless you want to be mercilessly trolled by a guy who used to be a rock star.

Here's how it all started. Back in 2014, Corgan adopted a pair of black cats that he named Miss Sammi and Mister Thom Cat from his local no-kill shelter in Chicago. Obviously, the shelter's publication, PAWS Chicago Magazine, put him on the cover holding the pair of cute and cuddlies and quoted his post that introduced them to the world: "... they are the best of friends, which is wonderful, but being young, they are into everything, including some things I didn't know you could get into." For some reason, he was surprised when someone had something to say about this comment that sounds much more like a librarian than a rock star.

Corgan has since deleted the tweets, but luckily Pitchfork reported on his feud with Cooper when it ignited. During a segment on Cooper's show where he takes a look at ridiculous news bits, Cooper said that Corgan was perhaps "off his alternative rocker," but speculated that there was something more to the breakdown of the musician's gloomy image. "Maybe he's being ironic, or maybe when the cool rock stars start doing less rock starry things, it kind of makes us face our own mortality," he said.

Ever the sassy teenage girl trapped in an old bald man's body, Corgan fired back: "Sorry to disappoint, but when I'm not raising cain for a great organization like @PAWSchicago, I'm still making REAL music." Burn! Maybe?

Anderson Cooper also had something to say about Corgan's — we'll call it art — but that's apparently not what riled the pumpkin smasher up so much. Cooper said that the album Siamese Dream was "a bit derivative of My Bloody Valentine," and yes, we're as surprised as you are that Anderson Cooper listens to both The Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine enough to allege that one could be derivative of the other. Still, it was the cat comments that got to Corgan.

But trolling the CNN anchor online wasn't enough. Corgan had to defend his love of pussycats in the real world, too. Pitchfork reported a month later that at a concert in Corgan's hometown of Chicago, he sold T-shirts that eloquently expressed his feelings for Anderson Cooper. The shirts featured a pair of bow tie-sporting furballs with the slick retort: "F*** you Anderson Cooper." But since the petty shirts were meant as promotional merchandise for the band, there may have been some inadvertently mixed messaging there. As the Pitchfork writer noted parenthetically, "since the band's logo is included, it says, 'F*** you the Smashing Pumpkins Anderson Cooper,' but that's probably not what they meant."

Now we want in on the action. We want a T-shirt with our names on it, so we're calling out Billy Corgan and his puny wrestlers. We've got Johnny B. Badd on our side, so bring it on!