Cat Bath
I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, then a short essay, then the past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner, Wayno whose weekly blog post can be seen here. I highly recommend it.
Here’s the ANSWER KEY to this week’s Secret Symbols in the Sunday comic, above.
——————————————————
Hey, Jazz Pickles, thanks for your brief attention. Last week I wrote a lot about AI and how scary it is but since then I’ve read a handful more articles and am less afraid again. I don’t really want to get into it too deep right now, I’ll let you google it yourselves, but basically, I’ve fallen back into the position that it will be a mixture of good and bad, just like the Internet. Advertising will be more intense and persuasive, conspiracies will seem more realistic and spread faster and wider, etc. There’s no stopping our species from racing forward in the dark or believing nonsense anyway, so what’s the use in getting riled up about it? That’s where I’m at this week. Next week, who knows?
Let’s talk instead about my Sunday Bizarro cartoon, above, which was conceived, written, and drawn by a human being. And all of the sentences in this post were typed by a human being. Of course, that’s just the sort of thing AI would say, isn’t it?
People often say cats are “clean” animals because they lick themselves so much. I’d like to go on record as one who does not put much faith in the cleanliness of cats. Let’s start with why they lick themselves in the first place: they are predators and carnivores, and in the course of an average snack in the wild, their faces, paws, and arms are covered in blood. They lick the blood off for two reasons, neither of which are about a tidy appearance: the blood is nutritious and part of their meal, and the smell of the blood in their fur can alert prey to their presence. Not very clean motivations in my opinion.
And what are they “cleaning” themselves with? Well, it isn’t Ivory soap and fresh water. It’s cat spit. Spit that has been recently used to begin digesting the bloody body parts they just ate. Or, in the case of your house cat, the can of body parts you fed them. If a human being became smeared with blood when they ate, then licked it off their hands and face, I doubt that “clean” would be an adjective many would use to describe them. If a person eats fried chicken and licks the grease off their fingers as Colonel Sanders used to brag they would, you’d not want to sit next to them on an airplane, much less shake their hand or invite them to cuddle on your lap. Or maybe you would, in which case I’d not want to sit next to you on an airplane, either.
That said, I love cats. I’ve lived with many and they add a lot to my life, as do our dogs, who are no cleaner than our cat. My wife and I feel that overall, living with a spit-covered animal and two that will eat feces helps to improve our immune systems, a benefit we’d rather get from living with some cute critters than a person who licks their fingers after a greasy meal.
And now let’s review my partner, Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons for the week, and see what preposterous claims may be found within. If you’ve read his amusing blog posts, you’ll know that he’s a cat lover, too.
Dogs can’t actually read but their sense of smell is so keen that they can sniff a word and discern the intentions of the person who wrote it.
More of a “K-hawk” really, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Oneday soon, calling those things “phones” will have the same anachronistic ring as turning “out” a light does. (Leftover from blowing out a candle.)
I like the name of his tuning service.
He has a special-made six shooter with a gigantic trigger loop.
Until recently, the weather in LA was so consistent that small talk was only about traffic. The climate crisis seems to be changing that now, unfortunately.
That’s a wrap on this week’s in-depth report on the cartoon crisis. Thanks for sticking around until the last cat was licked clean. If you enjoy our work and that we offer it here for free, without ads or paywalls, please consider helping us keep it that way via the links below.
Until next week, Is anyone marketing a washcloth with the same blood-removing abilities as a cat tongue?
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
COMICS KINGDOM SHOP (now with Bizarro products!)
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels