This CIDU is easier to figure out if you’re a cat owner. It provides an excuse to note that Comics Kingdom started Bob Mankoff Presents: Show Me the Funny (Animal Edition), which may be of interest. Since stepping down as cartoon editor at the New Yorker, he’s been running CartoonStock, which is a business that licenses cartoons.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Not sure why this is labeled CIDU…cats are well-known to be fascinated by laser dots. Business Cat doesn’t have a Powerpoint presentation, just the laser pointer, and that’s enough.
@ dvandom – There’s an old semi-tradition that “cat” comics are almost automatically CIDUs, because of Bill’s well-known inability to understand anything related to cats.
P.S. The setup above reminded me (tangentially) of a scene in one of the “Hotel Transylvania” movies, in which the werewolf failed miserably as a tennis instructor, because he kept burying every ball the player hit.
I notice dvandom apparently applying the name Business Cat to the character in this cartoon. But that makes we wonder if we have ever dealt here with the comics feature actually called Business Cat. It was a lot of fun; for a while.
I suggested BDUC (Bill Doesn’t Understand Cats) as a tag when he was still around.
@ Mitch – Business Cat has been mentioned a few times in CIDU comments, but has not yet been the subject of a CIDU post. Andréa linked to the only visible example of a “Business Cat” strip, but that was three years ago.
P.S. The link to the comments didn’t work, trying again. (If this try doesn’t work, then WordPress must be filtering it out.)
P.P.S. Confirmed: WP probably wipes that kind of stuff for security reasons. Try performing a Google search on
“Business Cat” site:cidu.info
In both cases it seems to have a badly formed A tag, bracketing just the words “a link to the comments” and lacking any href component.
Or you could try just dropping the raw URL you intend to link, don’t fuss with writing out the A tag, and let WP make the URL into a clickable link.
Meanwhile, my sometime delight in Business Cat was, as more or less noted in a previous comment, mixed with dissatisfaction. One disappointing period was the whole competition with Business Dog for Business Pet of the Year or whatever it was. That was a part of the original run, I think. But then recently there was a sort of reboot,with a subtitle or alternate title, something like Ordinary Cat – where he was for a while living as a stray, then got adopted by a family as their house cat. This era was all right, but it felt like all the funny ideas were already familiar from his time as Business Cat.
Thanks for the info on Bob Mankoff’s new site . . . I’ve added it to my daily read.
Speaking of New Yorker: I just finished David Sipress’ autobiography/memoir, What’s So Funny?. Man, these comedians/comic writers have the SADDEST childhoods.
My initial thought when I saw this was in line with dvandom. Yes I’m a cat owner but I have to think even those who never had a cat would get the joke here. The fact that they have cat features but otherwise look like humans is a bit disconcerting to me.
Yes, I think even Bill would have gotten this one.
Time to remember a classic patent: Method of exercising a cat.
@ Mitch – Thanks for indirectly identifying the cause of the problem: the URL that I had placed in the href part of the <a…>-tag contained two quote marks, which I had neglected to double or otherwise escape, so of course it didn’t parse correctly. However, the quotes are crucial: Searching without them produces too many incidental (irrelevant) hits.
Laser pointers are sometimes used in office meetings. I could swear I saw another cartoon based on this trope, only it implied that bedlam was about to occur with the office cats about to pounce on the dot used during the presentation.
@ Grawlix – Isn’t that exactly what is about to occur in this panel? All of the cats watching look tense, as if they were preparing to jump.