Two-door Cat

I get “Tudor Cat” out of this, but are Tudor Cats a thing?

A quick search pulls up this gruesome information:

“Cats were not a popular Tudor pet due to their association with the Devil and witchcraft. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII decreed in his bull against witches that cats were unholy creatures and were to be burned along with the witches that owned them, although I haven’t been able to find that instruction in the bull myself. When witches were burned at the stake it was often said that a black cat leapt out of the flames.

“At the coronation of Elizabeth I in January 1559, a dozen or so cats were stuffed into a wickerwork effigy of the Pope and paraded through the streets of London before being burned on a bonfire. Their dying shrieks were said to be the devils inhabiting the Pope’s body. Horrible!”

On a more positive note, that same web page notes this history of having a cat at 10 Downing Street.

“The resident cat, used as a “mouser” today, in 10 Downing Street, the British Prime Minister’s residence in London, is thought to date back to the time when Cardinal Thomas Wolsey placed his pet cat by his side, on a cushioned chair, while undertaking his duties as Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor. A bronze statue of Wolsey in his hometown of Ipswich in Suffolk features a cat peering out from behind his chair and clinging to his robes. It’s a beautiful feature of his statue.”

Larry, the current cat at 10 Downing Street, has served since 2011, through several prime ministers: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, and likely Burnham soon.

Still, it seems quite a stretch for Nate Fakes to be referring to these cats of Elizabethan times. Is there something closer to the 21st century I’m missing?

Donuts

Hinches sends this in: “I think it has to do with the doughnuts being the crime scene, The white circles were drawn by the cop with the white marker in his hand around the alleged dropped donuts. The look on his face seems to suggest after drawing the circles, either he or both of the cops explaining what happened ate the evidence. However, why is the ground under the white circles so dark? Does that have some meaning?”

2×2?

Straightforward, if not funny:

But what about those papers that might print 4-panel Nancy as a 2×2?

or some other orientation?

In earlier days, Bushmiller would sometimes do a 3 panel, but in the examples I looked at the third panel was double-width, so it would still fit within a 2×2 orientation. But perhaps the number of papers who might be affected is approaching 0.

Where we’re going…

…they don’t have roads?

Jack Applin writes:

I was puzzled by the “off-road trim”, because cavemen don’t have roads. Then I recalled “Dip in Road”. OK, fine. Why would the triangular wheel cause political arguments? It’s not pink. Is it simply “That other political party is so stupid that they promote triangular wheels! Haw haw!”?

Walk a Mile in My Shoes

Mitch4 has some questions:

“1) Are the shoes in the last panel meant to be actually larger, or just drawn that way to call our attention to them? Are these her own shoes with left and right exchanged, or maybe even somebody else’s shoes?

“2) What does her seating behind that tall, bald man have to do with getting her shoes “mixed up” [regardless of which kind of mixing up it was]? Does it mean she stood up on her seat to see past him, but was courteous enough to take off her shoes so as to not dirty up the seat as much?”