April 7th, 2020
7 Apr 2020 · page 977 of 1306
how to dog? how do i canine? where are the instructions for this thing
Cast: Benjamin Thackerey, Eliza Swift, Gren
Comments (81)
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Panel 4, I feel so called out XD
having owned cats for several years now i am thoroughly cured of the notion that they're clever
Everyone who has seen a cat do the I meant to do that walk away from a disaster of the cat's own making, please raise your hands. :)
i like how they always clean themselves right after too in a vain attempt to look cool
Yep. Psychologists even have a word for it. Displacement activity.
A.k.a. let's pretend the previous 10 seconds didn't happen.
I've never owned cats, but lived with cat owners for a few years, and at least one of them (the cats, not the owners :-) was as dumb as a box of rocks.
I had a cat that would try to jump off of a swivel-chair on to a desk and never expected the chair to move out from under him.
Some are. It's only rational that some members of a species are more intelligent than others. For a long time I thought the more "sports oriented" of our cats was stupid and insensitive. Then I saw him figure out how to open doors and the door of the cat carrier (he wanted to get inside. He likes the cat carrier.) I also noticed that he actually wanted to be held and cuddled, it was just his urge to play that got in the way of that sort of thing sometimes. He actually was smart and loving, but he was also very active and had his own way of doing things, even liking things we call stupid (like smelly feet and other stinky stuff.)
There are 3 cats at my house and one is pretty smart as far as cats go, one is average but also an asshole most of the time and one is really dumb. But all of them have learned to ask for what they want.
One of the cats I had in college could be distracted for up to an hour by the bubbles in a half-full glass of Sprite. He wouldn't paw at them, or the glass, he would just stare as though they were revealing a profound truth of the universe.
i lit a candle once and entranced Ham for like an hour
One of ours walked too close to a candle on the table and lit her tail on fire! She didn't notice immediately, and my wife reached out and pulled the fur on her tail from the base up and put out the fire.
Now, "putting out the cat" has a new meaning for us!
It's a myth that just doesn't hold water after they get their paws caught in the VCR the second or third time.
Attitude, yes. Covers for the brains they thought they had.
Quickly looks over to see if my Lord and Chief Napper is paying attention.
One of the cats my fiancé grew up with bit just about everyone and everything at some point. On at least one occasion, he bit his own tail and seemed surprised that it hurt.
i am 99% sure that cats have no idea they have tails
To be fair, dogs are sort of unclear on the whole butts thing themselves
That whole "farting themselves awake" business...
I own a clever cat, but she's mostly clever in the "I'm a bored toddler with razor blades stuck to my feet, let's see what I can accomplish" sort of way...
Being able to fake independence and intelligence is far more impressive than actually having it. XD
Not that impressive. Humans do it all the time.
Thats giving humans alot of credit
That is a very good description of cats.
Didn't Gren get a chance to snack on some meat at Pryce's warehouse? She's cleaning up on the treats this chapter.
Eliza calls Gren she, and Ben calls Gren it.
No wonder Gren isn’t interested in cooperating with Ben...
Yep. When you're a dog, there are Forms () and Protocols to Follow. And Ben… doesn't. ( etiquette, not paperwork - though paperwork can be fun to eat, it's not the same. 😉)
Ben needs to learn to respect gender, or else that ship is soon to founder.
Ben needs to learn to respect dogs, because hes being kind of a dick.
It's a spectrum.
"It" is a term used to depersonify things/people. I think it speaks to that Ben really doesn't like animals in general.
Words cannot express how much I want to play Eliza if Widdershins is ever adapted to another medium. I just love this woman more and more with every page.
Are you six feet tall with a lantern jaw?
I am, in fact, a six foot tall trans lady.
But do you have Filing System? ;-)
There's a C.M.O.T. Dibbler in every setting and universe. What's this one named?
Can't be this universe's Dibbler.
They're inna bun, not onna stick.
Also, I'm sure these sausages are mostly pork.
Not mostly pig.
I think you're doing well with Dibbler if the food is, shall we say, "named meat" at all.
I mean Gren is a magic sniffing dog, and Mal may be the most magic thing around, but those sausages just exude potent magical energy.
Gren, you'll have to train your human better than that.
I think she'd take great offense to Ben being described as "her human."
All right, technically he isn't her human, but she's the one walking him in the street, so it's her responsibility to make sure he behaves and to clean up after him.
I'm following the Mal and Harriet arcs with interest.
Gren's demostration of what independent and smart really means.
Ah, and thus we've come around full circle in Gren's development, I was immediately remind all the way back to page 6: [https://www.widdershinscomi...](https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/october-28th-2011 "https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/october-28th-2011")
hey comments, show me your cool pets! here is ham, who lives behind my tablet monitor
and susie, who lives to murder [https://uploads.disquscdn.c...](https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c48f19a4482d23390d466b0c97588e9e4b2cbc56ace0d666064c23456bc2cd4a.jpg "https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c48f19a4482d23390d466b0c97588e9e4b2cbc56ace0d666064c23456bc2cd4a.jpg")
This is Cruller, who is perfectly comfortable like that.
oh my god, what a baby
Here are Linus (gray and white) and Lucy (tortoiseshell) doing their famous Parallel Cats pose.
ah such synchronisation! ours could never manage that!
These two seem to do it automatically - as often as not we'll walk in and find them in matching positions.
The biggest baby we have
an extremely fine potato!
This was him 6 months ago. They grow up so fast 😂
ahh i love the big puppy ears! and little white socks!
Thanks 😆 he can be a little turd sometimes
This was my hardscrabble cat, before he went on to Ulthar.
a definite aura of badass
Buster, tele
working hard away
aa i love it when they go upside down and just wriggle? i was kind of new to cats when we got ours so that was a delightful thing to discover
I call mine Otter Boy when he does that, because he can lie belly-up with his front paws tucked like a sea otter.
This is sort of his sea otter pose.
And this is Kittiboon in a more regal pose.
ahh he's so beautiful!
:D Yes, he is also known as Mr. Handsome (and honey darling sweetie-boy).
[https://uploads.disquscdn.c...](https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/00f043967f69ddd35ab05747d1339dbe0d0a9d5a038c382405eee6fa8f1300cd.jpg "https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/00f043967f69ddd35ab05747d1339dbe0d0a9d5a038c382405eee6fa8f1300cd.jpg")
[https://uploads.disquscdn.c...](https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9cc30fcc0539eeca5f0f71f5cfe81504c3a5a618a87ef2a1ee99ec868485588b.jpg "https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9cc30fcc0539eeca5f0f71f5cfe81504c3a5a618a87ef2a1ee99ec868485588b.jpg")
From top to bottom: Garnet, Huckleberry, Rosencrantz, Radar.
No Guildenstern?
Would have been bad luck; they as a pair are famously known for being dead. Also by the time I got another cat I no longer had sole naming privileges, lol.
It's been a hard week.
In fairness to Ham, the heat exhaust from electronics is an excellent source of Vitamin Warm.
In the stone ages, when VCRs had popup tape loading, our cat discovered she could press the popup button and curl up around it. That VCR strangled on cat hair in short order.
Here are my kittehs and my granddog. Kami is the light one, Willow is the tabby, and Chala is my daughter's dog.
[https://uploads.disquscdn.c...](https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2a942a82a94968c5a40b9b68bb6b16e5383aff9fa527db56ab561362d73b3811.jpg "https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2a942a82a94968c5a40b9b68bb6b16e5383aff9fa527db56ab561362d73b3811.jpg")
This is my baby Degas. I lost her a little over a month and a half ago, after 20 years together. Pasta was arguably her favorite food.
Oh no! Has O'Malley been made into sausages since the last strip...?
Blue blistering barnacles!
Here are Gigi (cream) and Pipa (black&tan), on their usual completely-innocent patrol for fallen cooking scraps.
Yes, they’re sausage dogs, in case the angle makes it difficult to tell. Oddly enough, they adore when my dad sneaks them some kielbasa.
Hearts on the corners of the note? Mal? Y'okay?
I think somewhere it was figured out that the Purple Hippo of Happiness wrote it down for him. (But I don't remember seeing that myself, so I'm not sure how.)
Alas, I have no pets, but I’ll try to get a shot of the hummingbirds in my back yard—IF THEY SIT STILL LONG ENOUGH.
Apropos of nothing, shouldn’t Widdershins be a show on Netflix or something? It would be a perfect family show: action, humor, magic—come on, it sells itself!
british curse words so american netflix can't flag it...