2013-08-11

A six-panel comic. In a dim room, a house cat addresses its owner in increasingly nihilistic terms across the first three panels: "You will never know true love from a mate or a mother or a child," "Nothing you do has any effect on anything," and "No one will remember your name when you die, so it's no use even bothering!" The cat then simply says "Mow." A dark, empty panel follows. In the final panels, a person stands at an animal-shelter counter holding the cat and tells the worker, "Hi, I'd like to return this cat." The worker asks "Why?" and the person answers, "It's happier than me" — the joke being that despite spouting bleak nihilism, the cat is more content than its human. Votey (aftercomic): a close-up of the cat's blank, smiling face with a thought bubble reading "It's all meaningless."