The Brownies Play Cat

The Brownies have dressed as cats to frighten a nest of rats, and it is not going well. In the left panel the disguised elves creep forward on all fours; in the right the rats, unfooled, swarm over them in a tumbling brawl. Cox tells it in his usual rhymed couplets set below the pictures: the rats have scent as well as sight, and playing cat would never pay. That verse-under-image format came straight from the printed Brownie books and kept the strip readable for children still learning to read. Note the band of alligators stretched along the bottom, a decorative flourish Cox enjoyed. Every Brownie is busy, every face distinct, the crowd choreographed so the eye never loses the thread.