Puck, 1877-07-18 · page 5 of 16
Puck — July 18, 1877 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a sequential comic strip showing how a cat's fate becomes intertwined with human misfortune. The narrative progresses from a cat eating a mouse (panels 1-2), to someone witnessing this and reporting it (panel 3). This triggers a chain of consequences: a man is introduced to the cat's owner and experiences injury (panels 4-5), his mother learns of his condition (panel 6), a woman becomes involved in the case (panel 7), an elderly man detects deception (panel 8), and the situation escalates into violent conflict (panels 9-10). The final panel's caption—noting the old gentleman "gets the comfortable end of the arrangement" while "it is bad for the mouse"—suggests dark irony about how innocent parties suffer while manipulators benefit from chaos. The work satirizes how small events cascade into disproportionate human drama.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘PUCK, OF C 7TROUMSTANOES: 1. ‘This is the way it ‘began. 2) Which made the cat happy. 3. But somebody had been listening. Mouse still to be heard from. 4. And this is how he introduced 5. And underwent the same exper- 6. But the champion of the feline a disturbing element into the cat’s en- ience himself at the hands of the is surprised by his mama, joyment. small boy. 7. So there is a woman in the case. 8, The old man smells the affray from afar. 1o, It is scarcely necessary to observe that the old gentleman gets the comfortable end of the arrangement, as depicted above. But it is bad for the mouse. H comicbooks.com