I must be an idiot because I don't see what the joke here is. Accepting that I live in a world in which that cat does human things, I still can't fathom that I'd see said cat walking a pet snail like how I would walk my dog, and my reaction would be to find that annoying and/or comment out loud to my dog that he's annoying. He's quiet and not bothering anybody. Is there context from the previous comic or something? I just don't understand how somebody could make a living from doodling irrelevant non sequiturs. What's annoying about a cat walking his pet snail? He's not even in your way because you're just sitting there on a park bench. Is it because he seems kinda smug about it? Like, this is how silly you look for having another animal as a pet. I don't get it.
I think you did a great job of explaining the problems with this one. There is no prior context. It's a non-sequitur in a sea of non-squiturs. When I did the edit on this one I felt like it actually got better some people just hate snails. And for him to be referencing the giant snail made more sense than talking about the cat walking the snail.
Absolutely. But it felt like I was having a stroke or something. I know a thing or two about comedy, but even a bad joke or a joke that I subjectively don't find funny still registers as a joke. This strip has the cadence of a joke but without any actual joke happening. It's like an AI-written comic strip. Any punchline would've made as much sense if not more. Better ones would've addressed the snail or the cat or the dog or some behavioral difference. Maybe the best one I can come up with off the top of my head is "People think that this is less strange than when he was walking a dog?" That at least has some commentary on the expectations of a relationship between cats and dogs, and that a cat taking a dog for a walk would be really strange, but at least some people walk dogs; nobody walks a snail. There's an implication that people were upset before and now they're not.
Here though? Nothing. He just felt like drawing a cat taking a snail for a walk, I guess?
