It’s been over two and a half months since my last update. I don’t have an excuse for that.
A quick behind-the-scenes note about this page: the black cat and the “reverse jinx” are (like a lot of things in this comic, believe it or not) loosely based on real events. I was greeted by an unfamiliar black cat in the parking lot of my new apartment, in the middle of a terrible day, and I was cheered by the unprovoked affection he showed for me. I also found my luck to be much improved for the rest of the day, contradicting the old superstition about black cats, and I started to think of it as a reverse jinx. When I told my new roommate about it, she told me that the cat suffers from “kitty AIDS” and also a collapsed lung. Which was a bit of a downer, obviously.
I bore you with this story only to explain the mangled appearance of the cat in the comic. There isn’t a cat-eating monster on the loose or anything like that. I was just contrasting Max’s romantic world view with the harsh realities of life.
I see the real black cat almost every day now (probably because I give him treats every time I see him) and he’s mostly doing okay. He’s missing a bunch of teeth, though.