March 24th, 2010
A Chill Wind
I just returned from a trip to Egypt, so it was hard to resist cutting away to this scene in the city.
Also, Egypt has more cats running around than I’ve ever seen anywhere, and they’re quite well treated – lots of generous scraps of seafood for the local kitties in Alexandria. I’ll blog some photos of this stuff for you guys after I recover from the jetlag…

















March 24th, 2010 at 8:50 am
nice shot, but how does this tie in with charles’ trek?
March 24th, 2010 at 8:55 am
haha, Charles meets the snarky cats. This should be good.
March 24th, 2010 at 9:11 am
Istanbul also has a lot of cats running around. I think the people over there understand it’s a good way to regulate the rodent population.
March 24th, 2010 at 9:20 am
Adam, start reading from the beginning. Karl, I can’t wait!
March 24th, 2010 at 10:20 am
The calm before the storm? Hide your kitties, Charles goes to war.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:29 am
I’m glad that they are treating the cats well, but I wish that some of these cities like Istanbul/Cairo could put some resources into spaying/neutering the feral cat population.
March 24th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Beautiful panel!! As always!
March 24th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Love this! Of course…. anything with kitties in it make me happy. >.>; Egypt sounds like a great place. It’s been a place I’ve been interested in visiting. Can’t wait to see your blog post!
March 24th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
To quote the tagline from the movie ‘Tombstone’: Justice Is Coming.
March 24th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Celenoo, I remember seeing that city from the beginning. I think the lion wanted Charles to speak with the king. I’m just curious as to what it all amounts to.
I guess I’ll just have to keep reading, like everyone else!
March 24th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Wow…this is going to be awesome.
March 24th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Thank you for the post . I also look forward to the “forshadowing cold’ . I feel that it will be (as Artie Johnson used to say” Velly Intresting.)
March 24th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Now why would stray cats be well treated in a country that in ancient times WORSHIPPED CATS?
I can’t figure it out…
March 24th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
@Lyon – next time you’re in the Library, go pick up the 11/2009 issue of National Geographic. Sometimes they were so well-thought of, they got mummified…. and perhaps it’s a carryover from those times? In Ancient times, most homes had a cat in the household as an avatar to the goddess Bast/Bastet.
March 24th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
yes! More cats! I love the city scapes you’ve got here and can’t wait to see more detailed street views as the story progresses.
March 24th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Great Cairo skyline.
March 25th, 2010 at 12:16 am
Beautiful artwork. As usual.
March 25th, 2010 at 1:54 am
Awesome panel dude, Egypt sounds wonderful.
Welcome Back
March 25th, 2010 at 5:27 am
A beautiful panel! Also great feeling of foreboding…
March 25th, 2010 at 5:33 am
Oh noes, it’s the groke from moomin!!
March 25th, 2010 at 5:33 am
Foreshadowing: your guide to quality literature.
March 25th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
such a perfect example of foreshadowing c:
March 26th, 2010 at 10:20 am
I’m really glad I found this comic, devoured the archive, and now Wednesdays have a special kind of cool! The art, characters, emotion, writing, pacing, everything is great!
March 26th, 2010 at 11:21 am
They’re also kind to the stray dogs that hang around the sites, putting out water & leaving them food. The Muslim world, in general, often doesn’t cater to dogs, but the Egyptians seem to consider themselves as Egyptians first and Muslims second. Congrats on being able to visit, Karl; it’s one of the amazing places on the planet!
March 28th, 2010 at 4:52 am
Yeah, please post some pictures of your trip! And that slender cat is beautiful. It reminds me of the hybrid cats that breeders are producing from domesticated cats and the small wild African cats. Nice!
Now about that cold…
March 31st, 2010 at 8:10 am
A diseased population of cats will carry as many or more human-compatible diseases as a diseased population of rodents….
The reason there are so many cats over there is that there are superstitions about harming/killing cats. They *probably* go back to a time when the animal was worshipped as an avatar or servant of this or that pagan deity…but Mohammed is recorded as having been oddly respectful of the animals as well (there’s a story where he cuts the arm off his own expensive robe rather than disturb the cat sleeping on it, for example)…so the “be nice to the kitty” mentality is maintained even among the Muslim population.
April 3rd, 2010 at 2:04 pm
a sense of impending doom from the (ahem) aristocats, methinks?