Floof Regrets Nothing

Today's strip is available in English and in French!

I originally had Stella explaining the meaning of Bastille Day to her kids, with illustrations. That idea did not seem to come to life. Then I saw an older “Arlo and Janis” comic by Jimmy Johnson that had Arlo making Janis French toast, French press coffee, and giving her a French kiss in a tastefully staged pose. It was a great idea and I came up with a nice variation on the theme.

Floof the library kitten might actually storm her local “Bastille” for the same reasons the citoyens stormed the original—for bread, or in this case, Yum! cat treatz.

Shawm is the guardian of the “Bastille” although the fridge is still a Calder.

The strip was easily drawn and scripted. The French idiomatic expression at the end corresponds to the English ‘Your goose is cooked.’

https://www.gocomics.com/furbabies/2024/07/14

I got a phone call from Nicole Lambert of Les Triples, a beatufilly drawn series of books that just celebrated its 40th anniversary. Any collection of women cartoonists’ work should include Lambert. None of them currently do. Let’s fix this, shall we?

https://les-triples.com/nicole-lambert/l-auteur/

We exchanged artwork and Nicole asked if any of the FurBabies comics ‘were of interest to the French.’ Voila! A French translation was immediately produced. I thank my Parisian colleague Patrick Mate for approving the script, and the French Onomatopoeia page for a substitute for ‘chew chew chew’. “macher, macher, macher” might have worked but I went with the safe version. “Miam Miam Miam” is pronounced exactly like the English ‘yum yum yum.’

Floof mispronounces “Egalite”. French is not her native language. Elle ne regrette rien.

There was no equivalent for Sirius’ last line (eggcorns apparently do not exist in French) so I simply spaced the word to indicate his incorrect pronunciation.

Enjoy!

The French dispatch.