Show and Tell

A lazy afternoon of cloud-watching lives up to the chapter's title. Yashy confesses her crimes into the wrong ear, Lucy's deafness finally gets an explanation, and the whole gang's cat breeds get names. Well, almost the whole gang's.

Show and Tell
Chapter	9 of 127 (list of chapters)
Published	June 12, 2006 (2006-06-12)
Page count	4
Major characters	Lucy, Yashy, Mike, Daisy, Paulo, Chirpy
Minor characters	David, Sue, Amaya, Three Weird Girls
Collected in	Volume One, Omnibus 1
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Synopsis

Lucy is sprawled on a hill watching the clouds, and Yashy takes her spaced-out silence as a golden opportunity to confess everything at once. The missing birthday money was her, not Blur, and the April Fools' hose down Lucy's locker was her too, pinned on Mike. Mike storms in mid-confession, furious, only to realize Lucy hasn't heard a word of it. He wiggles her left ear by way of explanation, cooing "Widdle Woocy's left ear can't hear a thing~"

Chirpy asks why Lucy's ear doesn't work, and Lucy explains it's genetic — deafness runs in her family, a blue-eyed white cat thing, and she figures she lucked out with only the one bad ear. She adds, rather proudly, that she's a Khao Manee, "descendant of the royal cats of Siam".

Mike demonstrates Lucy's deaf ear.

Mike turns out to be a Korat rather than the Russian Blue everybody assumed. Daisy admits she's half Selkirk Rex and, more embarrassingly, part Ragamuffin. Mike hesitates for a long, uncomfortable moment, then blushes and calls it cute. Daisy is over the moon, Lucy and Yashy blush and frown behind her, and Yashy erupts with "A WHORE LIKE YOU CANNOT BE SO ADORABLE!!"

Paulo turns up last and announces he's a Somali, a breed that resembles a fox. His attempt at flirting with Lucy ends with her pounding him flat. Yashy demands her own turn, gets told she's a hairless lizard, and huffs, "For your information, I'm a Golden Retriever!"

Trivia & observations

• Mike was originally written as a Russian Blue. Veronica's commentary explains she only discovered Korats while assigning everyone's breeds, after this page had already been penciled, so she erased and rewrote the dialogue ("Thank god I drew with pencils!"). Korats also happen to have really sensitive hearing. Oliver reconfirmed the breed on Tumblr years later with a flat "He's a Korat!"
• The breeds named here stick around as shorthand for over a hundred chapters. In PDA, Madison refers to Mike as "the Korat" and Paulo as "that IDIOT SOMALI BOY".
• Lucy's deafness is played for laughs here, but Veronica's commentary flags it as a trait that gets "explored more clearly in future chapters" and advises readers to watch "who is actually considerate to it".
• Yashy's poison-apple request is a Snow White reference, per Veronica ("think Snow White and soon you'll understand"), and the Three Weird Girls are singing Boney M.'s "Rasputin".
• The arrow labeling Sue a European Burmese is the only statement of her breed in the entire comic. Oliver's commentary notes that "the throwaway nature of the final panel here always makes me laugh".
• All four pages went up on the same day, and per Veronica's commentary, the pages seen today are digital redraws of the original pencil version.

Related chapters

• Simple Pleasures: Lucy's bad ear was already casual continuity in the comic's first chapter, where she reminds Daisy that she keeps telling her about it. "Show and Tell" is where the comic finally explains it.
• The Burden of Parenthood: This chapter has the earliest instance of Yashy screaming "WHORE!!!" at Daisy for getting close to Mike. Her outburst here is the same insult with a few more words attached.
• Out of the Frame: Sue's rant about "insecure Khao Manees or oblivious Korats" stealing the spotlight only makes sense because of the breeds named here.
• New Year's Resolution: Lucy's line about deafness running in the family pays off years later, when she complains about an aunt who has a deaf brother of her own.