In the August 15th issue of The New Yorker, on the cartoon caption contest page, stage 2 of the contest — three finalist captions, to be voted on by readers — for Carolita Johnson’s drawing of a cat psychiatrist with a dog patient on the couch:
(#1) Winning caption to be announced in the August 29th issue of the magazine
In my 7/28 posting “Captionless Psychiatrist” (about the contest), I saw Johnson’s drawing as a possible gender cartoon (in line with Johnson’s aggressively feminist artwork), but I expected the caption entries to be about the conventional natures of cats and dogs, as in fact the three finalists are: cats as predators, in particular of mice; (pet) dogs as oriented towards pleasing human beings, versus (pet) cats as independent, manipulating humans to get pleasure for themselves; (pet) dogs as barred from lying or sitting on the furniture (their place is on the floor).
The therapist is elaborated coded as male — but of course it could just be a really butch dyke-cat, or a female cat in excellent drag (à la Marlene Dietrich).
Meanwhile, the dog-on-the-couch joke in the third finalist has been used for other Psychiatrist cartoons, as in this Bizarro strip from my 6/3/18 posting “The canine therapist”:
(#2)
[8/25: The 8/29 issue has arrived at my house, and Lawrence Wood’s “I need people to like me” caption is the winner. (I was in favor of Tyler Bradley’s edgier “What happened to the mouse?” caption.)]
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