[754] All these little guys

Oh noes, not the cute mice!

Oh please please please do not let Kat turn into a Soapbox Sadie about animal cruelty.

Why assume it's all for animal testing? You've gotta have mice for pet snakes...

Well... everyone who has been seeing hearts and stars now that Paz is in the story is going to get a rude awakening. Not that she isn't great and all, but we may possibly find out that she's doing Court-related experiments. That will give rise to conflicts between characters, certainly.

Now that I think about it, the more likely that idea seems, the more distasteful I am finding it. Paz is pretty cool. I hope there isn't some sinister back-story to her experiments.

I do hope I'm wrong. After the last two chapters, I'm not sure I'm ready for more really dark stuff. Hopefully this will just be another insight moment for Kat, and we can get back to her robot development story line. I want to see her "work it harder make it better do it faster make it stronger!"

Curses, beat me to it.

I'm wondering where this chapter is going. We've just had a very action-based chapter, so I'm expecting this to be a bit more chilled.

Of course the mice aren't for experiments. Why do experiments on mice when you can do them on humans?? (After all, mice are nothing like humans.)

Oh no! Now Paz isn't as cute helping people experiment on mice.

Dammit now we have to wait til monday to figure it out! I bet Tom planned the comics like this so we have to wait the weekend.

So... I suppose her empathic abilities are on-demand, not always-on. Otherwise, it would suuuuuck doing invasive research on animals.

My first thought was "snacks for snakes". The second thought was that some birds like little furballs very munch too, which for Kat would be an... interesting dilemma.
It's a good point, but breeding animals for food doesn't exclude some selection work. Then again, these mice are clearly albino (red eyes), which in itself suggests an experimental line.
If caring for this stuff is her responsibility, why not.

It's only fair if they try to feed better food to owls!
Cyborg mice are cool. What?

A good point, too.

On yet another side, "uhh" combined with making such a face may indicate Paz's opinion on keeping mice as pets. After all, there's even people who really like rats, but dislike mice (in rat-fans case - for stupidity). Or maybe she doesn't like having to deal with albino, who knows? It's a matter of taste.

I can understand Kat might be shocked over the robot doing the checkup, but why such an expression of shock to see the bird go after the food? It must have something with growing up in the Court with no animals around.

It's going to be really interesting seeing how Paz reconciles her animal empathy with their use in experimentation...

This is not true at all! Mice are incredibly similar to humans, genetically, which is often where it counts in terms of biological processes and medical applications! They have the added benefit of being cheap, easy to maintain, and fast breeding and maturing. The medical sciences would be no where without testing on mice.

However, maybe they aren't being used for something nasty, like cancer research (there are mice lines which are bred to get tumors like crazy, poor little guys). Maybe they are being used to produce monoclonal antibodies! Or vaccines! Mice have an astonishing array of uses in biology, and not all of them are unpleasant. Not even for the mouse.

Plus, (I don't know if this is true for the Court, but it is true for most other research facilities) before animal testing can be used, an animal ethics committee must review your experiment and verify that there is a purpose and benefit to your research that justifies the suffering of animals, and which reviews your procedures and conditions to make sure that there is no unnecessary suffering. It is actually quite hard to get approval from these committees.

This has been: Animal Testing in the Sciences, with Neal! Thanks for tuning in!

Anyway, I bet that was an aspect of Paz's job that took some getting used to. I sort of doubt they are feeder mice, because the conditions they live in are a little too nice for something that is fated to die quickly. My experiences with feeder mice is that they live a dozen to a cage that size, and are generally not very well cared for. Which is awful.

Edit because I forgot what I had been planning to say due to animal testing rant: I bet this is going to draw up some parallels to sacrificing Jeanne for the Court. I hope Kat can get some closure, and stop being so furious. I miss happy Kat.

I wonder who the man is in frames 3 and 5? Judging from his head-height in 3 (middle of the top shelf of mice) and the height of the girls in 5, the man is quite tall. Could it be Eglemore? The haircut seems right, but what would he be doing there?

People keep talking about 113 cameo....

(...what's that?)

I've seen little white mice in pet shops
It's cute with all of them in the cage all running on the wheel together
If this is snake related:You don't give live mice give them ones already frozen