Serious explanation here: she’s teaching them the instinct of being alert around enclosure openings! For example, if these were wild cats living in a bush, they’d run the risk of a larger predator running up to the opening and grabbing one of them. The mother cat is also only bapping them lightly without claws, so those slaps are more of an annoyance meant to get the kittens’ attention, and to teach them to keep their eyes out for potential threats.
It’s worth noting that the reason the beaver wants the water to be deeper in the first place is that the Beaver is using the deep water as a pantry:
All summer and fall, beavers gather up branches with the leaves they actually eat, and store it in the deep end of the Pond, where the cold water and limited oxygen keep the leaves fresh all winter, so when it’s negative 20 outside, a beaver can take a dip out of it’s lodge, grab some refrigerated leaves in the (relatively) warmer water and go back to it’s cozy little nap hole while everything else is out there suffering and eating bark or the like.
So it’s less “there’s a leak in my house” and more “OH SHIT THE FRIDGE!!”
Sequential Magazine has nominated False Knees for Best Webcomic of 2022! They also nominated me for Favourite Cartoonist! I’m not sure what that means, but you can vote by going here and then clicking the big red button. Thanks!
