2009-12-06
Explanation
This comic is titled "Bad Social Move: Making Puns That Don't Relate to the Situation." A bald man with glasses tells a woman: "My wife just died." The woman responds cheerfully: "It's a CAT-tastrophe!" with "CAT" emphasized, clearly trying to work in a cat pun that has absolutely nothing to do with the tragic news she just received.
The humor comes from the extreme social inappropriateness of responding to devastating personal news with a completely irrelevant pun. The joke is not just that she is making a pun at a terrible time -- which would already be bad -- but that the pun does not even relate to what was said. She is so committed to making cat-based wordplay that she deploys it regardless of context, making the moment exponentially more awkward and insensitive.
The votey panel continues the bit, with the woman telling the man: "You have my cat-dolences," showing that she cannot stop herself from forcing cat puns into the conversation even when attempting to offer genuine sympathy. The compulsion has completely overtaken any social awareness she might have had.