Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for March 16, 2019

Is there a saint that can rid us of rats?

since when the day an evangelist named Patrick become an Irish version of Oktoberfest?

Ste Gertrude, who is being celebrated on Breaking Cat News and has the same holiday as St Patrick, is the patron saint of cats, but also mice and rats. On closer inspection, she is a patron to rid fear of mice and rats. So the Catholic Church has missed an opportunity here.

Rat has never missed an excuse to get blasted. Please do not blame it on the Irish.

Works fof me.

St. Patrick’s day is one I would expect Rat to celebrate year round.

But but but the beer isn’t green!

Colin Farrell says they don’t color their beer green in Ireland. It’s harmless, I know, but somehow I feel we lack subtlety! :-)

And don’t skimp on the Irish ‘holy water’!

On Sunday there will be an illegal street party of many, many thousands of university students on Ezra Street, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. People will moan about it, newspapers will decry it, and police will spend close to $1,000,000 trying to control it, the same as they did last year and the year before, but nothing will change.

And that is fine because there is nothing wrong with a big party.

Argggggh! A saint. I’m not fond of church

Rat is definitely faithful to beer.

A saint,he ain’t.Slaint.

Ask trump, all his rats abandoned ship!

Irish I was Iwish.

St Ratrich ’s Day …. Croc Power !

Rat’s developed eyes!

Run for you lives!

My mother didn’t let us wear green for the day, had to be orange and green together or something totally unrelated. Said the holiday was just an excuse for men to shoot each other, and get drunk. After I named my son Patrick, I referred to the day as Patrick’s Day…didn’t want him to get a swelled head thinking he was a saint.

Who is Patrick the patron saint of, amateur drunks?

In the Catholic calendar, every day is a Saint’s day (some of saints being famous enough that non-Catholics know of the day as well). Official source: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/saints/03/17.html — less official but easier to read source: https://www.franciscanmedia.org/sod-calendar/ — the fact that they use ‘sod’ as an abbreviation for ‘saint of the day’ amuses me.

What I’ve always found odd was that St. Patrick’s day always fall during Lent, the 40 days of penance and atonement Catholics are supposed to observe heading into Easter (it’s why the French developed Mardi Gras – to get all that out of their system so the 40 boring days would be more tolerable). In other words, if your stereotypically Catholic Irish-person gave up booze for Lent (your supposed to give something specific up, and not just “be good”, although that too), he/she would be in a bad way on March 17.

Love his eyes! Those aren’t his first two beers.

Now Rat can say: I’ve a wee bit of Irish in me…and a wee bit will come out in me pee!

Purim is coming up and there’s a lot of drinking involved.

So what’s different about that? Rat’s ALWAYS soused…

In grade school we got St. Patrick’s day off.

How abou

Rat just wants a reason to drink just like most will tomorrow. I’m surprised that Rat didn’t go to Mardi Gra on March 5th

Lent is coming. Fasting and abstinence. Drink enough to forget about your religious epiphany.

Works for me!

It’s not “the faithful” that celebrate St. Patrick’s feast day that way.

If your Irish it does!

I love Ireland. Kathy Ireland, that is.

Gotta be…itʻs in honor of a Saint! Iʻm an Irish Catholic for a Day!

The Rat-style celebration of St. Patrick’s Day is a peculiarly American thing. Ireland is very different.

But our drunken Rat, with his two mugs of beer, is all-American….

His beer should be green.

As I’m typing this High School Musical is playing in the background… GO WILDCATS

He needs to be introduced to Guinness®!

Wait, if they’re celebrating a saint, what’s with all the beer? I don’t recall St. Patrick being a stumble-bum drunk!