…and it’s fairly unanimous… See ya! Wouldn’t want to be ya! Poor James Allen. The mantle of Mark Trail and the daily strip proved to be too much. We wish him well, though, with whatever direction his life takes.
I have to admit, looking at these Elrod dailies has caused my blood pressure and pulse rate to drop. The familiar will do that! To the Story!
One of the games we get to play now is “what year is this, anyway?” The car, the clothes, the cat give us no clue… Although the man, by the looks of him, could be a distant relative of Mark’s… In the middle panel, the cat still thinks it’s a game, but in the end, knows that it’s on its own.
…Well Hi!! I hear the voice over. OH! It’s a SHE-cat. OK that’s good to know… The fawn, still replete with spots, appears nonplussed… Welcome back, Jack.
The Daily Trail 
I reckon that, unlike dogs, cats must not have a sense (or scent) of “home” they can sniff out? Of course, we just had a “Lassie Come Home” episode, so I expect (in spite of everything else) this will turn out differently. Clearly, the “ranch” is the Doc & Cherry Compound, and somebody down there is bound to discover the abandoned kitty. But who will it be?
The cat will see Rusty and be frightened unty following her abandoners back home.
It looks like Allen is devoting his full time to “Edge of Adventure”. The once weekly serial is now updating daily.
I’ve been feeling for some time that James Allen had got sick of Mark Trail and was intentionally trying to sabotage the strip. The Yeti story was execrable. The orphan story was followed by the Andy Finding His Way Home non story and by that time Allen was obviously trying to get fired. He managed that with his infamous tweet, and now that King’s Features Syndicate are rehashing Elrod era tales we know that they didn’t exactly have a replacement available. Possibly nobody wants the job.