Frankly, I don’t know. Maybe that trip will evolve into its own storyline before too long.

Anyway, if Cherry’s timeline coincides with Mark’s then it is at least the day after the movie and Bill Ellis’s phone call. Mark and Rusty could already be on their way to California. Cherry—working in her usual stretch pants-and-logo shirt uniform—hears a kitten hidden in some bushes. I don’t think a mewing kitten is an especially strange sound, though in the context presented, it would at least qualify as a surprising sound. Words matter.

Art Dept. Mark the Contrarian Commenter (as I think I must identify him here) would certainly criticize that gelatinous foliage in front of the house for having no realistic shape or identifiable trait, other than being “a bush” (or possibly a Monty Pythonesque blancmange). Its vagueness and anonymity stand in sharp contrast to the more representational grasses in the foreground. Though I do not recognize them, they appear to be identifiable. Why this visual disparity? Maybe Rivera doesn’t like to draw bushes the way artists don’t like drawing hands and feet.

By the way, are you mystified as I am by the very small two-pane window in panel 1?