toy
Explanation
The Joke
A parent and child are looking at a toy, with the parent exclaiming "Oh my God! A toy tiger!" The comic notes that "these people spent decades breeding itty bitty cats to look like a tiger — so it is like a tiger but toy-sized."
A time skip of "ten years later" shows the now-grown child returning home, with the parent desperately calling "Come back, children! Come back!" The toy-tiger cats have apparently become feral, aggressive, or otherwise problematic — the "toy" predator was still a predator, just smaller.
The final panel shows a parent asking their child "Don't you like your toys?" in a way that suggests the miniature tigers are causing chaos.
The Humor
The joke is about the hubris of breeding wild animals down to a "cute" size and expecting them to behave like toys. Humans have a long history of trying to miniaturize impressive or dangerous animals for novelty — teacup dogs, dwarf cats, exotic pet breeding — and the comic takes this to its logical extreme by imagining someone breeding actual tigers down to house-cat size.
The humor comes from the assumption that making a predator smaller makes it safe. A tiny tiger is still a tiger in temperament, instinct, and aggression — it is just easier to underestimate. The time-skip structure lets the joke play out the inevitable consequence: what seemed adorable in the store becomes a domestic nightmare.
This also works as a commentary on consumer culture and the commodification of living creatures. Calling the animal a "toy" and treating it as a product rather than a living predator is the fundamental error the comic is satirizing. The parent's desperate plea for the children to come back suggests the toy-sized tigers have either driven the family apart or literally attacked someone.
Context
Selective breeding for novelty traits in animals is a real and sometimes controversial practice. "Toyger" cats, for instance, are a real breed developed to resemble miniature tigers through selective breeding of domestic cats with Bengal cats. The comic exaggerates this concept by imagining the process taken to an extreme where the resulting animals retain genuinely dangerous wild instincts despite their small size.