While Patience lounges nonchalantly at her desk, George screams at her for not delivering her design on time. When George finds an unflattering illustration of himself on Patience's desk, he fires her on the spot. Patience offers a meek apology before suddenly telling George off in front of everyone in the department, who in turn celebrate Patience's candor with a lengthy round of applause.

Later, Patience and Sally walk down a city street carrying Patience's belongings. Several dogs react badly to Patience, who responds by hissing back and writing off the outburst as "allergies." Patience is admiring a beautiful necklace in a shop window when Sally collapses.

At the hospital, Sally is in a wheelchair and informs Patience that her doctors have no idea what's wrong with her. Changing the subject to Patience's love life, Sally encourages her friend to take a chance with Tom Lone. Sally is wheeled away to meet a doctor she finds sexually attractive.

One of Catwoman's most important themes emerges in this chapter, and remains prominent for the remainder of the film: Patience's continued failure to operate in human society despite her cat-like senses and new abilities. Surely, this is meant to suggest the simultaneous blessing and curse of having extraordinary abilities; on the other hand, it may suggest an embarrassing miscalculation on Midnight's part, as even becoming Catwoman does not seem to have made Patience any better at her job.

As Patience lazily doodles through her public vituperation, we observe not even a passing resemblance between her sketch and its subject, throwing her basic competence as an artist into question. An alternative possibility is that this drawing is an accurate likeness and Patience is, in fact, expressing her hatred of post-Cheers Ted Danson. In fact, George should not be offended by this caricature at all, as even he could not be nefarious enough to like Becker.

Fortunately for anyone in the art department who values their job, George has not been blessed with special Catwoman hearing, and doesn't notice when everyone indulges in a round of noisy cheers just seconds after he leaves the room. Their jubilation, however, while apparently supportive, seems awfully insensitive of Patience's fresh unemployment, and the congratulations of her co-workers sure won't be following her out the door. Indeed, it may not take long for office folklore to redefine Patience as "that wise-ass who threw away a great job to pretend she's a cat."

Sally, on the other hand, accompanies Patience outside and helps carry her stuff down the street; while this seems pretty gracious and supportive, Sally's true disdain for Patience emerges when she stops to admire a diamond necklace, and Sally crudely reminds her, "You just got fired, remember?" Nevertheless, Sally can be forgiven, seeing as her mental faculties are loosening just before she faints in the middle of the street. As this is ostensibly a side-effect of daily Beau-line usage, it seems cruel that Patience has neglected -- and continues neglecting -- to share anything she has learned about Beau-line with Sally (or a major news outlet, for that matter).

At St. Catwoman's hospital, where Sally is admitted, we another theme of the film emerges: the marginalized wacky best friend existing only to further the plot of the main character. After leading with the Seinfeldian reflection, "You ever notice that when they keep you for observation, no one really observes you?", Sally immediately resumes her inappropriate interest in Patience's romance with Tom Lone: "This time I refuse to let you sabotage a good thing. If it's broke, fix it. He is gonna love you." Certainly, this seems like a lot of pressure on Patience to make it with a guy she's never gone out with, and whom Sally only interacted with long enough to hit on.

-- George Hedare, a man in touch with reality

• Patience hisses at dogs, just like a cat
• Patience is attracted to shiny objects, just like a cat
• Patience is newly assertive with her terrorizing boss, just like a cat