(Confused? Me too...it's got something to do with goats and pelicans. Check the archives).
Nay, this is something much, much evilerer: cats!
Now I know what some of you are thinking, 'But Jake, How can my cute cuddly Mr. Cuddles be evilerer? He's adorable! Just look at the way he plays with his paw'Well Friends, I've got news for you. Or more accurately, the BBC has news for you:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/6917113.stm
Yes, that's right folks. This cat is killing our seniors! Now I know what some of you felineaphiles are thinking "oh he's not killing them! He's so smart he can detect their deaths! He's letting us know who among us is dying!"
But you can't fool me. Healthy old person goes into senior center. Cat lies down next to healthy old person. Old person dies. It's the only logical explanation.
While in Senegal, I reserved a special type of glee for those rare moments when I'd hear a pan or bowl outside my window go "crashbangclatterclatter" followed shortly by the sound of a cat meowing in surprise: "reeooowwaaaw" is the closest I can come to transcribing it. Perhaps I wouldn't have been so gleeful if I had known that those cats were trying to lie down next to me and kill me.
I have long considered myself at the forefront of the movement bringing the truth about the evil nature of cats to light. This is just the final piece of evidence needed. Consider:
- Witches turn into black cats when they don't want to be discovered. Your cuddly cat could be a wicked witch in disguise, waiting until you're asleep to cast a spell that will turn you into a newt. At which point you will be eaten.
- Cats have long been a symbol of bad luck to the more superstitious amongst us. Everyone knows its bad luck for a black cat to cross your path, should it really be any surprise that they're killing us when they lie down next to us?
- The feline is the perfect evolutionary creation. They're fast. Is it any wonder that the cheetah, the world's fastest land animal, is a cat? No. They're smart. Cats are probably some of the smartest animals on the planet, next to that know it all in my 7th grade science class. They're more agile than goats playing happily on a cliff (except cat's don't play - they hunt). Have you heard of the Tiger? According to some hastily researched numbers, tigers kill over 300 people a year - and that's only in this one part of Bangaladesh! This article tells me that they also chase down boats like 'dogs chasing cars." Except of course my dog doesn't flip the car over and devour its inhabitants with bone crushing jaws like a tiger does. Remember Sher Kahn in The Jungle Book? He wanted to do nothing more than eat Mowgli, just because he was a human. I heard somewhere that in the jungles of India, people have to wear their faces on backwards so that tigers won't come up from behind and eat them. Sneaky tigers, what happens if they just come from the front? How will they see them then? They won't, that's how. And then they're dead - eaten by some tiger just because he was hungry.
But, you say, those examples are from cat's bigger cousins, Jake. It's not fair to judge my cute Mr. Cuddles because of something his big bad cousin does, is it? You wouldn't judge me poorly if my cousin Lennie attacked an old woman and stole her purse, would you (note - cousin Lennie does NOT exist)?
No, I suppose not, but have you tried catching a normal housecat? I once went chasing after my friends cat, trying to play with him by raising my hands up above my head and going "boogie boogie boogie!" When I do this with my dog, she gets excited and we wrestle. Not cats, cats do not want to play. He ran out of there faster than a one-eyed man in a three-legged sack race (what is he talking about?). Later that night, I found the cat lying on my pillow. When I went to move him, on account of I'm allergic to cats, he swatted at my hand and hissed at me. Not only was this cat missing some crucial fun-gene, but he was vindictive and aggressive to boot. All I had done was try and play with him, and here he goes trying to cover my pillow in cat hair so I die in my sleep! Evil, I tell you, Evil!.
If you read that BBC article, you'll notice that a noted "cat expert" claims that cats "can sense when the weather will change, they're famous for being sensitive to premonitions of earthquakes."
This is merely propaganda from the "I want to watch the world burn in a fiery ball of feline-inflicted doom" crowd. Cats don't "sense" changes in weather. They cause changes in weather. Those of you in Kansas better watch out. Next time a tornado comes ripping through your flatter-than-a-pancake state (it's true - the US Geological Survey measured), don't blame the dynamics of warm and cold air currents. Blame your neighbor's cat, or your own cat.
Everyone knows that the Japanese have a strong preference for cats, but nobody's told them that this is the cause for all their earthquakes. Wonder why they don't have earthquakes on the island of Tarawa in Kiribati, the tiny island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? I'll tell you why, it's because they consider cats bad omens and drown them as soon as they're born. Good for them.
What then, can we do when faced with such an evilerer and insiduous menace that threatens none other than our very existence on this planet? (Say what you will about the evil hoards of evil goats trying to implement their evil plot for world domination - they were merely going for power. Cats are actively trying to kill us all).
You could round up all the cats in the world and stick them on some remote island that nobody cares about like say, Australia. Everyone knows that cats hate water and so will never swim away, so it seems like the perfect solution.
But I see no reason to subject the good people of Australia to a fate worse than death - death by cat. Without their fun-loving carefree lifestyle, who would pop another steak on the barbee? The days of cheeky "gday mate" would be gone forever. (Though on the plus side, the myth that a boomerang actually flies back to you would be dispelled once and for all).
So no, we'll save Australia for now. Besides, can you imagine the logistics of such a thing? Not to mention the risk that cats would for sure overtake a ship or two and use it against us. And there's always the threat that cats learn how to build boats and then were right back where we started.
No, this requires a long-term focus. Something that will not only get protect us from cats now, but will protect our children in the future. Something that attacks all sides of the problem: a two-fanged approach if you will. We shall follow Bob Barker's advice (well half of it anyways): start a worldwide campaign to have all cats spayed and neutered. At the same time, we'll stop spaying and neutering all dogs, the natural enemies of cats everywhere.
Can you see what will happen? The dog population will explode, chasing an ever declining number of cats up trees where they will remain and hopefully mutate into something more benign, like a little monkey which we can then train to dance as a jolly fat man in a goofy suit plays a pipe organ. We'll call it the "Best Friend for Everybody on the Planet" campaign. With a name like that, only feline apologists will be against it, and they will be exposed for the world-hating crowd that they truly are. Who else would be against giving every man, woman, and child on this earth a playful best friend? Cat lovers (or more precisely, people haters), that's who.
It's sure to work. If not, I fear for all of us.
In Dog we Trust.
Love,
Jake
