Why Cats need to Shave their own Sheep

Neal’s Belch no. 139 for 18th Jun, 2004

I’ve been doing some research recently into the early days of architectural design, specifically the design and implemetation of catflaps in front doors in the mid to late eighteenth century.

In those days, of course, cats had not yet become domesticated to the extent to which they have today. So we’re pretty much talking about tigers here. Tigers took many hundreds of years to adapt to the cultural change between, on the one hand, eating a zebra which they had hunted down and killed with their teeth, and, on the other hand, sitting on a kitchen floor looking cute while somebody empties a tin of tuna onto a saucer.

Tigers were always baffled, in the early days, as to why they were made to eat off saucers. Saucers, they thought, are what you put a under a cup to catch spills. Surely plates are for eating off, not saucers. Unless they’re having milk, in which case you would have thought, surely, that the aforementioned dairy beverage would be served in a glass. Or maybe in a mug if it’s warm. But apparently not.

Then there was the ball of string thing. In their natual habitat, tigers used to make their own string by catching wild sheep, shaving them, stretching the wool on the branches of a nearby cocunut tree, dying the wool in a subsidiary of the Nile, and then selling the wool on the black market to raise enough money to buy a ball of string.

Nowadays they’re just handed a ball of string by their owners. It’s gotten far too easy. Young cats don’t know how good they’ve got it. They spend all day lying around purring and watching cartoons.

No wonder dogs get confused and are sometimes seen chasing their tails as if flattening some grass to lie on in the jungle. I think we need to do something about all this over domestication of animals. They’ve become too cocky, these cats and dogs. They’ve discovered that they can get anything they want just by being cute.

Well, I suggest we show them who’s boss. I’m going to borrow a couple of tigers and put them beside a cute little domesticated kitten, and see which one thinks he’s more believable in his role as “cat”.

Anyway, the problem with early catflaps was that tigers are bigger than humans sometimes. so instead of a cat flap in a human door, they had a human flap in the middle of a tiger door.

And it all worked perfectly fine, until humans became tired of playing second fiddle to an animal that wasn’t supposed to be living in a house. So the humans got a couple of tigers, one male and one female, and squashed them until they became small and cute. And the rest is history.

In the future, cats will become smaller and smaller until mice are no longer afraid of them. What will happen after that, is anyone’s guess.

I’m not suggesting for one moment that cats will become subserviant to mice. Mice have much better taste and self respect than to eat a cat for dinner. But I do think that mice will eventually realise that their time has come. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the movies in the Terminator trilogy, but I’m pretty sure that one of these days a giant naked mouse will turn up here in a time machine and enter a diner with a large weapon to steal a motorcycle.

And believe me, when that happens, we’re all bandjaxed.

So we may as well make the best of the limited time which we have left. I suggest taking up a hobby, or becoming guardian angel to a troubled boy who’s thinking of running away to join the circus but who can probably be helped to resolve most of his issues tidily in about sixty minutes, including commercials.

Personally, I have no hobbies whatsoever. I prefer to fill my spare time lying on my recliner chair thinking about the passing of time, the evolution of monkeys into human beings, the mysteries of the cosmos, the colour of the sky, the depth of the seas and the price of cabbage.

And I know what you’re going to say. There’s very little that I can do about any of those things. But that’s where you’re wrong. Take a look outside your window right now and see what the sky looks like today.

You’re welcome.