Cat Mafia

We buy tons of chicken feed.  Mice steal feed.  I pay for feed.  I hate mice!

Luckily mother nature invented the cat.  Aside from catching mice, cats are useless.

Our cats, all three of them, are inept.  The mice are winning.  I need another mouser, preferably a kitten.

Luckily mother nature provides.  Cats like to fuck.  (Usually loudly near my window just before dawn.)   This historically caused an oversupply of kittens which kept the mice at bay!  There really is balance to the universe.

The kitten oversupply was a feature of my rural youth.  When I was a young Curmudgeon, neighbors would periodically try to foist kittens on us.  Sometimes we adopted one and it became a beloved pet.  Sometimes our cat would have a litter and we’d scramble to adopt them out before they ate us out of house and home.  This only works because kittens are so damned cute and mice need chasing.

Sadly, I grew up in the Stone Age and a New World Order has taken over.  Now we’ve got Bob Barker bitching at us whenever a cat gets knocked up.  Being the good cat owner I am, I’ve diligently neutered all my cats.  Which means I have nutless inept cats that can’t even make more cats.  Thanks Bob!  Cut me a check to pay for some damn feed will ya?

Which brings me to an important universal truth:

Kittens, like zucchini, should be given away for free.

A prized hunting pup or a Holstein calf is worth money.  When a generic tabby drops a litter behind a dumpster it’s just a damned cat.  Free!

Over the years the Humane Society has disrupted that ancient (if imperfect) rhythm.  I can no longer wander around a Farmer’s market and find a farmer desperately trying to get me to adopt a free kitten.  They’re all in the Shelter.  Fine.  But if I go to the Shelter they’ll charge $80-$100 per cat.  I call bullshit!  Either it’s a poor orphan waif that needs a good home (and I care well for our critters) or it’s a free natural resource that the Human Society is exploiting.  The way to tell the difference is if they give you the kitten for free or if they try to turn a buck.  My theory is that great strides in spaying and neutering (which is a good thing) limits the free kitten supply.  This creates a market in kittens (which heretofore were free).

I’m not going quiet into that dark night.  I’ll pay for a cat when it can retrieve a duck.

In the meantime I’m still looking.  Somewhere I’ll find a kitten that needs a good home.  (I once adopted a street cat in Europe and even flew the bastard back to America with me.  A damned good cat that had a damned good life as a beloved pet. That’s just how I am.)    Cats must be free. I don’t give a shit what Bob Barker has to say.

A. Curmudgeon

P.S.  Spare me the Humane Society / PITA / after-school special story of heartbreak.  If they wanted the kitten to go to a good home they’d hand it over and be happy the little guy would have a good life.  If they’ll only part with the waif for a fee…then they’re a self perpetuating bureaucracy using kittens as a revenue stream.