the fuzzkill: cats among us

It seems that cats are just getting more and more wily these days. As this news story details, an unsuspecting family was recently shocked to find that a couch they bought at the Spokane Value Village was harboring a female cat that had been “trapped” inside the piece of furniture for upwards of 12 days.

returning to the scene of the crime

First thing’s first: I’m never shopping at the Spokane Value Village again. I’ve often been disturbed by the large amounts of unwashed tee shirts this thrift store has been peddling. I once bought a Monopoly set from them, and there was no steamboat (what’s the point?!). But this is definitely the last straw.

More important than my issue with the SVV is the fact that this is just the beginning of a massive onslaught by feline invaders. The following are just a few disturbing examples of this trend that my devoted readers were good enough to send for your edification.

Dayton, Ohio – Used television purchased on eBay. Cat emerged after three-and a half weeks, then smothered the family’s grandmother as she slept through her soaps.

Hoboken, New Jersey – Movie theater popcorn hid a kitten for 15 minutes. Kitten was thankfully stopped before doing any major damage.

NY, NY – Kitten found in banana purchased at Starbucks on 53rd St. between 5th and 6th Avenues. It was no longer alive, but had been perfectly preserved by the banana itself. Starbucks issued a formal apology.

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the fuzzkill: creationist cats

This week I’d like to bring your attention to a story coming out of the Galapagos Islands. The good news: a new species of Iguana has been identified on the Galapagos Islands, and it’s pink! This pink Iguana separated evolutionarily from other Iguana species about 5 million years ago, and it is adorable.

The bad news for the extremely endangered pink lizard (and the world) is that feral cats, introduced by cat-loving travelers and settlers (i.e. people like YOU), are eating these poor pinkos alive. I’d go into how this proves the kitty-creationist agenda, and how cats are clearly trying to stop the progress of science by destroying species that could unlock the secrets of our evolution, but it just seems so obvious that I’m not going to even bother . . .

THE BATTLE RAGES ON!

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a special tuesday edition of the fuzzkill: from ye olde fuzzkill archives

While doing research for my forthcoming book, The Black Paw: A Secret History of the Feline Underground that Threatens to Enslave Us All, I came across the following article from the September 18th, 1901 edition of the New York Times. It details a strange incident at the Garrick Theatre, during a performance of Clyde Fitch’s play Captain Jinks and the Horse Marines:

I post this as a strong, early example of the long-standing cat-bias in the mainstream media. Clyde Fitch was the first American Playwright to publish his work. He wrote more than 60 plays (many of them comedies) and made an astounding amount of money. In fact, just 7 months before, the New York Times ran a piece entitled “Clyde Fitch in his New Role of Foremost American Dramatist and Other Topics“. With this in mind, one must try and imagine his horror when he read the words of this despicable NYT reporter, who stated that the cat incident was “…funnier than anything Mr. Fitch has ever invented.”

What could account for this devastating about face? By way of explanation, I offer the following May 30th, 1901 article from the same paper:

It seems clear to me that the kitty-cabal, reacting to an “activist judge’s” decision regarding the value of feline life, infiltrated media outlets everywhere, planting cat sympathizers as “engineers” on Broadway to disrupt the plays of Mr. Fitch due to his penchant for casting dogs (and not cats) in his performances. How they infiltrated the Times, however, is a much darker story . . . one that’ you’ll have to shell out $25.99 for just as soon as these narrow-minded editors realize that The Black Paw is the most important work of investigative journalism since All the President’s Men.

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the fuzzkill: cat robber

You’ll notice that the title of this post is “Cat Robber,” instead of the more obvious “Cat Burglar.” You know why? Because I’m not going to play that game.

This week’s post is about “Frankie”, a cat who has been terrorizing his quiet UK town of Swindon. He is quite an accomplished thief, stealing anything he can get his greedy little paws on: plush toys, rubber “beefburgers” (Oh! British people!), green witch’s heads (?), old socks, “nappy sacks” (??), etc. etc.

Frankie will fu*%ing kill you

Predictably, the mainstream media coverage of this story focuses on how quirky the whole thing is. There no tough questions asked of this cat or its owner. More importantly, the strangest part of the story is completely passed over: this cat has stolen 15 identical toy leopards. Am I the only one who wants to know why everybody in this town owns an identical toy leopard? Sounds like a cat cult to me . . .

Awwwww!

More importantly than this lack of journalistic integrity is the underlying cat/human double-standard that so many of you people are blind to. I can’t just go around stealing things and expect to get away with it, then get written up in the local paper for how cute and quirky I am.

that's adorable!

I call it “the boyfriend rule.” When a cat kills something small and defenseless, then brings it home and puts it in your bed, that’s okay. When your boyfriend does the same thing, all of the sudden it’s “creepy.” When your cat finally learns to use the toilet, you congratulate him, and you don’t even make him flush. Yet when your boyfriend just forgets to flush (maybe he just didn’t want the water in the shower to be all wonky, and then it just slipped his mind) it’s like it’s the end of the world or something. You see what I’m getting at here?

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the fuzzkill: thanksgiving edition

This week, I’m going to take a step back from my usual “Cat’s are taking over the ‘X’ in ‘Y’ way” diatribe. I think it’s time for some positive bad cat news.

I am thankful for cat humiliation.

The best part about crazy cat ladies is that their enthusiasm for feline companionship often leads them to hurt the ones they love. I’m not talking about physical abuse, which I don’t advocate. I’m referring, of course, to the emotional trauma caused by severe acts of humiliation.

My first example comes courtesy of Gizmodo, and I think it’s a good, representative example of the kind of cat humiliation you’ve probably come to expect.

Insert funny LolCats saying here. I suggest “I iz eatn your brainz now”

My second example raises the bar on cat humiliation in a way that I personally find both twisted and courageous. It comes from the cat humiliation clearinghouse at Stuff on My Cat, and shows the effect that can be achieved when you’re willing to shave your cat before you dress it up. It’s quite stunning.

Suggested LolCatz tagline: “Iz did so much angeldust last nite!!”

Finally, for those of you looking for something a little more extreme, feast your eyes on my favorite example of cat humiliation by far. It comes from the Ten Speed Press book Why Paint Cats (spoiler alert: there’s no good reason) which I highly you find the book at your local bookstore, but here’s just a taste, and yes, it’s real:

This cat is a total whore.

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the fuzzkill: ftds (feline transmitted diseases)

The weekly column from our resident non-cat-lover

Science is now confirming what I’ve long suspected: an irrational and overly enthusiastic love for cats (or “Crazy Cat Lady” syndrome) is most definitely a disease, and it’s caused by a contagious parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. This by itself might not sound like such bad news to you fur-o-philes reading WWW, but I urge you to read on . . .

As Sharon Moalem (author of Survival of the Sickest) describes it: The parasite Toxoplasma gondii “needs to make its way to cats if it wants to reproduce sexually . . . recent research uncovered some shocking mind control tricks that toxoplasmosis uses . . . it seems that being infected with toxoplasmosis can change the behavior of mice. First off the mice get fat and then they seem to lose their fear of cats, which of course turns them into cat food.”

armageddon is near

So, having this parasitic disease first makes mice fat, and then makes them like cats. That doesn’t happen to humans, though, does it?

So a few more mice get eaten. What’s the big deal? In addition to widely credited research suggesting links between the parasite and schizophrenia, eye disease leading to blindness, and the flu-like symptoms of an active infection, Wikipedia reports that “correlations have been found between latent Toxoplasma infections and various characteristics such as decreased novelty-seeking behavior, slower reactions, feelings of insecurity, and neuroticism.” Hm. That sounds eerily familiar.

What’s more, an Australian researcher has found compelling evidence that infected men “have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans . . are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.” The same researcher found that infected women “tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.” Both men and women with the parasite are “2.7 times more likely than uninfected people to be involved in a car accident as a driver or pedestrian.”

I know you’ll probably say that you LIKE sitting home on Friday night, watching reruns of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman on TVLand with Mr. Mittens, putting off going to the bathroom because it just seems like so much work.

this could be you

Perhaps you don’t mind that your stupid, underachieving, ugly boyfriend is in prison again after crashing his car into a male competitor’s mailbox. And it’s possible that you enjoy crying into your pillow because of your intense feeling of loneliness and worthlessness, feelings exacerbated by your general whorish behavior and deteriorating eyesight.

Maybe when you’ve let it all out, your cat starts purring and pawing, bringing a smile to your face, making it all better. Or maybe, someday, your entire life story will be summed up in one horrific headline: Fort Worth woman who kept 185 dead cats loses custody of 100-plus live animals.

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the fuzzkill: cats gone wild

We love cats here at world wide whiskers. But they’re not perfect. In this column that may or may not appear weekly, the fuzzkiller will detail the darker side of our fuzzy friends.

If recent news is anything to go by, the war between catkind and mankind has finally come to a healthy boil, and it’s time to pick sides. I’m speaking, of course, of the crises currently being caused by the world-wide epidemic of feral cats.

Before you start giving me your cat-propaganda about how harmless and adorable your lovable Mr. Mittens is, consider the following account of a vicious feral cat-attack (or “cattack”) that occurred recently in Binghamton, NY.

Tarah Tripp, director of the Broome Humane Society reports that “A little girl was playing in her sandbox and a cat came up to her. She tried to pet him and unfortunately he scratched her face where she had to have stitches and have a series of rabies shots and the girl is only five years old.”

Artist's Rendering

People have long been arguing that a love for cats and a love for small children are not mutually exclusive, but we now have definitive proof to the contrary. If John Allison of Jekyll Island, GA is to be believed, “In a nine-year period, one unspayed female cat can be responsible for 11 million cats, counting her off-spring and their off-spring. And that is only if two cats from each litter survive.” Now, set aside for a moment the likelihood that John Allison probably just made that up, and look at the numbers which are now FACTS:

-With an estimated 90 million owned cats in the US (source) and countless other feral cats (let’s call it an even 50 million) that means that in nine years, there will be 1,540,000,000,000,000 cats with nothing better to do than maim small children.
- The average human weighs around 80 kilograms.
- 5 year-old girls are, roughly, 1/3 the size of adult humans, so we’ll say that the average 5 year-old girl weighs 30 KG.
- Kilograms are equal to liters.
- There are 2,500,000 liters in an Olympic size swimming pool.
- If there were 1,540,000,000,000,000 cats in the world, and each of them maimed just a single 5 year-old girl, you could fill 18.5 BILLION swimming pools with maimed 5 year-old girls.

That’s why I suggest the following one simple step to stop this thing right now:

Stop feeding feral cats.

part of the problem

Bob O’Neill, of the greater Chicago area, took up the task of feeding all the feral cats in his neighborhood after his elderly mother, whom he lived with, passed away. Bob needs to become the face of this feral cat problem. The doughy, mustachioed, bespectacled, momma’s boy, never-been-made-love-to-by-a-woman face. The message of Bob is loud and clear: We can no longer allow the Bob O’Neill’s of the world to endanger our children.

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