The Cat’s Meow

So, there’s this 20-year-old woman in Norway named Nano who thinks she’s really a cat, instead of a woman. She wears fake cat ears and a fake cat tail. She purrs and meows and goes around on her hands and knees, at least in her apartment. She has an overwhelming aversion to water. She hisses at dogs. So there you go; I guess she’s a cat.

I jest. I don’t think this woman is a cat. I think this woman was raised by some well-meaning loonies who indulged her childish fantasies and gave her a distorted impression about how the world works. I think she was misled into thinking that society should accept her as she claims to be, just because that’s what she claims to be. I don’t even think she’s actually insane. I think she knows she’s not a cat, but likes the attention from people who pretend to take her seriously. Also, she can talk. Granted, she speaks the Norway language, whatever that is, but still. Cats can’t talk.

Of course, I could be wrong. She could really be insane.

But Nano isn’t the only person in the world who wants to be something other than what she is. There are lots of those people. I happen to be one of them. I want to be a famous novelist who goes around in a HMMWV and has so much money that he commonly leaves small gold bars as tips in restaurants. The difference is that I don’t pretend to be wealthy. Not because I’m grounded in reality, so much, but because the IRS is liable to take me seriously, and start taxing my gold.

Honestly, I think Nano needs help. Someone needs to sit her down, give her a bowl of milk, and explain to her that you can’t just decide you were born the wrong species, and therefore everyone should consider you to be something other than what you obviously are. And if that doesn’t work, they should sic the dog on her.

I’m kidding, of course. That would be mean. And the last thing people need when they have problems is someone being mean to them. We should be nice to folks who think they’re something they’re not, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to indulge them. We should kindly let them know, as often as possible, that they need to grow up and live in the real world. Indulgence is a far greater injustice than truth.

Now, if I were going to pretend to be an animal, it wouldn’t be a cat. I’d pretend to be a dog. That actually isn’t a bad idea. Everyone loves dogs. Most of them don’t have to do much besides eat and sleep and chase a ball now and then. Plus, they can scratch where it itches whenever they want.

Cats, on the other hand, contribute nothing to society. All they really do is cause problems. Just last week, a reader sent me a story about a Canadian fellow who went to jail over a cat. And it wasn’t even his cat.

Dan Smith (his real name) lives in Gatineau, Quebec, where all cats must be registered. I think guns have to be registered up there, too, which just goes to show you how strange the Canuks are. They think guns are as dangerous as cats.

Dan’s story is pretty weird, even by Canadian standards. Gatineau police and animal control officers have been chasing him for months over a $276 fine levied against him last summer for having an unregistered cat. You’d think they would have been able to catch him, if they knew where he lived, well enough to know his cat was unauthorized, but Dan says he doesn’t even live in Gatineau. His estranged wife lives there, and he spends some time with her, but he actually lives in Vanier, which is across the river.

Besides all that, Dan says the cat, Winnie, is a feral cat, and it just showed up one day and his wife started feeding it, so it hung around. Who wouldn’t? But the Gatineau law doesn’t make any provision for feral cats, and Winnie has been eating at the Smith place for 12 years, so Dan is guilty.

After dodging the heat for months, every time he visited Gatineau, Dan finally decided to turn himself in. The fine was up to $326 by that time, but Dan refused to pay it. “Why should I pay a fine,” he said, “if I don’t own a cat?” I’m thinking that if he’d owned a dog to begin with, none of this would have happened.

But it did, and Dan ended up spending three days in jail, in lieu of the fine. Three days in jail over a cat. I don’t know who to be more disgusted with – Dan or a court that would put a man in jail for that. They should have locked the cat up and let Dan alone.

Maybe he should hiss at the judge and see if they’ll let him go. That might backfire, though. Gatineau might have a neutering law . . .

Kendal Hemphill is an outdoor humor columnist and public speaker who has had several cats, including one named Penelope that once whipped a cat-eating Shar Pei. Write to him at [email protected]