arteejee

A site of satirical musings, commentary and/or rhetorical criticism of the world at large.

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Location: Southeastern, Pennsylvania, United States

Sunday, March 09, 2008

The Little Kitten Who Could

This weekend, a warm, fuzzy story about survival has surfaced in Cleveland. A company there uncrated a shipment of steel coil and found a “scrawny, black and white female kitten” inside one of the coils. The crate was sealed in Singapore on February 4 and shipped to the states three days later. Unfortunately, the kitten's mother and siblings were found dead in the same crate. The kitten, estimated to be 12 weeks old, is responding well to medical treatment and eating food. The report states that the kitten will be held in quarantine for three weeks to determine if it has any infectious diseases which it can pass on to other animals.

This is certainly an amazing story. Of course, we’ll be left to ponder forever how this cuddly fur ball could live for nearly four weeks in a crate without a pan of water or a can of Fancy Feast in sight. Many of us will consider all scenarios of what might have happened, including the unthinkable. Leave it to me – a blog writer with a German ancestry and a fondness for gallows humor – to not only think the unthinkable, but also propose my theory here.

Quarantine for infectious diseases...hell! How about using that time for weening the little tiger off of its cannibalistic tendencies? There, I said it! I went there, and there’s no going back now! It’s best to let me go on with this and get it out of my system.

This cat should come forward and bare all as soon as it’s up on its feet. Perhaps an appearance on Oprah, but not Dr. Phil is in order. Dr. Phil would try to coax some guilt out of poor little Donner - my name for our plucky survivor after the Donner Party (huh, get it?). Unfortunately, he would not succeed. It is well known – or at least mostly assumed – that cats have no concept of this emotion called “guilt”. You want guilt, get a dog!

I sense a book and movie deal from this story! No, this wouldn’t be a tale suitable for children or the squeamish. Perhaps Stephen King could be called upon to commit the story to paper. The scene of Donner gnawing on her deceased siblings would be undoubtedly graphic in the King style. This could pose a challenge when Pixar brings it to the big screen, but I’m sure they’ll find a way to present it for mass consumption.

The ensuing publicity tour for the book and movie could take Donner all over the country. This could include a stop in San Francisco where she could swap recipes with the inhabitants of the tiger exhibit. Oh yeah, I can just hear that conversation now, “Take it from us, Donner. Humans taste like chicken!”

However, all these cheap shots at humor ignore another angle of this story: the kitten came into this country in a crate without going through customs. This kitten is an illegal alien! I’ll bet it doesn’t even have its visa paperwork filled out! Has the INS been called in? Why isn’t Lou Dobbs pouncing on this story? This angle gives Fox News an excuse to sink its teeth into the story now.

Okay, I think it’s out of my system now. I sincerely hope that this kitten will lead a nice comfortable life once it is adopted. It should be a warm, cozy existence living guilt-free, but always looking over its shoulder for immigration agents.

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