Perhaps it would be good for me to tell you a little about the stories that we cats tell each other around the fire while we wait for the staff to bring us some nice warm milk.  The first is told on Halloween.  It is the story of the Kitty Hawk and tells of a giant hawk that swoops down and picks up the bad kitties and carries them off where they are turned into yappy, arrogant, stupid and ill-tempered little dogs.  This is where Chihuahuas come from.  The mother cats tell this to their kittens to get them to behave.  Believe me, no cat wants to end up a Chihuahua.

For Thanksgiving it is the story of how the Pilgrims would have starved had it not been for the resourcefulness of the cats in winning the affection of the Indians who then provided food for the Pilgrims and taught them how to grow much of it for themselves.  The Indians recognized the cats as brilliant hunters and immediately saw they had something in common with them. I’m not sure they really trusted the Pilgrims, but they came to that conclusion a bit too late.

On Christmas Eve just before we all go to sleep our mothers would tell us the story of Kitty Claws, which is where humans got the story of Santa Claus.  Kitty Claws embodied the best of catdom; kindness, wisdom, warmth, and concern for fellow cats.  Kitty Claws brings presents for all good kitties, the bad ones having been taken by the Kitty Hawk and recycled into Chihuahuas and given to unsuspecting kids as Christmas presents.  Toy mice are a favorite.  Live ones are better but in deference to the staff’s sensibilities toy ones are the norm.  Kitty Claws travels in a sleigh pulled by reindeer.  In the beginning the sleigh was pulled by mice but you can imagine the problems that created with the mice being understandably nervous knowing that Kitty Claws was a big eater and it was a long night.

So if you hear a little noise coming from around the Christmas tree late on Christmas Eve, it is NOT the cat trashing the tree, it is Kitty Claws visiting your precious kitties.

The staff, like the rest of the world, is concerned about the financial crisis.  We cats are too.  Anything that interrupts our food or sleep is a cause for alarm.  As an expert on all things I’ll offer my opinion on one of the points of human behavior that mystifies me and leads to small problems becoming large ones – Regulation.  Humans have a fascination for it.  As soon as anything new comes along someone thinks they should regulate it.  What humans don’t seem to get is that regulation, even well-meaning and generally intelligently done regulation creates greater risk than everyone acting on their own because if everyone does the same thing and it turns out to be the wrong thing a local problem becomes a world-wide disaster.

Let’s use cat food as an example. I have never understood tuna flavored cat food.  Who thinks cats catch tuna in the wild?  Ever see a cat go fishing?  Mouse flavored cat food, now that would sell to cats, but apparently not to humans, and since humans are the ones doing the buying it is tuna not mouse.  Maybe someone tried mouse flavored cat food and failed.  Anyway those individual failures present relatively little risk to society and that weeding out process provides a laboratory to determine what actually works. Tuna flavored cat food, for example. 

But when regulation determines the actions of society as a whole there is great “systemic risk”.  A failure that would otherwise affect only a small segment of society is catastrophic, and no experimentation has taken place to determine what actually works.  Regulators never change their policies and even if they wished to do so it would take forever.  Do this on a global scale and you have what we have now, a global disaster. The international policies that contributed to the problem were the Basel Accords, but that is for another day.

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As much as the Left whined about preventing “systemic risk” the entire Progressive program is focused on creating it because of the hubris that somehow the experts of the Progressive movement are not affected by the limited knowledge that affects everyone else so they want to set the rules for absolutely everything.  The Founders created a Federal Republic with a central government with specific limited powers in order to protect us from over-control by that government and in the process, perhaps without knowing it, limited “systemic risk”.  The last thing we need is only one flavor of cat food.   

As a keen observer of human behavior and avid reader I am constantly amazed at how humans attack the problem of corruption by putting the foxes in charge of investigating theft from the henhouse.  Since I don’t have opposable thumbs I can only read the covers of books but one of my favorites is by P. J. O’Rourke – Parliament of Whores.  Sounds like an apt description of what I hear the staff describe as something they call Congress.  I used to open books with my teeth and just remove a page at a time to read but the staff vehemently opposed this and very nearly destroyed my educational opportunities.  I finally learned to use the internet while they were gone.  Makes for easier reading and once when I found their credit cards I had a great time.  They never did figure out how we ended up with $100 in cat toys.

Anyway, back to Congress.  Apparently they are setting up a committee to investigate members of Congress doing what would get a private citizen tossed in jail for a long time – insider trading.   Of course since their approval rating is in the single digits it is hard to imagine what they could do to make it much worse.  With debt fueled spending spiraling out of control, the Euro crashing, and a rumored catnip shortage, I am comforted that the foxes are once again protecting the hens.  I am sure the hens feel safer too.  Politicians are like roaches, it’s not what they pick up and carry off but what they fall into and mess up that makes them so destructive.

Ever wonder how cats spend Thanksgiving?  We eat and then nap, just like humans.  But, of course, we do that every day.  As much as you humans like turkey, in the wild we cats have to prepare our own and prefer something a bit smaller. One of my siblings tried to attack a duck once.  Got pecked half to death and remained terrified of even the smallest sparrow for months.  Chickens however are perfect; just the right combination of entertainment and nutrition.

By the way, when I bring the staff gifts of mice that I have captured I am saying two things very clearly which the staff never seem to get.  One, you are pathetic and obviously incapable of getting food yourself so here is an example of how to do it; and two, I can do this to you too so don't mess with me.

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You may be wondering why I, a cat, would be posting about economics, politics, and life in general.  You probably think that because cats spend much of their time sleeping they are not intelligent.  You would be WRONG!! At the outset let's be clear, the fact that we cats sleep 20 out of 24 hours is not evidence of laziness, but of great intelligence.  We are far more intelligent than animals which sleep less - dogs come immediately to mind.  Humans too.  You may find it hard to imagine that cats are more intelligent than humans but look around, who has trained whom?  Well, nap time. 

 

I thought I should introduce my self for my first post.  My name is Cato the Larger of Peevish St. Vincent.  I am a cat and therefore I am an expert on everything.  I should begin by letting you know that I do not type these myself.  Big furry paws are great for hunting stealthily and for shredding curtains, but not much good for typing.  I dictate these to one of my staff who, between feeding me, petting me, and letting me outdoors, dutifully types the posts.  Any errors are, of course, his.  Like most humans he's not all that bright, but you get what help you can.  If I just had opposable thumbs imagine what I could do!