Three of my absolutely favorite things are golf, good coffee, and cats. Except cats. I don’t like cats. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that cats often exhibit the same behaviors I find disagreeable in people–things like arrogance, aloofness, and pooping in sandboxes.

Now before all you sourpusses get furrious and start caterwauling and send me a bunch of catty electronic correspondence saying that cat-haters should not be able to serve in the military or have marriages recognized by the state, please understand that I was born not liking cats and only as I grew older did I come to realize that cat-hating was part of who I am.

Therefore, in order to be true to myself, I have no alternative but to catalog a few tails about cats littering the news this week that would admittedly be tragic if they were not so pawsitively humorous. Please be advised: if you are a cat-lover or overly sensitive, these stories may hurt your felines.

The first story comes all the way from Turkey. I know what you are thinking, but I am NOT going to stoop so low as to make fun of (i.e., ‘roast’) Turkey over its goofy name because 1) it would display typical American insensitivity, and b) doing so would tend to make people Hungary.

Last fall an earthquake hit Turkey at the city of Van, further proof that Turks like to name their locations after random nouns. According to one highly trained and perhaps somewhat delusional veterinary scientist, the local cats have been made so upset (i.e. put into a bad mewed) by the quake that they have been hurling themselves from high places in a furry of kitty suicide attempts.

One would normally conclude that the catalyst for this trend would be too much catnip or imitation of what young kitties see on Tom & Jerry or maybe the Jack-cAtss movies. But this is more than just another case of copycat stunts. Kitty depression has obviously led to this catastrophe. (Lynx!)

Perhaps most apawling is that this is a story the main-stream media refuses to purrsue. If you recall, through the entire Republican primary debates not one question by any of the so-called unbiased moderators had to do with this issue of cat suicides–so say the Democats. Purrsonally, I think the UN needs to stop pussyfooting around, do their usual job, and pass a resolution that addresses the issue and yet has no practical effect whatsoever.

One solution I see is to round up these distraught kitty-cats, and send them to Tonsberg, Norway to have them put out of their mewsery by police. A woman there by the name of Gro (no, really; her name is Gro–I‘m not kitten) called police because her cat had been hit by a car, which is a testament to the true utopian existence they have in Norway as the police there litterally have nothing better to do.

The police, seeing the dire condition the cat was in and wanting to be humane about the whole thing, sprang into action and immediately took catstody. Then, using a technique developed over years of experimentation by Dr. Katvorkian, they placed the cat in front of their own vehicle and ran over it again. Unfortunately, the cat still did not die, presumably because European police cars are manufactured by Matchbox. But these were no ordinary policemen; these were highly-trained professionals taught purrseverance and resolve, trained to serve and protect until their shift is over. So they ran over the cat a third time. If nothing else, this story demonstrates that northern European socialism can and does work, thanks to local claw enforcement. (Lynx!)

An obvious drawback to the Norwegian solution is that though they are a mountainous region, they are plainly lacking in Catskills. So another option I see for the Turks is to purrhaps send the cats to Arizona and give them to Lucienne Touboul. In this story, the purrpetrator is an 86-year-old woman twice accused of hoarding cats to the point of placing them in her freezer when they die to be later made into various mealtime treats like calico bean salad or catcciatore (made with tom-atoes).

The furrst time police were summoned to see about Lucienne, she had 90 cats in her possession, and this time tabbylations showed 64 feline friends littering her home. While this story may give you paws such that you categorize it as an incident not meriting mews coverage, I find it worthy, if for no other reason than it contains the quote, “No cats were found in the freezer Wednesday.” (Lynx!)

While I’m sure Turkey tastes great on a croissant with mayonnaise and can handle their own problems, we have gato stop procatstinating and do something ferally soon. For this is quite pawsibly the most meowntainous cataclysm Turkey has faced in furrever.