“Mrkgnao.”
—Leopold Bloom’s cat
Remember back when cats were domesticated? When they sat on your lap, purring as they stroked your cheek with theirs? When they didn’t roam about, increasing and multiplying, usurping all of our precious Dukean resources? That sure was a swell time—a time where Man ruled over the Animal Kingdom, where He was at the top of the food chain, where He could walk to class without 10 furry felines impeding His tranquility of mind.
Duke cats are growing by the millions. No exaggeration. And they are slowly taking over our turf—have you heard people talk about the cat epidemic?
• Example 1: A human rights activist talking to a Duke student.
Activist: There is genocide in Sudan! There are 50 trillion children dying in Africa! Israel is oppressing Palestine!
Duke student: You think they have it bad? Tell ’em to come here. We’ve got cats.
• Example 2: Two everyday students talking about the cats.
Bobby: What’s wrong Sally?
Sally: I just saw four cats, Bobby!
Bobby: Not cats! What were they doing?!
Sally: Nothing. They were just… sitting. It was disgusting.
Bobby: Oh, the horror! What have we done to deserve this?
(At this point, Bobby and Sally embrace in mutual helpless agony.)
The cats are a menace and must be stopped. They’re reproducing faster than bunnies, faster than Hugh Hefner if he didn’t use protection. For that matter, faster than the average male Duke student if he didn’t use protection. But that aside, why are so many of these rabid sexoholic cats here in the first place? I mean, cat penises have hooks on them, for crying out loud—copulation can’t be that fun when you’re getting ripped apart from the inside. Ever hear cats screaming late at night? Well, you know what they’ve been doing. But I digress—why are the cats here, of all places? It’s not like Duke’s campus is a prime natural habitat.
Initially, I thought that there was really no way for me to know the answer to this question. The cats were here last year when I came to Duke, and undoubtedly they were there when I was still in high school. But then, something occurred to me, and it all began to make sense. It’s so obvious—why I didn’t see this before, who knows. But on to the epiphany: See, it all started when some little kitty was mistakenly admitted to Duke. Don’t you see? Some kid named Ricky thought it would be too cool, daddio, to have his cat apply to Duke. So Ricky filled out an application for his cat, Fluffy, and some delinquent cat-lover working in admissions thought the opportunity was “too cute” to pass up. Fluffy was of course accepted, no doubt over some high-achieving 1600-SAT-scoring valedictorian.
The opportunity was too keen to pass up; I mean, by golly, Ricky never liked cats anyway. So he boxed Fluffy up in a little wooden crate marked “APPLES,” snuck her onto an airplane and paid some random junky 20 bucks to take her to Duke Admissions when she arrived at RDU. The problem was that Fluffy, typical Duke student that she is, had some fun before coming to Duke. Unfortunately, cats don’t have the advanced prophylactic protection that we privileged humans do, and she got “knocked up,” shall we say. The rest is history.
So now that it’s been a couple of years, and this epidemic has escalated to biblical proportions, what can we, as rational human students, do? Well, we go to a university that accepted a cat, so I think that we simply have to bow down to the power of the felines. Or we could just ignore them. If you see a cat, don’t go preaching about it like a burning bush talked to you. The ultimate choice is ours: Submit to feline authority or simply ignore them, thereby exerting our Homosapien prowess over them. We’re in the middle of an epic battle more important than World War Two. If we lose to the cats, simply imagine the consequences. Two words: Meow Mix. Then you’ll feel dumb for complaining about the Marketplace, won’t you? Forget the outside world; forget genocide, oppression, corrupt governments and voting tomorrow. We’ve got a much bigger dilemma on our hands.
Matt Dearborn is a Trinity sophomore.
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