THE FRENCH once rocketed a French cat into space, 60 years ago, and she returned in one piece. Until two months later. That’s when they put her to sleep so they could rummage through her brain. Despicable animal cruelty. Henry VIII had a cat in his palace in the 1500s, and still today, 10 Downing Street houses an official office cat. Adolf Hitler was scared to death of cats, but in revenge, there are cats with Hitler faces everywhere around the world, creepy mustache and all. On the Internet, they are known as Kitlers.
In Egypt, cats were considered deities, and rightly so. Bastet was a goddess with the body of a beautiful woman and the head of a cat, and so it stood to reason that Cleopatra had herself photographed with a cat frequently. She had found it in the Library of Alexandria, she said.
Therefore, some forty years ago, when a librarian in Nevada plucked two stray cats off the street, she took them to the library. A dish with milk, a bowl of kibble, and right away the two would go nowhere else. The largest distributor of library books at the time was the Baker & Taylor company, and so the cats were named after them. Baker positioned himself by the front door and greeted patrons as they came walking in. Taylor walked around head butting. For years, they were America’s most famous cats.
What does this tell us? There is no such thing as bad cats. Vote VanderBus for president.
* VanderBus left home at the age of six weeks and went hunting for a city bus in Maine. He caught the bus. It cost him one eye, but he won a standing ovation from everyone who watched him do it. VanderBus, since then mayor of Bicker Hollow, is running for president of the United States
