Junction City, June 24, 2011--Albino County homeowners from Prairieview to Moorseville are reporting a "disturbing upsurge" in cat vandalism in spite of the best efforts of county commission chairman Dick Cheshire's Cat's Cradle Task Force.
According to spokesmen for the sheriff's police, incidents of hairball vandalism, shredded rare books, missing parakeets, torn furniture and midnight caterwauling outside bedrooms where innocent children are reading exotic books under the covers with flashlights are up 330% since the last time anyone checked.
"It's a catastrophe," said Cheshire as he admitted that "little cat feet" had depleted the task force's budget of $350,000 in only three weeks. "Our finances smell like a bad litter box."
The latest known incident occurred before dawn at the home of Coralie Poodlestone of 666 Dante Street in Mooresville where the scalloped apron rail and sweeping cabriole legs of Baker provincial draw table were "shredded to smithereens." A note next to a broken dining room window said, "What's the sound of one cat clapping?"
Two weeks ago, a group calling itself Cats is Us sent an e-mail to the editorial department of the Star-Gazer, claiming responsibility for the violence. While the Sheriff's Department has asked the newspaper not to release the full text of the message, Editor Lucinda Trail said that the message was typical of the kind of "cat and mouse acts that run rampant through innocent communities like unclipped claws through a cat lover's arms when pet stores and veterinary clinics become so obsessed with booze and reality TV that they forget to close their doors when night flies into town like little crows' wings."
Poodlestone said she believes cats from Cats is Us are targeting homeowners in her neighborhood due to the Man's Best Friend Acres sales department's "hazardous preoccupation with homeowners having doggy sounding last names." The Rex family at 75 Dogrun Avenue and old lady Fido at 387 Broken Leash Road discovered, when they went outside to take a leak this morning, that their yards were covered with hairballs and empty tuna cans.
According to Cheshire, the county's crack philosophers are trying to figure out the answer to the sound of one cat clapping riddle. "So far, the answer is 'nothing,'" Cheshire said with a grin that hung there in the air long after he had left the building.
Sheriff's Police detectives label the demands of Cats is Us "excessive and out of sync with the traditional kinds of demands made by garden variety kidnappers and other hooligans.
"All cats love fish but fear to wet their paws," explained Bill "Cat's Eye" Morgansterne. "They want what we can't give them and don't want what we are offering which, if I do say so myself, is a cat’s pajamas kind of deal."
According to Trail, all of the notes received from Cats is Us and copycat gangs indicate that the "litter will hit the fan" if the demands are not met prior to the dog days of August.
"I feel like a detective on a hot tin roof,"Morgansterne admitted.
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LOL! Love this!
Posted by: Melinda | June 24, 2011 at 08:03 PM
Hmmm...now I'm wondering if it was a marauding cat that carried of my hiking shoe rather than a marauding coyote!
Posted by: The Earth Mage | June 24, 2011 at 08:42 PM
Once the cats begin to organize, be afraid. Be very afraid.
Posted by: Montucky | June 24, 2011 at 09:56 PM
Thank you Melinda.
Yeah, Smoky, maybe the coyotes were just the usual suspects, yet they were innocent.
That's for sure, Montucky. Then they'll take matters into their own paws.
Posted by: Malcolm R. Campbell | June 25, 2011 at 06:37 AM