The Importance of Being Accurate.

Most everyone agrees that cats are adept prowlers, able to utilize stealth and cunning as efficiently as, and often better than, the average weasel. Regardless of one's expertise in conducting such clandestine capers, however, it's only a matter of time before even the craftiest kitty is caught, red-pawed, doing something that, at least to the typical overbearing human, they probably ought not do. Sadly, I'm no exception, and earlier this week, after years of hiding my superior feline literacy, I was discovered surfing the net on my self-proclaimed owner's HP. I tried to pretend that I was simply batting the mouse aimlessly; but as clever as I am, an actor I am not, and such a lame little charade wouldn't have fooled a d*g, let alone a human.

I admit I've been lazy lately and have relaxed in my usual precautions. I knew it was unwise of me, but I began relying on the predictability of Azy's habits. Unfortunately, she's never been a very reliable sleeper, and just when I thought I had her figured out, she walked in, rather abruptly, as I was browsing the Cat Fancier's website. I must say, she took it better than I'd ever have expected, and rather than die straight of a heart attack, she decided to put my talents to use.

At first it didn't seem like a bad deal: Free, uninhibited use of the PC, her office, paper and supplies, in exchange for a few hours of mundane research. Regrettably, I can now see why she's so eager to delegate such research to me. The topics are tedious and vague, and sometimes flat out frustrating. I can search for hours and find little of relevance. I think she makes most of it up, but there's really no telling. Humans aren't complex thinkers, so I suppose it's possible that she truly wants the rubbish she has me seeking.

I'm sure most of you, being human, are unsympathetic. Still, if you want to know just how frustrating her little scavenger hunts can be, try meeting her so-called criteria yourself and see how miserably little you find. This was her request:

"Fleez, I'm working on a project that requires seeds no larger than sesames, that are naturally blue in colour; but they can't be too dark or they won't work, and I've no idea which plant produces them. Hop on it! Chop, chop!"

When I heard this, naturally I was confident. After all, I'm a cat with a taste for plants, and since she gave me her credit card number and authority to use it for the purchase of her heart's desire, I figured I could probably get away with tacking on a tender, young cat mint bush as my personal reward for a job well done. This is where it all goes pear-shaped: even in the catalogs that boast a strictly seed inventory, you rarely find pictures of the seeds themselves. Page after page of luscious plants! Ferny, flowery, viney, leafy, succulent, wispy, and fully bloomed, plants. NEVER SEEDS!

What's the point of calling it a seed catalog if you never show a picture of a blasted seed! If all you see is the finished product, shouldn't it be called a plant catalog? When was the last time you saw a catalog for paintbrushes that contained no pictures of the brushes themselves but plenty of the masterpieces they'd painted? I realize that most of you aren't looking at paintbrush catalogs, but it's a good question all the same. And while we're on the subject of accurate advertising, if the finished product is all that's to be depicted, why do these so-called seed catalogs never show pictures of big, barren plots of weedy dirt, complete with mounded deposits made fresh nightly by the twenty-seven neighborhood ferals who stand on line to use your garden as a giant toilet while howling mercilessly at the unaltered female in the house directly next door? Not everyone has green fingers, you know? It's just absurd to think that every single seed will form into a big delicious-looking plant like they show in these catalogs, and anyone who's ever seen a plot fail in a garden anywhere near a feral colony knows exactly what I'm on about!

All I can say is that the lack of communicative and organisational ability displayed by the human race is abysmal. I believe such deficits are directly relevant to the decline of modern civilization. If felines ruled the world, seed catalogs would have pictures of seeds, plant catalogs would have pictures of plants, and paintbrush catalogs would have pictures of paintbrushes. One would always know where to look for things, because they would always be properly labelled.

Yours Purringly,
W.C. Humphries II (Mr. Fleez for short.)