Really? Do I really need one?

I am sitting at a stop light, in the fifth largest city in the United States (we passed Philadelphia last year), when I looked to my left and there, on the street corner, was the free enterprise system at work. A man was selling ‘cat trees’ out of the back of his truck. These were not your ordinary cat trees-no way. They were the Sequoia of trees, the red wood of cat climbing, well, things. Covered in fine carpet ruminants and containing perches and tunnels two to three meters off the ground to simulate the feline’s prior life as a huntress in the great forests, Serengeti’s,  and apparent living rooms of millenniums past.

Here’s a question, why do we want to promote such behavior with an animal?

Now don’t write hate-o-grams to me about cats being like people and they make great pets. Yes, I admit, I am not a cat lover. But I will defend your rights to own one. But do we really want to allow a cat, who apparently once hunted living things, and apparently lived high enough that when they are on a well, let’s say a book case ‘two to three meters’ high, they apparently can’t be seen by the animal they are hunting and will jump down and smite the passing victim? Do we really want to have this animal get in touch with its ‘roots’ and have that son of a bitch jump out of a used carpet/cardboard thing and have some PTSD thing on our skulls?

If we’re going to do that, we run the risk of being mistaken for some passing water buffalo and Tom thinking it’s a friggin Bengal tiger, not to mention that damn tower falling over when you always least expect it and render us unconscious, thereby allowing Tom to come up and eat our eye balls out, then go lay down and clean himself.

By god my dogs don't do that! You won’t see them jumping out of a bookshelf. No way, they have the recliner or the pillow on the couch next to master. And they don’t clean anything unless 1) it tastes good 2) it feels good and 3) why would they clean it off? They will just have to roll in it again tomorrow?

I was playing golf this morning, early morning and quite badly I might add. I hadn’t killed anyone and was able to keep the ball near the fairway. Here, about one hundred yards out, in the middle of the fifth largest city in the Americas, loped a coyote. At least it looked like a coyote at one hundred yards. When we got closer, it looked like a dog with some coyote in him, a product of some West Virginia/Appalachian relationship. A well fed coyote. Apparently, the coyote found a food supply. He wasn’t jumping out of trees. Nope, he found himself some morning sun and laid in it while watching me slap a little white ball passed him. I think he laughed, while he licked himself and then fell asleep in the warm sun.

There wasn’t a cat tree around.