Practical Cat Research Continues

Jump to Comments

A cat, doing what they do best. Credit: Enga

As I mentioned in an earlier post, science has given up on the effort to find a practical use for cats. Granted they are decorative, but there’s like 700 million pounds of cat just laying around in America’s living rooms (see illustration above.) Surely all these cats could be put to good use somehow?

Many sectors of the American economy have tried to harness the power of cats. The results have not been the success one would expect considering the popularity of the little flea buses; aside from the multi-trillion dollar cat food, cat litter, and cat toy industry of course. The video game industry tried to cash in on cats for example, click on this banner to see the less than popular result:

Mind numbing, eh? Clearly no match for Pac Man or whatever it is the kids are playing these days.

One of the most elegant and brilliant attempts to harness cat power is the famous buttered cat array:

Buttered Cat Paradox

As everyone knows, a cat always lands on its feet. And a piece of buttered bread always lands butter side down. So if piece of buttered bread is strapped to the back of a cat butter side up, and the cat is subsequently dropped…the laws of nature state that the cat must land on both its back and its feet at the same time. This is obviously impossible, and such dropped cats simply hover spinning in the air inches above the ground. Sadly attempts to attach generators to hovering spinning cats proved to be bloody failures, and it wasn’t cat blood.

Some have suggested that cats used to be useful, but being pampered in living rooms is the problem. So just putting the cat outside should do the trick. Once again, the results were predictable:

Outdoor cat at “work.” Credit: Black Millie’s Cat Photos

Scientists now believe that cat’s legs are vestigial organs that will disappear entirely in a few more generations. Will people tolerate cats that have to be carried everywhere? Well, they do now. Finding a practical use for cats may be one of those scientific mysteries that never gets solved, like where does the lap go when someone stands up.

Fortunately, even as science has foundered, lay researchers are continuing their investigations. It has been reasoned that possibly a combination of a cat and some other item might make an indolent cat into a useful household accoutrement. See this site for research in this field: Stuff on my Cat.

I will post further on this fascinating subject at a future date. Now I have to go clean a litter box, scrub out cat bowls, and order new curtains. Makes me wonder, who’s running this planet anyhow?

(The above images are claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. They are not being used for profit and they are central to the subject of the post.)

1 Comment

Filed under Cats