Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Recorded for Posterity

I had to register the cats today.

I'm not entirely sure why Our Little Town thinks that cats need to be registered. To the best of my knowledge I would not have to do that for any firearms I might have around the house, and cats are less dangerous than guns even if you are a rabbit. I suppose it is one of those mysteries, much like why exactly Charles Nelson Reilly was famous in the first place. You either get it or you don't.

Regardless, every year I am forced to go down to City Hall (which you cannot fight, since it is a building - you can fight the people inside if you want, but somehow "Less paperwork for cats!" does not seem like one of the great rallying cries in history and I should probably save some of that revolutionary vigor for more important issues, like chickens) and fill out the appropriate paperwork stating that yes, I do indeed have two cats, and yes, they are up to date on all shots including rabies, and yes, they think they run the place and what are you going to do about it, that's what I'd like to know.

I then have to pay the city a nominal fee for the privilege of being manservant to the cats, in exchange for which I get shiny metal tags to put on their collars so they can lose them somewhere, and the promise that if the police decide to write me tickets for letting the cats outside illegally I will only have to pay $5 per cat rather than $200 per cat.

What a bargain, I say.

So I do my bit for bureaucracy, and the cats are square with Our Little Town for another year. The natives will rest easy tonight.

3 comments:

Katherine McKay said...

Does "outside illegally" mean that cats are to be kept indoors or on your property at all times? Really?? Wow! Nifty cat beds, by the way.

David said...

Well, we can have them outside if we put them on a leash, which suggests to me that the City Fathers of Our Little Town don't own cats themselves. The girls tried to train Tria to take walks once. It went about as well as you'd expect.

Beatrice Desper said...

I saw Rick take his cat for a walk once. It was more like a pull.

What's the difference between cats and dogs? Dogs have masters. Cats have staff.

Issam recently got a parking ticket. By paying within two weeks of the incident, we got twenty percent off the bill. What a bargain!

BTW, where do you get all this time and energy to write? Have you found an agent yet?