As I approach a few days' Cat break - where mousing will be heavy, and blogging will either be non-existent (at worst) or light (at best), it's very satisfying for this Moggy to discover that there are other areas of this terrestrial vineyard where the idiocies of the Northumbrian politicos, their soothsaying country cousins and the ruling classes are exceeded. In fact, I'd go as far to say that they're not only exceeded - they're outclassed. If there were ever a Holy Roman Empire (neither holy, Roman nor an empire) Idiocy Games, the Northumbrian contestants should immediately pick up their knuckles from the ground and discreetly withdraw in shame to contemplate their crushing defeat.
My dear readers - wherever you are on this globe (yes - it is the circle of the earth: the Bible says so in the Prophecy of Isaiah), prepare for The Big One. Sit down - making sure you've found a chair first. Pour yourself a flagon of mead, chew a red, spotty magic mushroom - or find some alternative way of mentally preparing yourself for what I'm about to tell you.
Ready..?
Somewhere in the far-away land of Ultima Thule, an entire city has decided to ban the selling of pets to its citizens. Read it again - slowly. If any member of a human family in that benighted parcel of earth wants to take a kitty or a bunny home - or even a puppy if absolutely necessary - then he or she won't any longer be able to go to the shambles and make a purchase of a cuddly animal from a pet trader. An entire industry is going to cease - and pet stall proprietors are a species facing rapid extinction.
Of course, there will be an underground trade; business is business, and there's a hardy breed of entrepreneur found in every community who will continue undaunted to meet the market demand - with frequent, furtive glances over his shoulder. But at what cost? In that land - renowned for its savage and uncompromising treatment of those members of the criminal fraternity who don't achieve the exalted and privileged ranks of the political classes, the jails are going to be heaving with apprehended kitty merchants, and the gallows will be working 24/7 shifts to dispose of this evil - root and branch.
I know from Caedmon that he obtained me from a kindly local farmer; his pet cat - a formidable mouser - had surprised him with a litter, and once weaned, I was parted from my mother and siblings at no cost to Caedmon. Many of my feline peers were bought from the shambles and markets of the district.
The likely outcome for Those Wise Ones in the administration of Sacred Law in that Ultima Thule metropolis is that they'll reap the whirlwind from the breeze they've sown; a surge in good-neighbourliness and human kindness will result in animals being given away for free, and the population of cows, sows, cats, gnats, bats, rats, frogs, hogs and dogs is going to increase exponentially. There will be legions of street cleaners, hopelessly and frantically sweeping up brown colorectal statements from the pavements, unable to keep up with the volume of production.
I will be joyfully contemplating this over the next few days - if the supply of mice has reduced, that is...
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