The Cats And Rats Plan

My dear old dad once told me about a poor sap's idea on how to make a lot of money with very little investment. It was called the cats and rats plan.

The first thing you have to do is find a few stray cats. These you train to catch rats and then bring the rats to you. The rats are butchered and fed to the cats who are very happy with their reward and so they go out to find more rats but you get to keep the rat fur which the cats don't want anyway. The rat fur is sold to companies that put stuffing into things like chair cushions or to China which uses rat fur for doll hair and other items then sold for export to stores like Walmart. If you run out of rats you just cut back on how much is feed to the cats and set out the rest of the meat for a day or two which will attract more rats for your half starved cats.

It was all very simple and as everyone knows, the simpler the plan the better.

I thought of this the other day when someone who is a friend of mine on Facebook commented on a "news article" sent their way by a friend of theirs. The article showed a photo of a 85 year old women dressed in an odd looking fur coat getting booked by the Waco, Texas police. The caption says something like - Woman Arrested For Making Fur Coats Out Of Cat Hair.

The article goes on to say that neighbors were noticing that quite of few of their pets were missing and a lady in their neighborhood was wearing a fur coat that had some parts reminding them of their precious lost one. The neighbors hired a private detective who happened to see this little old lady luring an unsuspecting cat into her home with a bowl of milk. He found out that after she would entrap the cats and kill and skin them she would use the cat fur to make her coats. The cat carcasses were fed to the newly arrived victims so the fur could be harvested at the right time. The article goes on to say that it took 30 cats to make one coat and that the lady had 6 other fur coats. The 85 year old lady was sentenced to 15 months in jail for her actions.

My cousin Gretel loves puns but I've always had a soft spot for tragic cat stories. After reading the article I checked the comment section of the news article and found the most horrible but kinda amusing remarks. These are not quotes but they went something like:

15 months! She should get 15 months for each cat!  #no more animal cruelty

That lady should burn in hell for eternity and beyond!!!!!! The life of every living thing is precious. #peta for all

And my favorite:

Someone should skin that lady and make a coat from her! #waco neighborhood association

And then you have the remarks about the remarks:

Burn in hell for eternity? Don't you think that is a little much? Maybe you animal loving ******* can hold her hand while she burns in hell!  #springtime is wonderful

I checked the source of the article and found that the photo and article were taken from an online site which purports to be a news site but in truth is a satire site. I've seen other of their stuff posted by outraged friends before so I didn't even need to check the Urban Legends fact checker for this one. I mean really, in the photo she didn't look a day over 79.