Thursday, March 24, 2011

Cats are squirreltastic

Hello again! Long time, no post. When I'm away at school, I rarely have the time, nor the inspiration, to write about my furry felines who stay at home. I only get to see them on the weekends every few weeks and my mother (henceforth their grandmother) hasn't been keeping data logs on their behavior like I asked her. "Alien cats?" she said. "That's silly" she said. "You're wasting all the tinfoil" she said.

Yesterday I came across a video produced by a very angry, very animated . . . squirrel. The squirrel, despite its high-pitched voice and adorably huge eyes, hates everyone and everything and spends his free time complaining about human beings and throwing nuts at them. Warning - the following video uses (some) strong language.

In Foamy Fan Mail VIII, Foamy (the Squirrel) receives a fan letter regarding a contest he had. The transcript goes:

Letter: Dear Foamy, in October, when you had the Foamy-Look-Alike contest, how come the pictures I submitted didn't win?
Foamy: *sigh* Dear Annie Leibovitz, well a simple explanation for this - you sent in pictures of a damn cat! AM I A CAT? No! I am not a cat. I don't look like a cat, I don't think like a cat, and I don't know any cats that have a t-shirt with the logo "Squirrely Rap" on it. SSSQUUUIRRREEELLLLY.

I have to disagree, especially with the comment "I don't look like a cat."

Yes, Foamy, yes you do. All squirrels do. And it's only since yesterday when I came to understand why.

First off, for those of you who are skeptical about the whole "Squirrels look like cats" claim, go outside and start walking until you come across a squirrel. Take note of its spastic, jerky movements, its cute fluffiness, and it's general caffeinated-like demeanor. Seem familiar? That's because it is. I would know. I'm and expert on both squirrels and cats at this point, given my observational studies on felines and the fact that my school campus is teeming with squirrels. Seriously. I'm pretty sure the humans are barely taking the lead with a student to tree rodent ratio of, like, 2 to 1. They're everywhere.

Here's a visual aid to illustrate their likeness:

Identical.

A shallow-minded thinker might go "They're clearly related by some distant ancestor. That's just proof of evolution! That cats evolved along with squirrels right here on Earth!" But you and I know better than that. No, no, this is evidence, alright - evidence that cats are also psychologists. They know exactly how we think.

See, I don't think that cats just stumbled across Earth, thought it was a decent enough place, plunked their ship down, and took over the world. There are many, many variables they must have considered - such as oxygen, gravity, presence of water (but not too much), and on and on. And I'll bet they knew that the intelligent species* on any particular planet would notice something was off if every single creature on the planet had scales except one species. Yeah, that's discreet.

I imagine that they must have taken the appearance of other creatures in the world into consideration in choosing the planet of their choice. They had to blend into the crowd.

Nailed it.

* Not as intelligent as them, obviously.