Friday, May 06, 2011

Stealth Dog

As facts trickle out of the clandestine corridors of power it was disclosed yesterday that, in addition to the NAVY Seals and Army stealth helicopter pilots that took Mr. bin Laden down, there was also a highly trained dog. Reporters are fanning out through the land as we speak trying to glean information on this mysterious canine. Perhaps President Obama will shake his (or her) paw when he congratulates the members of SEAL Team Six in a secret ceremony later today.

The Pentagon retains the services of over 2000 dogs to guard the country and defeat the forces of evil. Police departments, drug enforcement agents, and disaster recovery teams all use dogs. Although we preferred monkeys in the early days of space exploration, the Soviets blasted many a brave dog into orbit.

And it's not just dogs we trust. Plenty of other animals are used for special governmental assignments, such as dolphins, mice, pigeons, and even fruit flies.

Felines
But have you ever noticed? There is one animal we never depend on to accomplish a crucial assignment: The cat. That's right, although cats are America's most popular pet today, they are never the animal of choice for top secret missions, let alone deployed against the world's most feared terrorist. They don't fly stealth bombers or land on far-flung beaches in the middle of the night. We don't have bomb-sniffing cats protecting our airports or cadaver cats searching for crime victims.

I know what you're saying: "Sailors love having a cat or two among their hearty crew." But that's only because our interests happen to coincide with theirs. If cats didn't enjoy torturing and eating things, they'd never win a berth on any tug boat or trawler. Besides, aren't they all too well known for jumping ship at some obscure port where a curious object catches their eye?

Back in the late '60's the French bravely sent a crew of cats into space, having put them through rigorous training to learn vital tasks for feline astro-research. But once having slipped the surly bonds of Earth, the highly trained cats abandoned their mission and spent the time mewing pitifully, eating freeze-dried Little Friskies, and batting at critical switches with cute gloved paws, sending their ship spinning wildly out of control. French Mission Control was able to return the kitties safely to Earth only with the utmost difficulty. Their space program was set back at least 5 years and the dream of showing Russia and America up by landing a cat on the Moon was never realized. Even today, if the French send anything up on their Ariane rockets, it's a couple of lab mice.

Alright, that last part was a riff on this real thing that happened.

At any rate, be proud of all the many animals that stand between us and the forces of chaos. And also be grateful for the ones that cause chaos. Just don't let them on the International Space Station.

4 comments:

Elvira Mistress of Pussydom said...

There seem to be a lot of misguided dissing of Pussydom Assembled going around in the aftermath of the Bin Laden Take Down.

I've been finding other posts like yours.

While it may be true that we have never been trained to fly airplanes...how can you claim to know whether a Cat took part in the raid, or have never been trained to be bomb-sniffers, or other secret missions.

Secret missions are secret for a reason, after all.

Pleonic said...

I know. My cat Scooby chewed me out when I read it to her, so I had to apologize.

Elvira Mistress of Pussydom said...

Good on Scooby!

I've updated my post to let Pussydom Assembled know of this developement. ;-D

DeeDee said...

I wonder if the old cartoon Felix the Cat was named after Felix the space cat...

I enjoyed your blog. I will be back.

DeeDee
http://yesindeedee.blogspot.com/