Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 1, 1994 TAG: 9408020016
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But we like to live by the law, and we recently paid $2.50 for a license for Judy, who is 14 years old and hyperthyroid.
At Judy's age it may not make a whole lot of difference if the county doesn't have any tags that say "cat" and instead issues this blue device that plainly says "dog tag" on it.
We thought it was kind of weird to issue a dog tag to a cat. This tag, incidentally, is a big sucker that appears to have been designed for riveting to the collar of your average Hound of the Baskervilles.
I can tell the county now that Judy has enough trouble with her thyroid gland and can't be expected to go stumbling about the house wearing this piece of hardware that misstates her species.
Although Judy may not care, we don't know how dogs or cats handle the stress of ordinary living, and it may be that her sense of self might be eroded by wearing a tag that says "dog" on it.
We've tried to shelter her since her thyroid surgery, and I think we just won't tell her about the tag. I think she'll be happier that way.
Eventually, of course, armed officers of the law out for a night of busting non-licensed cats will pound on our door, and I'll whip out the tag that calls Judy a dog.
One of these cops is going to notice that the tag is for a dog, and then I'll produce the receipt to show that a cat is a dog as far as the county is concerned.
It will then be up to these officers to decide whether they wish to continue employment with a government that would have us put dog tags on cats.
They might also ask if people who do things like that can be trusted to keep the payroll and make sure the old pension fund has enough money in it.
They also might wonder - as I do - about what would happen if the county decides to have llama licenses.
It may be kind of uppity for an old Radford boy to describe this mislabeling of cats as Kafkaesque.
But I looked up old Franz Kafka in my World Book, and its description of his work seems to fit. It is a trifle sexist, maybe, but it fits.
World Book says that in Kafka's writing: "Man appears as a hunted creature, facing shapeless, inhuman forces that prevent him from achieving his aims and fill him with anxiety."
Sounds like your average cat-owning taxpayer to me.
by CNB