The Conservative Cat

It is only a slight oversimplification to say that this principle defines the difference between conservatives and liberals. Given a government program that has gone wrong, a conservative will opt to scrap it while a liberal will argue that it only needs fine-tuning. To the conservative, the certainty of unintended consequences makes fine-tuning impossible.

We had an excellent example of unintended consequences here at home Tuesday afternoon. On that fateful day, the girl who feeds me was at the local animal hospital with the Other Cat. The Other Cat has kidney problems and needs periodic checkups. While there, the girl met The Interloper-- an orange longhair cat who needed a new home. Although completely ruthless when dealing with people, the girl is extremely soft-hearted when it comes to cats, so I ended up spending most of Tuesday evening explaining the rules of the household to The Interloper while she sat atop the washing machine expressing her displeasure at her sudden loss in status.

Shortly after midnight (while I was busy helping Bruce with the blog) The Interloper snuck out of the laundry room and found a place to hide. By Wednesday evening, the girl became worried and began tearing the house apart trying to find the missing orange cat.

So we had a 13-year-old girl searching every single hiding place in the house during the time of year when a house is most likely to contain unwrapped Christmas presents.

Everything has unintended consequences.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat