Why
is it that the first we hear of the cat is when it appears in Egypt
around 2,000 B.C. as the living embodiment of the goddess Bast?
The dog was domesticated...comfortably ensconced as man's adoring
servant, catching frisbees and letting his tongue loll unattractively
out of his mouth, long before the cat arrived on the scene.
Why? Where was the cat? Why are there no images of cats in cave
paintings? Why is the Bible silent on the subject?
It's
quite simple, really. Cats are not from around here. We know
now that our planet was visited long ago by astronauts from
a planet more intellectually advanced than ours. There is strong
evidence to suggest that the planet was the Planet Hsif, and
that cats were those ancient astronauts.
Say
these cats arrive in pyramid-shaped space shuttles, they land,
they reconnoiter, and someone's beeper goes off... there is
an emergency at home on the Planet Hsif. Everyone drops what
they are doing, the bulk of the team is hurriedly picked up
by the mother ship, leaving a token force behind to gather artifacts
and guard the pyramid shuttles. The main team plans to return
to earth to complete their mission
at the first opportunity. But their return is stymied... first
by a civil war, later by budget cuts.
Those
astronauts left behind await the return of their team with great
patience... perhaps they stare at a spot for a year or so and
then their situation hits them. They
have been abandoned. They growl, they weep, they nap, and then
with the pragmatism that characterizes their people, they proceed
to damage control. Determined to blend in, in spite of their
unusual features (they know they are fabulous-looking and this
will cause jealousy), the astronauts assess the needs of the
Egyptian culture and develop a coping strategy.
They
will become goddesses, rat killers, and charming domestic companions
all at the same time. Indispensable to Egyptian society, they
are indulged and pampered, their lives protected by law. In
Egypt the punishment for killing a cat, even accidentally, was
death. Families who lost their cats displayed their grief by
ripping their clothes and shaving off their eyebrows. It's all
been downhill since then...no wonder cats sometimes have that
whiny sound in their voices. 
This
scenario seems to me much easier to swallow than the one history
gives us: that the pyramids were built by laborers with only
primitive technology and without cranes or fork lifts.
You
doubt it? All cats evidence a vestigial memory of their origin.
Try this experiment: bring three cats together in a room, and
you will find that no matter where they are set down, they will
gravitate towards each other and automatically arrange themselves
into the shape of a pyramid.
There
is evidence to suggest that hairballs are actually a very sophisticated
means of communication and that their variety, time of day and
frequency of appearance are significant. Cats emit hairballs
to signal to their people in much the same way that shipwrecked
travelers build huge bonfires on the beach in hope of attracting
the attention of rescue planes.
How
frustrating it must be when we rush to blot out all sign of
these communiques. Perhaps cats feel like prisoners who mark
the days of captivity on the walls of their cells, only to have
their sadistic jailers rub out the signs of their efforts as
soon as they appear. I hope not. I hope they understand that
we mean them no harm, that in this as in many other things,
we just don't have a clue.
Some
cats have made it back to Hsif. In 1988 one of our major tabloids
headlined the news that hundreds of cats were disappearing,
kidnapped by aliens. Au contraire, I don't think so. They haven't
been kidnapped; they've been repatriated. We miss you guys,
but we know you're truly happy at last.
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