Here Kitty, Kitty

If you're wondering why
Cats lick their own hide,
It's not for a cleaning
Or reasons of pride.
Because those who speak cat
Have asked and were told,
Their hair is like ice cream.
It's creamy and bold.
Their fur is a treat
when a tongue strokes it so.
Don't believe it?
Only one way to know.

-B.C. Byron

In a previous poem post, I talked about the engineer’s axiom “trust but verify”, which you may remember is a phrase that means there are some things that we don’t believe until we’ve tested it ourselves. This poem is not a good trust but verify situation. Please don’t lick cats. I do wonder though, is it possible that a cat’s taste buds are so different from ours that their fur tastes like ice cream to them? They like it enough that they’re willing to put up with having to throw up a ball of hair. I had heard about cats hacking up hairballs when I was a kid, but despite having many cats in our neighborhood and in our own yard, I had never witnessed the hairball barfing until I was maybe eleven. My mom is allergic to cats, so we weren’t allowed to have them in the house. I was naughty and stayed up late one night to sneak my black cat in through the window. I petted her for a while and fell asleep with her on my bed. I woke up a short while later to a horrific rasping, wheezing sound. I’d never heard anything like it. Thinking my cat was dying, I jumped out of bed ready to get help. Just then, the wheezing stopped and the nastiest wad of fur flopped onto my blanket. My parents didn’t find out about me sneaking the cat inside, but I paid for my crime by having to grab that fuzzy wet blob with my bare hands. I never let a cat in my bed again. I also learned that licking fur is a risky business. Can you imagine having to expel a chunk of your own hair at a party? It sounded painful, too.

Amazingly, I later saw a person on a TV show who was actually addicted to licking her pet cats. Again I wondered if it must taste better than we expect. Why else would she keep licking cats even after the doctor showed her a scan of her gut filled with festering kitty coat? I always tell my kids, if it’s not food it doesn’t go in mouths. I guess this lady likes to learn things the hard way.

Maybe we can solve the mystery of cat hair flavor in a safe way by having the folks at Jelly Belly make a new flavor of jelly bean. They have machines that you can put almost any object in and it will chemically analyze it, then reproduce the flavor in candy format. I’m going to give their factory a call.