Bob Day had no idea what he was unleashing.
On March 31, at 9:55 a.m., he drafted an e-mail to the Bakersfield College staff asking them to stop feeding the collection of wild cats on campus. He had no sooner clicked the “send” button than the fur started to fly.
Catatonic employees all over campus came alive. Taking time out from busy schedules and overburdened workloads, they pounced on their keyboards with a ferocity worthy of the feral felines themselves.
Some, like Gloria Dumler, came out spitting on the cats’ behalf. Hackles raised, she bared her rhetorical fangs and accused Day of nothing less than cat baiting. Why, she hissed, didn’t SISC, the district’s insurance company concerned about cat-borne diseases, extend its policy of faculty-feline segregation to squirrels, gophers and “assorted other animals”?
Day did say SISC was concerned about all wild animals that faculty might be feeding, but he singled out the cats as Feral Enemy No. 1. Actually, he wasn’t referring to the cats themselves. He really meant what they leave behind i.e., their crap. Yes, you’ve undoubtedly seen those noxious, steaming piles all over campus, just waiting to be tracked, smeared, squished or otherwise transported into classrooms, along with the unfriendly bacteria that happily call them home.
Perhaps you even complained to student government. Thanks to Joyce Kirst’s e-mail, we have learned that an ASBC representative discussed the issue in Academic Senate. Student government is working with administrators to review cat relocation strategies, the emphasis being, of course, on the method that will cause the hapless felines the least amount of pain and distress.
It is good to see BC tackle this pressing issue. Solving the cat crisis could well be the key to the seemingly unrelated problem of budget cuts. Day should be commended for his foresight in recognizing that feeding the BC cats is the first step on the road to financial ruin. What with all those soft hearted staffers putting out Friskies for our grateful kitties, some are bound to catch diseases which will spread to other staff members, faculty and students. A shrunken work force will mean fewer classes, and with fewer students attending, the college will lose even more funding.
Picture an abandoned campus ruled by roving bands of wild cats defecating and breeding in what used to be the science building, Forum West, the free speech area. Day was right to condemn a practice that could trigger this doomsday scenario. The rage of a few feline-fond employees is a small price to pay to avert disaster.
It seems the powers that be have already acted. Wonder why Campus Center looks more barren than usual? Yep, somebody done razed the vegetation. It looks like a swath of Vietnamese jungle after a napalm drop.
I’ll give you three guesses why: A) The gardeners are on LSD. B) Sandra Serrano hates green. C) Hedges are prime kitty housing.
If you answered A or B, please see a psychiatrist immediately.
I don’t know why nobody thought of my solution, which is so brilliantly simple only someone with an advanced degree would miss it.
Relocate the cats and their loving supporters to a self-contained wild mammal preserve!
Just think of the benefits for everyone. The humans would have the joy of living among their favorite animals, Jane Goodall style. They might eventually be accepted into the feline social order, thereby creating unparalleled opportunities to demonstrate the compatibility of these two very different species. The campus would be spared an epidemic, the cats themselves would be assured a lifetime supply of free food, and a feline studies department could be created to analyze the cat-human relationship, using the preserve as a case study.
Instead, BC got turned into a moonscape while we were tanning in Mexico. We now have a grimmer, uglier campus, and therefore grimmer, uglier students. Our cats are once again homeless, driven out like so many vagrants from their makeshift homes.
Our only consolation is that, like Bubble Boy, we live in an environment so antiseptic that we will never again be at risk from cat-borne bugs. We may be miserable, but at least we won’t have the runs.
Life just might be better as a wild cat.