Luna's birthday, the internet, Douglas Adams, and fish...

Today is Luna’s first birthday. Thank God... without this celebratory event I’d have probably ended up writing about Douglas Adams’ birthday - which was yesterday and his sixty-first – well it would have been.

She may not have gone where she intended to go, but I think she have ended up where she needed to be. Yes, she’s made it to fifteen in cat years and is officially a teenager. You live and learn. At any rate, you live. Cat birthdays aren’t like human birthdays. For one thing there’s no cake - just fish and cat treats - and the first year of a cat’s life is equivalent to fifteen human years and not one. After that the second year is equivalent to ten, and then each subsequent year is the equivalent to four human years. Cats, as you can see, grow up pretty quickly. I know this to be fact as I read it on the internet.

Luna meanwhile doesn’t really care about the internet. All she wants is lots of food, to be allowed outside for a play, have plenty of time for sleeping and limitless places to sleep. For Luna time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so, as lunchtime is any time she wants it to be. The closest Luna has come to the internet is falling asleep on my laptop. Why does she do this? Well I asked her and she refused to answer that question on the grounds that she didn't know the answer.  How utterly cat-like. It would seem that in some ways cats seem to be a little like human beings, almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, and also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Mind you if cats do ever become internet users I think that we can expect a few changes. For one thing there will be even more pictures of kittens… if that is possible. Mice and fish will probably feature a little more than they do currently and all online games will feature a ball of wool that rolls around waiting to be chased and caught. Seems pointless to me, like thinking fish is nice is some undefined way, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

Who knows? Maybe the internet might be a better place for the intervention of cats. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons. This could just as well apply to cats, except instead of mucking about in water which most cats hate (not Luna, she loves it), mucking about with balls of wool would apply. But then you never know with cats. If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat. And that would never do 

Douglas Adams would have been 261 in cat years today, which unfortunately isn’t the answer to the great question of life, the universe and everything. It seems that life is wasted on the living and the answer, as all cats know, is Forty-two.

Anyway that’s it. And as Luna would say if she could be bothered - so long, and thanks for all the fish.