a lesson to be learned

Animals and their urine are in the news today.

I read this morning a story about some cats that caused a fire by relieving themselves in the wrong place.

It seems that in Kobe, Japan, some guy had two kittens in his house and they chose to urinate on his fax machine. The urine found its way into the electrical printing mechanism of the fax machine, caused a spark and the result was a fire that extensively damaged the man’s domicile.

Fortunately the man suffered only minor smoke inhalation as he put out the fire, and the kittens ran to safety and were not injured.

I’m sure there are many right now thinking, “Thank goodness those cute little kitties were not injured.”

To which I answer an emphatic, maybe.

The owner of the house says there is a lesson to be learned here, so I guess, since he gained some new knowledge, some good came from it. He says if you have a cat or dog, be careful where they urinate, and to make sure they don’t urinate on electrical appliances. I also see some good that came out of this. While the house reeked of smoke and burned rubber and plastic, it didn’t smell of cat piss—at least for a while. I think the real lesson is to keep your animals out of your kitchen and living room, at least until they are housebroken so they won’t be urinating and defecating all over the place and smelling up the house.

There was also a story in the news about a bovine gone mad in Nigeria. In this situation it was the animal that apparently was offended by a human urinating. The cow killed a bus driver who was taking a whiz on the highway. It also injured some bystanders. The police “arrested” the cow and put it in the pokey.

I think the lesson that can be learned from this is to make sure that whether one is a human or an animal, one needs to be sure that they relieve themselves in the proper place, or there could be negative consequences. If you are proceeding down the highway and the urge becomes too great, at least stand on the other side of the vehicle and shield yourself from traffic, or from large animals that might take offense and stop you in mid-stream. If you feel you have to tinkle on electronic equipment, find the guy in Japan and do it in his house. He’ll understand. Otherwise you may be in for a shock, or you may be playing with fire. For the rest of us, we’ll confine our voiding to properly designated places.

That’s the way we do it in Jimbo’s world.