Why hairballs? Scientific explanation by Dr. Chi Chi Lachatte

Here moi is again!!! Did you miss me?! So many of you wrote brilliant comments on my last post that I feel encouraged to write more. I know many humans are mystified by feline behavior. We are much like dolphins, quietly going about our miraculous lives without drawing attention to our wisdom or cuteness. While dolphins don't make hairballs, we cats do. I just know you have always wondered why.

Here is a scientific explanation even a human can understand. Cat researchers at MIT - of course you are familiar with the Meow Institute of Technology - have performed brain scans of cats and discovered an area of the feline brain they have named the Subcortical Hairball Nucleus. Nucleus hairballus subcortical whateverus.

The SHN is an exquisitely designed structure (much like moi) that responds to input from the visual cortex and the Very Smart Thinking Part of the feline brain (VSMTP). The SHN is particularly sensitive to human stupidity and hypocrisy. When it receives information from the visual cortex and the VSMTP that tell it human stupidity and hypocrisy have been observed (this happens a lot - statistically speaking, about 90% of the time), the Subcortical Hairball Nucleus sends messages to the Hack Hack Hack, Gag, Spew Nucleus. Voila. A hairball is gathered and ejected.

Here is an example of recent human activity that has triggered tens of millions of American cats to hurl hairballs: American humans, whether they are right, left or moderate, are mad at the new president for not fixing things immediately. In this way, American humans are a lot like little children who want Daddy to make everything better right away. Need I tell you that kittens are not like this, even when they are very little - and adult cats? No way Jose!

I think of the current American political situation in metaphorical terms. (My degree, PhD, from MIT, was split between physiological psychology and tripping-his-brains-out-on-catnip, Dr. Carl Jung.) Mr. Barack Obama is in the exact position of a human who inherits a huge chunk of land. That land is packed with outhouses almost wall to wall. (By the way, would somebody please tell humans about hygiene - dig a hole, do your business, then cover - of course, it would help if there weren't so many of you, but I digress.)

The bajillion outhouses are packed full with you-know-what - left by the previous administration, You Know Who! The American people have given Mr. Barack Obama a teaspoon and said to him. "You clean all this crap out!!! Now!!!!." And as soon as he started to work, they sent in swarms of mosquitoes and deer flies to torment him while he tries to do an impossible job.

I have to go now. Just reading my brilliant exposition of human stupidity and hypocrisy is triggering...hack hack hack........

There, I feel better. My next post will consider the role of Dopamine in human folly. Get it? Dope - a - mine.