Does it make me a bad person to wish that an alligator would mysteriously eat my neighbor’s cat in the middle of the night?

If it helps, there’s a possibility that it might not even actually be my neighbor’s cat, but simply a stray that no longer has a home and hence, no longer has feelings. You know, kind of like the homeless people that you pass every day driving home from work but never toss your spare change because you know that they’ll only spend it on drugs and booze anyways…

I think it pretty much goes without saying these days that I don’t really care for cats, although I’m going to keep bringing it up anyways for emphasis. As far as I’m concerned, cats are pretensious, self-centered, and despite the family dog, who proudly bears the title of man’s best friend and would gladly endure a terrible foot odor just to bring his owner his stinky slippers each morning, your cat really doesn’t give two shakes of the dog’s tail about you. Look at your dog from across the room and chances are his thoughts are something like, “Hey buddy, can’t wait to go down to the fishing hole with ya tomorrow!” whereas catch a glance from a cat across the room and it’s more along the lines of, “I’m better than you, and when you go to sleep I’m going to poop in your sock drawer…”

And just to clarify, though, for me it’s not even an issue with all cars – when I see a lion or tiger in the zoo, those are pretty cool because while yes, they do still give off that same I’m better than you vibe that your average housecat exudes, for all tends and purposes those larger cats actually are better than me! The average Bengal Tiger weighs two or three times my weight, is likely a whole lot more lean than myself because I’ve yet to see a tiger lounging around munching on doritos into the wee hours of the night, and it could likely shred me to pieces in a matter of minutes … I have no problem admitting a creature like that to being better than me. But a scrawny, little thing that just lays around the house all day, leaving behind a mess of hair and crap for me to clean up … not so much…

Hence the reason why when I started noticing a strange, black cat poking around our patio in the evening hours, my first instinct as a supporter of the Everglades was to put those mighty lizards to work reducing the annoying cat population. And just think, with each feline, errr, donated, that’s one less alligator in Florida going to bed hungry tonight … and really, in the end isn’t that what it’s all about?

I’m sorry if this brilliant, seemingly foolproof plan upsets the two or three fans of these snobbish felines out there, but we really don’t have any other choice. I’ve tried dealing with them in other “more civilized” ways – sending them up in a balloon or way out west, for example, but the darned things just keep coming back! One time I even devised a particularly clever idea to send one to the man in the moon – I really thought that one was a goner, but well, you know the song…

So ultimately I suppose I’m always open to your suggestions, but in the meantime if you happen to see any gators just waddling across the golf course near our home, let ‘em play through, will ya? They’re working for me now…

No cats were harmed during the making of this humor column, but tomorrow is another day.