The Cat Burglar
Photo by Brazil’s General Superintendency of Prisons of Alagoas (SGAP) in Arapiraca, Brazil.
Authorities in Sao Paulo, Brazil, have announced that they are trying to get to the bottom of the case of the small white cat who was taken into custody while sneaking back and forth through one of the gates of the Alagoas state prison. When local authorities apprehended the kitty on her way in on New Year’s Eve, they found a cellphone, drills, small saws and other contraband taped to her body.
According to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, all of the medium-security prison’s 263 inmates are suspects. But, as a prison spokesperson put it, “It will be hard to discover who is responsible since the cat does not speak.”
What are we to make of this? First, obviously, we hope that the kitty is OK and in good hands. No news yet on this from the authorities.
Beyond that, some key questions:
1. Why are the authorities making the whole story so public, rather than just watching the various comings and goings of the cat – attaching a GPS to her … or whatever? If she’s just an innocent participant, she could surely have led them very quickly to, at very least, the people on the outside.
2. So, either:
- a) the authorities did not follow her, which means that they are either very dumb (unlikely) or are already in possession of a great deal of information that they haven’t revealed, or
- b) they followed the cat but she didn’t lead them anywhere of interest.
3. If b), then this cat clearly knows what she’s doing and is doing a lot more than she’s letting on. And since it’s unlikely that any of the prisoners are up to her level of intelligence, we can only assume that it is she who is the brains behind the whole operation. If that’s the case, then …
4. Since cats created the Internet and are behind all the world’s greatest conspiracies, we must assume that this kitty has others in a large, possibly global, network who are conducting similar operations at other prisons.
5. With that in mind, why is she smuggling drills, saws and a cellphone into this prison? So that a few hoodlums can escape? Unlikely. Cats aren’t interested in fostering petty criminality. So we must look to other possibilities, like:
- a) work is underway to create tunnels for feral cats to turn prisons into cat sanctuaries
- b) a large network of cats is preparing medium and high-security prisons in countries in the Amazon region to imprison people who are leading the destruction of the rain forests
- c) the metal fences around the prison are being adapted into a large-array radio telescope to communicate with cats elsewhere in the cosmos
- d) all of the above.
We will bring you further information as soon as it becomes available. Meanwhile, please keep a close eye on your cats at home and report any unusual activity.