Last night during the late news we ran a brief piece on spaying and neutering dogs and cats—typical C-block (after the last commercial) fluff.

This morning, my phone line that takes viewer comment calls had the following messages. Note that listening is significantly better than merely reading these, so my apologies if you don’t find this as entertaining as I do.

Comment #12; 7:05 am
My comment is about your story about cats and how they need to be fixed. Please don’t do that; the anthrax bacteria is transmitted by animals and mice are very hard to catch—the only ones to do that are cats, and cats are very easy to maintain and can roam in the streets without any trouble. You need to know about defense in these times of war. Maybe the terrorists, instead of using bacteria in bottles, will do it with animals, mainly rats or mice. Anthrax is a disease that can be transmitted easily and the animals can live for five or ten years and cannot be controlled. If you have cats, they can kill the rats and the mice and then you can burn the cats, so it is a public issue. Please do research on it and even tell the Parliament about it. Don’t fix the cats, reproduce them and let them roam. They are pretty, they don’t hurt people, they are easy to maintain and in ancient times they were used to control diseases that were transmitted, so actually it is really important that you do not neuter them. Thanks.

Comment #13; 7:12 am
This comment I just told you about cats, I forgot to tell you that every house in America, every business, your station, and all the Parliament including national houses are supposed to have cats. Don’t think that this is a joke—it is the truth that bacteria is inoculated in mice and that’s the main transmission, so I beg you to call the people who are neutering the cats and promote every family adopting a cat because hopefully one day it may be that cats are the best weapon that you have against terrible disease. I am sorry it sounds stupid now but it is not. Do research and do a whole program about it and see how pretty cats are and how useful they are as the best weapon we have in America against attacks.

Burning the cats? Realize that this call is absolutely typical of the viewer comment line. When I get 5-7 calls per week like this, how can I not love my job?