It's Raining... CATS?!

            Being a proud and unabashed cat-lover, I couldn’t resist writing a blog post about them when I found an article tying cats to aviation. You might say that I was overjoyed at the discovery! Contrary to what dog-lovers say, cats are better than dogs in nearly every way. Granted, I may be a bit biased, but hear me out: do dogs bathe themselves? No. They let themselves get nasty and stinky, forcing their owners to clean them if they don’t want them to eventually smell like a sewer. Do dogs respect personal space? NOT AT ALL. They follow you everywhere (super annoying) and to add extra insult, they LICK YOU from time to time. So disgusting. Cats, on the other hand, respect personal space but still want to spend time with their owners, yet in realistic time periods, just like normal human interactions. Also, can dogs learn how to poop in a box? NO. They force their owners to clean up after them. And oftentimes they poop in their neighbors’ yards, which poor people like me end up STEPPING IN when they’re just trying to enjoy a nice summer day. Also, cats have been proven to be more intelligent than dogs. They can make a large variety of sounds to attempt to communicate different emotions to their humans and to each other, whereas dogs are capable of producing just a few noises. This is just one example of many saying that cats are much smarter. But I digress. The most important thing I want to stress (the point relating to the article I found) is that in many areas of the world, the common cat has a serious and pivotal ecological impact (which you can’t really say about the common dog). In the 1950s, a small town in the country of Borneo (an island in southeast Asia’s Malay archipelago) had a severe malady. And the only prescription, the only hope, the only cure? Cats. Only cats.

Borneo is boxed in red in map above.

           

            In the early ‘50s, the Dayak people of Borneo had a very serious problem. They began to experience an outbreak of Malaria due to a swarm of malaria-infested mosquitos. Many people were dying, and they were nearly helpless to defend against the disease. Upon hearing about this situation, the World Health Organization stepped in to attempt to save the Dayaks. They sprayed the chemical DDT (an insecticide) around the village. The mosquitos died, and the village appeared to be saved. However, after a short while, bad things started happening. The thatched roofs of the Dayak houses started caving in. Why? Because the DDT had killed a parasitic wasp that ate thatch-eating caterpillars. This was the least of the Dayak’s concerns, though. In the weeks after the DDT treatment, sylvatic plague and typhus started breaking out in the village, once again killing large numbers of villagers. Why? Once again, because of the DDT. It had killed the gecko-lizard, which was the main staple of the diet of the local feral cats. Thus, the cats also died. This allowed rats to run rampant in the village, and they were the carriers of the sylvatic plague and typhus. This created a new problem for the WHO, so they convened and came up with a solution for the rat problem—Operation Cat Drop. They loaded cats into planes (some reports indicate that there may have been as many as 14,000 cats involved) and they flew them to Borneo. When they arrived at the Dayak village, they grabbed the cats and parachuted them to the ground. The Dayaks turned the cats loose, and by all accounts, they seem to have decimated the rat population, saving the village.

            There are several variations to this story, but the main premise would seem to be historically accurate. So if you’re not a cat person, just keep these things in mind. Not only are cats flat-out awesome, but they save lives. Case closed.

            And now, for your viewing pleasure, kittens: