Well, this is going to seem like piling on considering the inordinate amount of oddball cat posts on this blog.
A couple days ago, I was involved in a conversation and attempting to make a point, I invoked the cat/rat farm saying; “That’s like the cat/rat farm thing.” The guy said; “What’s that, what are ya talkin’ ’bout, whaddya mean?”
Now, at this point I don’t even remember the gist of the conversation, just how caught off guard I was that the guy had never heard of the cat/rat farm (also known as the cat/rat ranch) thing. And I couldn’t find a way to explain it.
I found out, at Triva-Library.com, that the origin of the cat-rat ranch was a piece that Lacon, Illinois editor, Willis B. Powell, released to the AP in 1875. Here is the original text.
Glorious Opportunity To Get Rich!!! We are starting a cat ranch in Lacon with 100,000 cats. Each cat will average 12 kittens a year. The cat skins will sell for 30 cents each. One hundred men can skin 5,000 cats a day. We figure a daily net profit of over $10,000. Now what shall we feed the cats? We will start a rat farm next door with 1,000,000 rats. The rats breed 12 times faster than the cats. So we will have four rats to feed each day to each cat. Now what shall we feed the rats? We will feed the rats the carcasses of the cats after they have been skinned. Now Get This! We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and get the cat skins for nothing!
Husker Du used the cat/rat article Mr. Kite style in this song “How To Skin A Cat”.
As always, think bottom line at the end of the day then, click pause on the music player located in the side bar before playing the YouTube.
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