Well, Chicken Corner missed the Dec. 29 Times story the first time around, but thanks to the Echo Park Animal Alliance list serve news service, the story doubled back to me: LAPD to deputize cats in rats war. [My headline.] They're putting the critters to work, no questions asked. Years ago, my husband was a witness/non-witness in a crime, and a detective used to pop up at odd hours (they don't call ahead) to talk about what RJ hadn't seen. One time, standing at the door, the detective saw my cat Flipper (who at just this moment 2008 is doing some pre-rain-storm prowling around the house). "Does he catch many birds?" flew right out of the detective's mouth. (And rats, by extension.) I immediately said, "Oh, no, no, never!" Which wasn't true. Stupid! Stupid! I didn't realize it was a job interview.

According to the Times:

One animal welfare group has figured out a way to save their lives and put them to work in Los Angeles. The Working Cats program of Voice for the Animals, a Los Angeles-based animal advocacy and rescue group, has placed feral cats in a handful of police stations with rodent problems, just as the group placed cats in the rat-plagued downtown flower district several years ago -- to great effect.

One thing Carla Hall's story gets egregiously wrong is the notion that feral cats cannot be turned into pets. I have my own stories on that account, i.e.: Completely feral cat who showed up at my house and hung around, so frightened and wild I didn't really know what he looked like for the longest time. Cut to: two years later. The black-and-white cat, who now has a name, Blackie, outside my window howling not to be fed but to be patted. I used to avoid him when I was wearing nice clothes because his kneading was so intense he pulled threads. He could spring six feet straight up out of my arms when he was startled. He learned to love love.