News for cats

Rather sad news actually, in that there has been a fire at a local cattery and it appears that all the inmates have either perished or escaped (except for two who are in hospital suffering from smoke inhalation).

However, no news story - even one involving cats - is so tragic that a little light relief can't be found in the official spokesmen's statements to the press. Viz. one Pat McFarlane of the Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service who told the BBC that 'tackling the fire had been difficult because of the number of cats being looked after on the site'. I really have no idea what that means. However, he counterbalanced that bit of incomprehensibility with a classic understatement of the obvious - when animals are trapped in a fire and subsequently manage to escape, apparently they 'tend to leave the scene'.