It started with the
pigeons.
For a while very few people missed them. The crazy
old fools who fed them were
dismissed as crazy old fools when they complained loudly about the absence of pigeons. Tired little
waitresses were pleased about the lack of
excrement on chairs and tables. Smrklnd the
horse, carved out of
granite by the great German
sculptor Ferdinand Avowel, missed their little
talons, scratching at the itches he could never reach.
It took two weeks for the
mysterious disappearance to make the news. There being no official body responsible for handling this kind of situation, various entities vowed to take ‘
whatever action necessary’ to
rectify the situation.
A couple of weeks later questions were raised in the
daily papers by the handful of people who always write to the papers. Once again, the
official bodies replied with statements that ‘every measure is being taken to fully comprehend the scale of the situation’.
Within six months pigeons had not only vanished from the country, but were almost completely
extinct in people’s memories. The
fables about perfectly balanced
ecosystems keeping all
god's species in check were thrown out of a window somewhere and fell onto
unfertile concrete. No one missed the pests. After all they
harassed tourists,
defecated on the shoulders of men in suits, dirtied public buildings and in general made a
nuisance of themselves when they were around. The crazy old fools took to feeding
rats in gutters and that was the end of that.
One bright,
October day dawned to a world without
cats.
This time the
outcry was widespread and intense. Breaking news flashed all over the globe. On
plasma screens and
transistor radios, newspapers and fancy
mobile phones, wives to mothers-in-law, and other reliable channels that transmit
smidgens of news at lightning speed, the lack of
furry cuties was broadcast in an alarming frenzy. Heads of state met in sombre, grey buildings wearing sombre, grey suits and carrying sombre, grey briefcases. They talked and talked and drew up documents with great
resolve but the cats refused to turn up.
A year later the
media carried features that mourned a year without fluffy, feline creatures.
And then it was the
storytellers.