By Tim Sanders

Last week I wrote a column which dealt with our nation’s oil crisis and the rising price of gasoline. Although I did mention some inspired and proven methods for battling the fuel dilemma, including siphoning gas from your neighbor’s car and using electric scooters for freeway travel, several of my readers felt that I neglected to give serious attention to alternative fuel sources.

So, to prove that I am every bit as sober and civic-minded as the next journalist, be he a Republican, a Democrat or just a nondenominational liar, here is something which recently caught my attention. It is a September 14 Reuters news article which I discovered all on my own without any help whatsoever:

German inventor’s "cat fuel" angers animal lovers

BERLIN - A German inventor has angered animal rights activists with his answer to fighting the soaring cost of fuel – dead cats.

Christian Koch, 55, from the eastern county of Saxony told Bild newspaper that his organic diesel fuel – a home-made blend of garbage, run-over cats, and other ingredients – is a proven alternative to normal consumer diesel.

"I drive my normal diesel-powered car with this mixture," Koch said. "I have gone 106,000 miles without a problem."

The website of Koch’s firm, "Alphakat," says his patented "KDV 500" machine can produce what he calls the "bio-diesel" fuel at about 30 cents a litre, which is about one-fifth the price at [gas] stations now.

Koch said around 20 dead cats added into the mix could help produce enough fuel to fill up a 50-litre (11 gallon) tank.

But the president of the German Society for the Protection of Animals, Wolfgang Apel, said using dead cats for fuel was illegal.

"There’s no danger for cats and dogs in Germany because this practice is outlawed in Germany," Apel told Bild on Wednesday in a story entitled "Can you really make fuel out of cats?"

"We’re going to keep an eye on this case," Apel said.

But then we learn that things are not always what they seem. Shortly after this article was released, Reuters was forced to retract it; or at least rewrite it. Mr. Koch told Reuters:

"It’s an alternative fuel that is friendly for the environment. But it’s complete nonsense to suggest dead cats. I’ve never used cats and would never think of that. At most the odd toad may have jumped in."

The second Reuters article went on to explain:

A spokesman for Bild told Reuters the story was meant to show that cat remains could "in theory" be used to make fuel with Koch’s patented method.

The author of the story said Koch had never told him directly that he had used dead cats as the story implied.

So what is my point, you ask? Well ... I forget. Oh yeah, for one thing, my point is that I actually did do some serious research into alternative fuel. And there are several things to be learned, here:

1. In Germany, opportunistic journalists make things up, just like they do in the good old USA; it is part of the journalistic ethic. If newspaper editors and columnists were forced to just stick to the facts, what a drab, lifeless world this would be, right?

2. One can infer from Mr. Koch’s explanation that he believes animal rights activists would find dead toads less objectionable than dead cats; especially "odd" dead toads, whatever that means.

3. But Mr. Koch can’t fool me. Since he admitted that dead toads in his diesel mixture were a distinct possibility, then just because he said that he didn’t use dead cats, that doesn’t mean that he won’t in the future; or that his illegal dead cat formula might not be stolen and used by some Third World country looking to corner the dead cat market. Germany certainly doesn’t hold a monopoly on dead cats.

4. And I don’t want to be an alarmist, but if dead cats were finally found to be of benefit to mankind, transportation-wise, there wouldn’t be enough of them lying around to make a dent in the fuel shortage. 20 dead cats for every 11 gallons of diesel fuel? Why, just think of the tractor-trailer rigs crisscrossing our nation every hour of every day, and you can envision where this dead cat program could lead. We’d need herds of ‘em. We’d have cat farms dotting the landscape like so many oil rigs. We’d be up to our armpits in dead cats. God help us!

[GRATUITOUS CAT DISCLAIMER: I realize that without our cats, we humans would be deprived of many things we’ve grown to love. For example, we’d miss the wonderful, lilting sound of a cat choir serenading us, or a pair of felines either fighting or mating (it’s always hard to tell which) outside our bedroom window at 4 a.m. And how about the thrill of getting into our car in the morning and finding that one of our neighbor’s artistic tomcat friends has decorated our windshield with a wide swath of Cat Potion Number 9? And don’t forget the furballs on our decks, or the partially digested mouse and bird parts which old Tom is always proud to leave on our front doorstep for us, so we can appreciate his prowess as an instinctive, stealthy regurgitator. And what human life would be complete without having to scale a fifty-foot oak tree to retrieve sweet little squalling Puss, who was perfectly capable of climbing up there, but genetically incapable of climbing back down because she has a brain half the size of a single methane gas molecule?]

No, we can’t risk the loss of our feline friends to some wacky, ill-intentioned diesel fuel scheme. Cats dying of natural causes are one thing, but that won’t fill the bill for a nation and a world hungry for cheaper fuel. Today toads, tomorrow road kill cats, next week black market low-grade diesel tabby farms. Where will it all end?

Well, I don’t know all the answers, but I am a serious journalist. And I–serious journalist that I am–would encourage environmentalists and animal rights activists worldwide to keep a chary eye out. If they notice that cats seem to be disappearing in greater than normal numbers, they should contact whoever those people contact when they smell something rotten: Oliver Stone or Michael Moore or Garfield or Pamela Anderson or some other intellectual giant. With a little creative investigative journalism, I’m sure they’ll discover that George W. Bush is involved in the Dead Cats for Fuel plot, somehow. They might want to check into this Koch guy’s shadowy relationship with Halliburton, too.

Either way, until further notice, the local truck stop is off limits for our cat, Sylvia. She has a 45-50 diesel fuel rating, and if she were to get within 100 yards of an idling Kenworth W900, she’d go off like a Roman candle.