People are talking a lot about UFOs again lately although our heads of state don’t usually join the conversation. Trudeau has been silent but I’m sure that if he ever managed to get his hands on an extraterrestrial he would threaten to grab it with both hands and stuff it into one of his nasty quarantine hotels faster than you can say Avro Arrow.

Trump didn’t give UFOs much airtime(!) when he was in office although he is the first US President to admit that he had been briefed on UFOs. Reportedly he was skeptical of the whole business.

Biden is apparently under a gag order and ducked questions about the topic last month. He simply told the press to ask Obama.

Obama is the exception: seems he can’t keep his mouth shut, holding forth about UFOs recently on the CBS Late Late Show with James Corden (aka The Early Early Show with James Corden) and also on The Ezra Klein Show (aka The Ezra Klein Show).

He had this to say:

“We’re just a bunch of humans with doubts and confusion. We do the best we can. And the best thing we can do is treat each other better because we’re all we’ve got. And so I would hope that the knowledge that there were aliens out there would solidify people’s sense that what we have in common is a little more important. Plus, there are also a whole bunch of us here who think cats are actually an alien species sent to Earth to spy on us and report back to their home planet.“

Full disclosure: I probably made up that last bit.

What Obama really said was that he had no doubt that were aliens to be proven real, it would impact the political and social climate on Earth and he also noted that: “there would be immediate arguments about like, well, we need to spend a lot more money on weapons systems to defend ourselves. New religions would pop up. And who knows what kind of arguments we’d get into? Besides the cat thing, I mean.“

I don’t know why Obama would be so fixated on this Unidentified Flying Felines issue. He’s not into cats. In fact, he owns two Portugese Water Dogs named Bo and Sunny. Incidentally, and in the interests of inclusiveness, Bo and Sunny can be arranged to: “and Boy Nuns”. But I digress.

Here’s how to estimate the probability that you or someone you know (such as your daughter, hypothetically) believes the “cats are alien spies” narrative:

<1 (aka zero) cats in house: Person probably doesn’t believe cats are not of Earth

1 or 2 cats in house: Person sometimes entertains thoughts about alien cat spies. But not very often.

3-12 cats in house: Person is totally down with Obama’s narrative. Said person also invests heavily in pulverized walnut shell litter futures and options. You know who you are and you know what I’m talking about.

>12 cats in house: Person is an alien recruit facilitating transfer of cat-sourced data back to home planet. (This begs the question why a species advanced enough to have mastered interstellar travel would send out spies lacking opposable thumbs.)

To save all the skeptics out there some time, I somehow found this site: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pgg9gm/are-cats-spies-sent-by-aliens-motherboard-examines-a-favorite-internet-conspiracy-theory

Are Cats Spies Sent by Aliens? A Deep Examination of One of the Internet’s Best Conspiracy Theories

The author cites various observations in support of the theory including ancient Egyptian cat references, our inability to understand how cats purr, the uncanny similarity between cats and “grey aliens”, their superior vision, hairballs, their habit of suddenly darting out of a room (presumably to give report) and their ability to defy gravity and always land on their feet after falling out of a window or a hot air balloon.

Indeed, these are compelling observations.

Here is another compelling observation found on the THINK website:

“Mind you, it’s hardly clear why extraterrestrials would travel many trillions of miles through the dangerous voids of space simply to pirouette above our heads and occasionally play cat-and-mouse (emphasis mine) with the Navy. But — full disclosure — we really don’t know what the aliens find interesting to do. Maybe they have their reasons.”

Yah. Their reasons are that their ships are piloted by alien feline spies. Duh.

And if you’re still not convinced, check this out:

This is an actual unretouched photo of a new spy which has just touched down in its landing pod. It is already hard at work, gathering information.

I rest my case.

P.S. Another full disclosure: I have two cats. My daughter has three