Wading in the Velvet Sea

NEW YORK -- A small California biotech company says it has successfully found the Holy Grail of the $35 billion pet industry: a hypoallergenic cat.

$35 billion might sound like a lot, but trust me, creating this hypoallergenic cat only took up $5 billion of that total. A lot less than was spent on the non leg-humping dog or the kangaroo that could complete sudoku in less than 20 minutes. However, it must be said that lot more was spent on this that the 100,000 deutschmarks Hitler spent to create Jew-hating hampsters.

At the start of next year, the first kittens -- which the company calls ``lifestyle pets" -- will be delivered to eager owners who have been carefully screened and on a waiting list for more than two years. Since it announced the project in October 2004, Allerca of San Diego, says it has received inquiries from people in 85 countries seeking to buy a cat bred so that its glands do not produce the protein responsible for most human cat allergies.

“Lifestyle pets”? Has the Republican Party been alerted to this? I mean, how do we know this lifetsyle meets their approval? Perhaps God intended cats to make us sneeze. And who is Allerca to question His will?

Also, “carefully screened and on a waiting list for more than two years”? Didn’t Angelina Jolie get a Cambodian baby in like, a week? And she’s fairly insane, by the most objective of measures. Are you telling me Mr. AntiSniffles gets better pre-screening than Maddox?

Also, in case you’re curious: yes, if after two years you’re deemed unworthy of owning a cat, you have to kill yourself. Those are the rules.

If ordered now, it will take 12 to 15 months for delivery of a cat in the United States, 15 to 18 months in Europe. Cost: $4,000.

A year might seem like a long time, and $4,000 might seem like a lot of money for what’s essentially a really small, aloof roommate, but you have to understand: Jango Fett’s not always available to lend Allerca some DNA, and for the cats to go through extensive housebreaking (read: paramilitary training for sleeper cell assignment) takes at least that long and costs the government quite a bit of money. You might wonder why anyone would voluntarily put a feline weapon in their house, but you have to understand: these are people who think nothing of dropping $4,000 on a freakin’ cat. So, perspective, etc.

Buyers must also pass Allerca's finicky screening tests. Prospective buyers are interviewed for motivation and warmth, as though they were adopting a child. Will they punish the cat if it has an accident on the floor or scratches the furniture? Their families and homes -- from carpets to curtains -- also must be evaluated for allergies and allergens.

Now, as stated above: I’ve never been a pet owner. But I’ve been around enough cats to know this: cats could seriously give a crap about motivation and warmth. Cats do their own thing. It’s impossible to motivate a cat towards any emotion possible. At best, you get a “Seriously? This is how we’re gonna roll?” from them. And even after that, they simply yawn and go away to scratch something.

The Girl had two cats before moving up here. One, Logan, was certifiably insane. The other, Domino, treated us like feces and couldn’t believe she was forced to suffer the indignities of our presence.. And that was their one and only characteristic. They were as one-dimensional as an extra on “CSI”. Conducting two hundred tests on them would have yielded no other insight into their personalities, because there were no others to be found.

``You're not just buying a cat; it's a medical device that replaces shots and pills," said Megan Young, chief executive officer of Allerca. ``At the same time this is a living animal, so the well-being of our product comes before our customers. This is not some high-priced handbag that you put back on the shelf if it doesn't match."

Oh, OK, I get it. Now this makes sense. Here I was thinking this was about the people. But Allerca’s concern lies with the cats. The same cats they’ve genetically altered in order to sell them for $4,000. Suddenly the welfare of the cat comes into question. Too late, Megan Young. You can’t convince me you’re one of those crazy ladies that owns six cats and has an apartment that always smells like carrots. No way, Ms. Young. I bet you own a dog, you hypocrite.

In the United States and Europe, cats are the most common household pet -- there are an estimated 30 million in the United States alone -- and cat allergies are one of most common human allergies. That combination has made many homes cauldrons of sneezing, itchy conflicts, where a fiancé is allergic to a partner's favorite pet, or a mother-in-law can't come for a festive meal because Fluffy is present.

Here’s a radical idea: don’t get Fluffy in the first freakin’ place! God forbid we can’t indulge every freakin’ impulse we have. Know what? I wanna have a six-pack of beer along with buffalo wings every night for dinner, and then go watch the game on my plasma-screen TV, and revel in my six-pack abs and my fat bank account. But no what? If I eat that every night, I’ll be fat as hell by Christmas, and if I buy the TV, I will be in even more debt than I am now. But people eat until they are so fat they get diseases and drive up health care costs, they buy things with credit cards and are unable to pay them back, and society just creates more ways for these idiots to not learn their lesson. You can’t get everything you want, people. Just the way it works. The Red Sox didn’t make the playoffs and I can’t afford a new TV and some people just weren’t meant to own cats. Occasionally, life sucks. As Denis Leary would say, get a helmet.

With cat owners paying thousands of dollars each year for allergy shots, antihistamines, and air filters to damp down allergies, $4,000 for a sneeze-free existence may be an acceptable price tag. Though more research is needed, preliminary independent studies suggest Allerca cats do not provoke allergies.

They do provoke strokes, cancer, and uncontrollable rage, but you’ll never have to buy Visine again. So, pros and cons.

Also, I hate to sound like a broken record, but come on: at what point do you say, “Hrm, without Toonces, I’d have a few thousand extra in the bank, in addition to a better smelling house with less overall cleaning needs. Sinking four grand into a new cat will leave my broke but less urine-laden. I’m sold! Wait, I have to wait two years and undergo extensive psychological training that will probably also come with hundreds of dollars of hidden costs? Sweet! Toonces, pack your crap, you’re out.” And if you have an answer for that, like, stay away. You’re scaring me.

``As strange as it may sound, for us the price would have been worth it; it would have saved us money and saved us pain from all the medical and also emotional problems," said Christopher Cullen, of New York, whose girlfriend's worsening allergies this week forced them to put up for adoption their beloved cat, Cimbi -- a feline who had achieved ``mild Internet notoriety" as the star of her own website.

Um…just get rid of the cat…

Cullen and his girlfriend, Cheryl Burley, have fought a losing two-year battle to engineer a tolerable coexistence with Cimbi, because Burley, a devoted cat lover, has had cat allergies since childhood. On www.harlemfur.com, you can watch Cullen, who works for the New York Senate Democratic Conference, giving Cimbi a bath to reduce her allergen load; he takes Cimbi on a leash to Morningside Park for a day to give his girlfriend's allergies a break.

Uh…maybe you should look into someone else taking the cat…

The couple never put down carpets; they installed special air filters and vacuumed incessantly. But Burley's symptoms worsened in recent months, and that fragile equilibrium fell apart two weeks ago when they took in a second cat, Marley, which turned Burley's allergies from annoying to overwhelming. She couldn't work, couldn't breathe, and had a seizure.

Seriously, I am sure you could find many loving homes for the hellbeast seemingly bent on your destruction. The monkey in “Monkey Shines” wasn’t this evil.

``Our whole life has gone downhill -- I missed four days of work, I'm back on inhalers, eye drops, and creams," Burley said. ``This hypoallergenic cat would be a perfect solution for me. I'm determined to have a kitty."

If anybody knows Mr. Cullen, invite him out a for a drink. Then let me know where you guys are meeting so I can come and kidnap him. Brother’s in trouble.

Guys, if you’re with a girl, and she’s having seizures because of the cat, an she still won’t get rid of the cat, it’s OK to dump her. Preferably over the phone since she’s unstable and might kill you if within arm’s reach. And ladies, it works both ways. If the guy, say, gets six types of mouth and throat cancer due to chewing tobacco, and merely switches to a “light” brand, it’s OK to hightail it out of there. There are certain people that can’t be helped.

A SEIZURE! A FREAKIN’ SEIZURE! And she wants a “kitty”. The fact that she calls it a “kitty” alone signals issues. I don’t know her, and I know 78% of everything she owns is pink. I don’t like her. In case you couldn’t tell.

Dr. Sheldon Spector, a professor of clinical medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, recently studied the cats and said the concept seemed to work.

But warned the seizure chick was “batsh#t insane”.

Ten volunteers with severe cat allergies were exposed to a variety of cats but showed no reaction to the Allerca cats, though all had symptoms with normal animals.

``This is not a definitive study, but it is an interesting and intriguing concept that could really help people," Spector said.

I have an interesting and intriguing concept, too. If you’re allergic to something, like, stay the hell away from it. If you’re allergic to something like, say, grass, then hop yourself up and meds. But if it’s something like cats or a certain Pier One candle or something you don’t have to work tooo hard to avoid, then just avoid it. I don’t care if you want a kitty. I don’t want you to have a seizure. And neither should you. You moron.

For the moment, he said he would not recommend purchasing the cats because ``$4,000 seems like a lot of money," and there is the chance that some people may react to some degree to less common cat proteins. Most human cat allergies are caused by `` Fel d 1, " a molecule that has been sequenced and its gene mapped in the last decade. At first, Allerca scientists sought to discover a method to delete or disable the gene.

But after the unfortunate (and incredibly covered-up) Feline Genocide of 1999, Allerca decided that plan kinda blew.

But in testing to see whether the gene had been effectively silenced, they made a fortuitous discovery: A very small number of cats carry a mutant gene that produces a modified protein, far less likely to induce allergies.

Oh Christ. Nobody tell Magneto about this or there will be hell to pay.

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Your thoughts on the future of catdom? Should we just welcome our eventual overlords now? Stop Allerca before they wreak destruction upon humanity? Wonder why the hypoallergenic cats still seem so disinterested in anything besides themselves? My personal vote is getting Cullen away from the psycho and go from there.

One step at a time, people.