The Narcissists at Kenyon College Enter into an Unholy Alliance with an Ambitious Methodist Minister and in Doing So Doom Moxie to an Early Grave Through Their Insufferable Arrogance, Naked Exploitation, and Abject Neglect of Him

Not Allowed Indoors, Moxie Was Forced to Hang Out on Middle Path

"'Will you walk into my parlour?' said a spider to a fly.
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.

The way into my parlour is up the winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to shew (sic) you when you are there..."
-- Mary Bothan Howitt

It is truly lamentable that cats are not born with the prerequisite bon sens in order to steer clear of the degree mills. Even so much as a passing acquaintance with any of the selfish, predatory, and good-for-nothing egomaniacs who strut and prance around these capitalistic, brainwashing warehouses for the young, naïve, and ambitious can be lethal for a cat.

Sadly, that was the tragic and cruel fate that befell a handsome five-year-old black tom named Moxie on the night of July 6th when he was run down and killed by an unidentified motorist at an undisclosed location on the campus of Kenyon College in tiny Gambier, eighty-two kilometers north of Columbus in the woods of rural Ohio. He thus became the latest victim to be added to the ever-growing list of cats that have died, quite often violently, as the result of the abject neglect and naked exploitation meted out to them by legions of totally irresponsible and morally retarded professors, administrators, and students.

"It is with great sadness that I inform you that Moxie was struck by a vehicle last night and passed," is how that campus police chief Michael Sweazey broke the distressing news July 7th on Twitter. (See "Moxie the Cat.") "The driver immediately stopped to render aid, but there was nothing that could be done."

First of all, vehicles do not kill cats any more than guns kill people; au contraire, it is drivers who kill cats and they always do so intentionally. Secondly, given that Moxie was killed on campus, the driver most assuredly was connected in some fashion to the college. 

Thirdly, the individual behind the wheel could have braked unless he or she was either speeding, impaired, or gassing on the telephone. Additionally, all motor vehicles on the road today are equipped with modern, state-of-the-art braking and suspension systems that enable them to be stopped on a dime. (See Cat Defender post of August 14,2019 entitled "No Respect for Life: Early Graves and Crippling Injuries Are All That Cats Who Dare to Set Foot in the Street Can Expect from the Bloodthirsty Motoring Public.")

Fourthly, contrary to Sweazey's sottise, Moxie simply did not "pass" but rather he had his young life violently taken from him in, presumably, a few seconds. Cats that are killed instantaneously by motorists usually have been struck in the head with their brains and eyeballs squeezed out of them and deposited all over the pavement.

On the other hand, if Moxie had received only a glancing blow there is a good chance that he was still alive but that the campus police, being too lazy and cheap to have transported him to a veterinarian, stood idly by and watched him die a lonely, protracted, and excruciatingly painful death. Such a scenario seems more and more plausible given that, as best it could be determined, there are not any practitioners located in Gambier and that in turn would have necessitated that the cops driven him to Mount Vernon, eight kilometers to the northwest, had they been so inclined.

It is even conceivable that they finished him off with either their nightsticks or a bullet to the head. After all, they love nothing better in this whole, wide world than to train their coshes and the barrels of their automatics on helpless cats, other animals, and individuals. (See Cat Defender post of March 22,2012 entitled "In Another Outrageous Miscarriage of Justice, Rogue Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Is Let Off with a US$50 Fine for Savagely Bludgeoning to Death an Injured Cat.")

Fifthly, "last night" could mean anytime between dusk on July 6th and dawn on July 7th. The outside world has only been given Sweazey's account of events and all cops are, to one degree or another, inveterate liars and perjurers. Besides, it is extremely unlikely that he was even working that night; normally, chiefs of police do not work the evening and graveyard shifts. Consequently, it likely was one or more of his subordinates who responded to the scene.

"His owner was immediately notified, and a dignified and respectful burial was arranged," Sweazey concluded. That, too, could mean almost anything.

Moxie and his brother, Mosie, first turned up at the old-as-the-hills Anglican-affiliated liberal arts school in October of 2017 as six-month-old homeless kittens. They were almost immediately apprehended and taken into custody by the Reverend Susan Stevens of the Gambier Epworth United Methodist Church at 200 Wiggin Street. Following closely upon the heels of their earlier cruel and indefensible abandonment, Stevens' entry into their young lives constituted their second stroke of outrageous Unglück.

Whereas the presence of the eggheads would have been bad enough, the addition of a hypocritical and ambitious Christian into Moxie's life ultimately proved to have been too much for him to have overcome. After all, when it comes to defaming and killing cats, the followers of Jesus Christ have quite a checkered past.

For example, in 1233 Pope Gregory IX denounced black cats as being satanic. Two centuries later, Pope Innocent VIII issued his infamous witch bull wherein he decreed that all cat-worshipers and, by extension, felines themselves were to be disposed of via the auto-da-fe.

Moxie Was Taken Advantage of by the Eggheads and Holy Rollers

Some historians even maintain that the principal reason that the bubonic plague was able to have so easily decimated one-quarter of the population of Europe over the course of five hundred years can be laid at the feet of the Catholic Church in that it killed off so many cats that there were not enough of them left alive in order to control the rodent population which spread the disease. Many churches of today, such as St. Jude Catholic in Tequesta, Florida, and Northside Baptist in Baltimore, still fervently believe that the only good cat is a dead one. (See the Palm Beach Post, October 19, 2007, "Cat Feeders Hiss at Church's Barricade" and Cat Defender posts of July 30,2009 and May 1,2010 entitled, respectively, "Ferals Living at a Baltimore Church Find Out the Hard Way That Hatred of Cats Is Every Bit as Christian as Unleavened Bread and Cheap Wine" and "When It Comes to Cats, Acts of Faith Count for Absolutely Nothing with the Good Christians at Northside Baptist.") 

In keeping with that ancient Christian tradition, the good Methodist Stevens took Moxie and Mosie home to her abode near the Acland Apartments, just off campus, whereby she shortly thereafter washed her hands of all moral responsibility to the former by turning him loose to roam the sprawling one-thousand-acre campus all by his lonesome both day and night. Even more reprehensibly, she became enraged when concerned students and local residents began to warn her on an "almost nightly" basis of the dire consequences of her callous and inexcusable neglect.

"I had to remove my phone number (from his collar) because I was getting calls at two in the morning," she unashamedly confessed to the student newspaper, The Kenyon Collegian, on April 11, 2019. (See "Beloved Campus Cat Moxie 'Fills a Need' on Kenyon Campus.") "I know when he's not coming back, he's with somebody."

The old girl surely must have missed her calling and should have been a fortune teller instead of a Bible beater because she ultimately was proven correct in both of her prophesies. First of all, Moxie was indeed with someone on the night that he was killed: a motorist. In fact, he was underneath that cretin's front tire having his precious life violently crushed out of him. 

Secondly, he most definitely will not be returning home or anywhere else for that matter. Moxie was not a creation of some Hollywood movie house who dies in one flick only to return to life in a later production, but rather a real-life, flesh and blood sentient being who is now gone forever.

Stevens' callous and morally irresponsible attitude toward him while he was alive also calls into question the veracity of Sweazey's assertion that "a dignified and respectful burial was arranged." Specifically, since she was so unwilling to even answer telephone inquiries regarding his safety, let alone to have gone and collected him, it strains credulity that she would have been willing to have gotten out of bed and gone and retrieved his mangled and bloodied corpse.    

Au contraire, she more than likely instructed the ever-obliging Sweazey, or whichever one of his underlings that was on duty on that god-awful night, to have disposed of his remains in the nearest trash can. If against all odds she did elect to provide him with a proper burial, his grave should be easy enough to locate either on campus or close by.

It also is odd that, in so far as it has been reported, no funeral service was held. Of course, that glaring oversight could be explainable by the petit fait that as a hellfire and brimstone Christian Stevens does not believe that either the lives, souls, or remains of cats are worthy of preservation and commemoration.

If that indeed is the case, the Bible furnishes her with more than ample justification for her immorality beginning with the Dominion Mandate of Genesis I:26. In his 2015 encyclical on climate change, Laudato si', Jorge Mario Bergoglio signaled the Catholic Church's readiness to move away from that simply hideous doctrine but so far the only action that he has taken has been to chastise the faithful for keeping cats and dogs as opposed to adding to this already hopelessly overcrowded planet by having more babies. (See The Guardian of London, January 5, 2022, "Choosing Pets over Babies Is 'Selfish and Diminishes Us,' Says Pope.")

In addition to the Dominion Mandate, the god of the Christians and Jews commands them in Acts 10:11-13 to kill and eat animals and Americans slaughter and scarf down more than nine trillion terrestrials alone each year.  As if all of that were not morally reprehensible enough, Isaiah 27:1 has been used by both sects as a rationale for killing millions of whales. Before the first oil well was sunk in Titusville, Pennsylvania, on August 27, 1859, it was whale oil that was used in order to illuminate the major cities of Europe and New England. 

With Yom Kippur rapidly approaching, Orthodox and Hasidic Jews are sans doute already busily sharpening their straight razors in eager anticipation of the tens of thousands of totally innocent and defenseless chickens whose throats they are going to be slitting during their utterly barbaric sacrificial rite of Kaparot. In reality, however, this outrageous bloodletting has very little to do with atonement but rather the turning of a fast and easy buck in that rabbis purchase the birds that they slaughter for US$2 and then sell them back to sinners for US$26 or more. 

They also callously allow thousands of other chickens to die from heat exhaustion while they are on death row in cages that are purposefully left out in the hot sun on the streets of Brooklyn and elsewhere. Although these horrific atrocities violate every anti-cruelty statute on the books, the Jews are allowed to get away with them year after year just as they enjoy this society's blessings to live off of tons of welfare and the fruits of their crimes instead of being required like everybody else to work for a living and to obey the laws.

To top it all off, they claim that they donate the chickens that they slaughter to charity but that is an outrageous lie in that they instead toss them in the trash. Furthermore, it is difficult to believe that they ever have given so much as a penny to charity. 

 Absolutely Nobody Cared Enough about Him to Have Saved Moxie's Life

For example, back in 2018 two staffers at the Central United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, pled guilty to stealing US$3.2 million that the New York State Health Department had given them in order to feed needy children. (See the New York Post, January 19, 2019, "New York City Yeshivas Collect More Than US$100 Million in Public Funds.") 

Clearly, both Christians and Jews always have been at war with the animals and Mother Earth and they do not have any intention of relenting until they have annihilated the both of them. It could even be argued that Christianity is antithetical to human rights, egalitarianism, and democracy.

"...Christianity, with its emphasis on humility and the hope of a happier afterlife was clearly a religion for slaves and poor people," is how that Edward Rutherfurd put in his 1997 historical novel, London. Even though the Talmud thumpers and the Bible beaters may have won the propaganda war hands down, they have not been able to completely drown out saner voices.

"There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham... and it will not stand when things come to be turned inside out and put down for what they are," Anna Sewell did not mince any words in declaring in her 1877 masterpiece, Black Beauty. Abraham Lincoln put the matter even more succinctly when he declared that he did not "care for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."

It was in her eulogy, however, that Stevens bared her ugly and thoroughly rotten soul for all the world to behold. "My boy touched so many hearts and souls," she began on July 13th in an article that is posted on the school's web site. (See "Remembering Moxie. Community Members Reflect on the Life of a Beloved Campus Cat.") "I too loved him from afar because he felt the need to minister to you all."

That last statement of hers is so asinine, dishonest, and self-serving that it is difficult to even read without vomiting! Even so, she did not have the bon sens to have stopped there.

"My prayers are with all those whose hearts he touched. Know that his legacy lives on in all of you," she continued. "Go be Moxies in the world in which you live."

Statements such as those make it perfectly clear that she never thought of Moxie as a sentient being with needs and prerogatives of his own. Rather, she looked down upon him as an expendable tool in order to recruit paying parishioners to her church.

"I really believe god has given him that gift (friendliness)," she averred to The Kenyon Collegian in the article cited supra. "God brought him to campus to fill a niche, to fill a need."

Stevens so far has declined to disclose how much money and how many converts that Moxie brought in to her church but, given the tenor of her remarks, his contribution to her bottom line does not appear to have been insubstantial. "When this cat came onto campus the doors just swung wide open," she continued to The Kenyon Collegian. "I was able to meet so many of you, and I want to say thank you to all you college students who have taken him in and loved him."

First of all, cats not only do not know anything about Christianity but they most assuredly do not have any need for either it or any religion. Secondly, Stevens' imploring of students to "go be Moxies" can only be interpreted as a clarion call for them to allow Christians like her to exploit, neglect, and to ultimately sacrifice them upon the altar of her religion. After all, Christians simply adore martyrs so long as they are always someone other than they themselves.

Thirdly, Stevens is lying through her rotten teeth when she clumsily attempts to make Moxie out to have been a feline version of an itinerant minister along the lines of the Elmer Gantrys of yesterday and the David Terrells of today. People are all the time getting it wrong, but the only reason that cats roam, except for intact males during Paarungszeit, is because they are being hideously neglected at home by their totally irresponsible owners.

Contrary to popular belief, cats are high maintenance animals and for that reason nobody should be allowed to adopt one unless he or she, or another family member, is willing to stay home with it every day and night. C'est-à-dire, cats with owners who are willing to stay home with them, to entertain them, to give them treats throughout the day, and to play with them do very little or no roaming at all. Therefore, whenever a cat is routinely spotted either on the street or a college campus it is a sure bet that it is either homeless or has a derelict owner.

A Warning Sign Ignored: Moxie Stranded Aloft at Wiggin Street Coffee

Locking up cats indoors while their owners are out chasing shekels, whoring, doping, and drinking is not the answer either. On the contrary, it is not only cruel and negligent but doing so additionally creates mental and physical health problems as well as leaving them to the mercy of burglars, conflagrations, and gas leaks. (See Cat Defender posts of August 22,2007 and October 19,2007 entitled, respectively, "Indoor Cats Are Dying of Diabetes, Hyperthyroidism, and Various Toxins in the Home" and "Smokers Are Killing Their Cats, Dogs, Birds, and Infants by Continuing to Light Up in Their Presence.")

Stevens therefore killed Moxie through her extreme neglect and selfish exploitation of him just as if she had been the individual who mowed him down in the street. She accordingly has blood all over her grasping little hands and ugly face and it is going to take considerably more than insincere religious mumbo jumbo for her to get it off.

She also sans doute belongs in jail but it is a foregone conclusion that neither the Knox County Humane Society nor the Knox County Animal Shelter, both located in Mount Vernon, has the slightest bit of interest of looking into Moxie's killing. At the very least, the slackers should take Mosie away for her before she kills him too. Through both her words and deeds she has proven conclusively that she is totally unfit to be entrusted with the life of any cat.

Most revealing of all, there is absolutely nothing in her eulogy that even remotely demonstrates so much as a scintilla of any real appreciation and love for Moxie; rather, it amounts to little more than a crass and totally inappropriate advertisement for her faith. It therefore is almost a sure bet that she is yet to lose either so much as a wink of sleep or to shed a solitary tear over his cruel and premature killing.

She can hide behind her phony-baloney religion and precious shekels until judgment day but if she does not richly belong in jail for animal neglect and cruelty, she must assuredly needs to be put away for being such an outrageous hypocrite. In his 1906 magnum opus, The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defines a Christian as "one who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin" and that definition fits Stevens to a tee.

  

In spite his myriad of other problems and mistakes, Sweazey was somewhat more forthcoming than Stevens in his eulogy, which appeared in the Twitter article cited supra. "As you know, Campus Safety had a special relationship with Moxie and is in mourning with all of you," he wrote. "I know I will miss his frequent 'guest appearances' in my Google Meet-Zoom meetings as he used my window and desk as his highway in and out of our office and knocked a few random items off as he passed through. Kenyon has lost a legend who will not be forgotten."

Sweazey's fellow officer, J.P. Downes, pretty much echoed his boss's sentiments. "I am going to miss seeing him laying (sic) in the Campus Security window seat he loved to sleep in! I'd say good morning to him most mornings....," he stated July 13th in the commemorative article posted on the college's web site. "He was the best boy."

Miracle Mahle, who works as an administrative assistant in the campus police department, also paused to remember him. "Moxie was one of a kind. Sassy and beautiful. Intuitive and funny. Spoiled rotten and giving," she told the campus web site. "He had the best life a cat could have."

If she truly believes her last assertion, then why is Moxie dead at the tender age of five? Furthermore, the same charges of moral turpitude and abject neglect that have been leveled against Stevens apply equally to Sweazey, Downes, and Mahle.

As officers of the law, they were acutely aware of the myriad of imminent dangers that Moxie faced every day of his life and yet they stood idly by and allowed him to be killed. That in turn gives a distinctively hollow ring to their eulogies.

Furthermore, police departments do a terrible job of protecting the lives of those cats that they adopt. For example, members of the Philadelphia force inexplicably allowed one of their cats to be stolen. (See Cat Defender post of May 29,2007 entitled "Corporal Cuffs, a Beloved Stationhouse Mascot, Is Abducted Right Underneath the Noses of the Philadelphia Police.")

Like the campus police at Kenyon, officers of the Hamilton, Massachusetts, Police Department carelessly allowed their black cat, Eco, to be run down and killed by a hit-and-run motorist on February 15, 2009. (See Cat Defender post of March 18,2009 entitled "Eco, Who for Years was a Mainstay at a Small Massachusetts Police Department, Is Run Down and Killed by a Motorist.")

Moxie Hitching a Ride with Teddy Hannah-Drullard

"An unlicensed therapy cat, Moxie was a friend to all in good times and in bad, and could be trusted to keep a confidence," is how that Liz Keeney of Student Accessibility and Support Services chose to remember him on Kenyon's web site. "He will be widely and deeply missed."

Being so narcissistic as to be thoroughly incapable of ever thinking about the needs of anyone other than themselves, nothing much was expected from the toffs and in that regard political science and Asian studies professor Michelle Mood certainly did not disappoint. "Moxie came into my upstairs Acland House office one time, perambulated once, and promptly left with a sniffy attitude," she related in a vein that can only be described as a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. "Being a cat lover, I felt like I was being snubbed so thoroughly I could only laugh at his judgeyness (sic). I did not count."

Whereas Mood's soul may be a wasteland of rank selfishness and runaway egotism, the Kenyon experience apparently is not a complete waste of time and the whopping US$80,000 in tuition, room, and board that the professors con out of unsuspecting students each year. "Safe travels over the Rainbow Bridge, Moxie. Your companionship during my time at Kenyon College made Gambier feel even more like home and inspired me to adopt a black cat of my own," 2019 graduate Evangeline Warren testified to the college's web site. "You will be missed."

Still, it is impossible to justify the continued existence of Kenyon if the very best that it is capable of accomplishing is to once in a blue moon produce a graduate who is morally responsible and has an abiding respect for the sanctity of all feline life. Certainly, none of those qualities are to be found in its professors, administrators, and religious blowhards.

In what little that can be gleaned from press reports and online articles, even Mahle's assertion that Moxie "had the best life a cat could have" seems absurd in hindsight. To begin with, since Stevens categorically refused to keep him at home nights, where did he sleep? Also, how did he survive Ohio's cold and snowy winters without shelter?

Secondly, what did he do for food and water? If he was forced to scrimp by on morsels of hot dogs, sandwiches, and cookies tossed to him by students, he is lucky that he did not die from either malnutrition or food poisoning long ago.

Thirdly, no one connected with the narcissistic degree mill ever afforded him so much as a speck of protection from motorists, such prolific feline predators as dogs, raccoons, skunks, and coyotes, the machinations of ailurophobes, such as ornithologists, wildlife biologists, and gardeners, and such ubiquitous poisons as ethylene glycol. Worst still, even after he became stranded on top of a dormer window at Wiggin Street Coffee at 101 East Wiggin Street in 2019 and subsequently had to be brought down by firefighters, neither Stevens nor anyone connected to Kenyon could be bothered to take any proactive measures whatsoever in order to better safeguard his well-being and fragile life. 

Fourthly, the school's professors would not even allow him to enter their classrooms. Being nothing more than priggish, selfish, and egomaniacal monsters on even their best days, they were not about to share the stage with a cat even if doing so meant saving his life or even granting him a moment's respite from the bone-chilling cold, rain, and snow.

Fifthly, Moxie was not permitted to so much as set foot inside the on-campus Harcourt Parish of the Episcopal Church at 100 College Park Street. Whenever he attempted to do so, the Reverend Rachel Kessler, a 2004 graduate of Kenyon, did not hesitate to give him the bum's rush. Since the worship houses of the Christians are off limits to cats, who the hell would ever want to go to their heaven? Hades would be a far better choice in that there are sure to be plenty of witches and warlocks down below and they always have been some of the staunchest defenders of both cats and the truth.

Given the cold shoulder by Kenyon, the Episcopal Church, and the good Methodist Stevens, Moxie was relegated to spending his days, evenings, and nights hitching rides on the tops of obliging students' backpacks and hanging out with the campus dicks. Not being welcome anywhere else on campus, he thus was forced to live outdoors and with all the dangers that entailed.

Even though both the Christians, Methodists and Anglicans alike, and the eggheads were totally unwilling to have taken any responsibility for his care and safety, they certainly were not the least bit shy about exploiting him to the hilt for their own selfish purposes. "I think Moxie injects a levity into the campus," the ailurophobic Kessler blowed to The Atlantic on September 27, 2019. (See "The Cat with a Campus Wrapped Around His Paw.")

Most hypocritical of all, although Moxie was not allowed indoors, the college's admissions office did not hesitate to exploit him as a recruitment tool. "Moxie has definitely become a selling point," Teddy Hannah-Drullard, who graduated in 2020 but has been unable so far to do any better for herself than to gamely solider on as a gratte-papier in the admissions office, confided to The Atlantic. "If you're on a tour and Moxie shows up, you are definitely not discouraged from stopping, picking him up, and bringing him with you (but not indoors)."

The picture that emerges from all of this is as clear as a blue sky on a sunny day. Both the eggheads and the holy rollers not only exploited Moxie and treated him like dirt but they also callously allowed him to be run over and killed by one of their own motorists.

Middle Path Still Exists but Its Most Famous Promeneur Is Gone Forever 

Even their eulogies are, for the most part, insincere and as phony as a three-dollar bill. He most assuredly will not be remembered because in order to do so both groups of miscreants would have to first candidly come to terms with his blood being all over their grasping little hands and, as consummate narcissists, they are not about to do anything of the kind in a million years.

In addition to not caring anything about him, they remain to this very day totally ignorant as to the enormity of their despicable crime. They have killed a young cat who not only had his entire life ahead of him but whose existence was easily worth ten million of their own.

Most damning of all, in spite of their multitude of degrees and honors neither the eggheads nor the holy rollers seem to have all that much between their ears. For instance, it is well-known that a cat has the intellectual development of a four-year-old child and absolutely nobody with so much as a lick of sense would ever turn loose a toddler in traffic but yet that is precisely what Kenyon and Stevens did to Moxie.

If the eggheads are so smart and know it all as they are all the time proclaiming, why is Moxie dead? Moreover, with them in charge of things, why is this world teetering on the eve of destruction?     

Could it possibly be that every one of them is a colossal fraud and that higher education and Christianity are little more than sleazy, money-making and power-grabbing rackets? Socrates once asked the Sophists whose lives that they had improved and that same inquiry needs to be directed at the eggheads and holy rollers.

Since cats such as Moxie are unable to read and to learn, the only prudent course of action is to bar under penalty of law all eggheads and holy rollers from coming within one-hundred yards of any of them. They are far too selfish, egotistical, morally irresponsible, exploitative, and manipulative to be entrusted with the life of an animal as exquisite, precious, and refined as a cat. Why, just the mere fact of bringing them together is tantamount to mixing tin with gold.

Finally, although it is way too late for it to be of any use to him now, Mary Botham Howitt's 1829 poem, "The Spider and the Fly," pretty much sums up in a nutshell the web of intrigue that the eggheads and holy rollers spun in order to not only entrap but to rob Moxie of his life. It begins as follows:            

"'Will you walk into my parlour?' said a spider to a fly.

'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.

The way into my parlour is up the winding stair,

And I have many pretty things to shew (sic) you when you are there..."

Just like the hapless fly, Moxie went unwittingly to his horrible, violent death, ignorant to the very end of just where those that he trusted were leading him. Howitt thus continues:

"He (the spider) dragged her up his winding staircase, into his dismal den,

Within his little parlour -- but she never came out again!"

The lesson for both those who care about cats as well as for individuals who are partial to staying alive in such a vile, violent, and deceitful world should be obvious but, in case it is not, Howitt spells it out as follows:

"And now, dear little children, who may this story read,

To idly, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed:

Unto evil counsellor, close heart, and ear, and eye,

And take a lesson from this tale..."

In other words, the Philistines should return to their pulpits and lecterns and confine their strutting, preening, and overinflated egos to their dreary, dull little worlds. In doing so they should remember just one little thing, however, and that is to keep their filthy, blood-drenched hands off of cats!

They already have killed far too many of them. Besides, they have their acolytes' empty noggins to fill up with their lies and sottise, their pockets to clean out, their young bodies to sexually exploit, and the United States Treasury to loot and that should be more than sufficient in order to keep such sorry excuses for human beings busy.

Photos: Ben Nutter of The Kenyon Collegian (Moxie on Middle Path), Kenyon College (Moxie on a cushion, asleep on a table, and stranded at Wiggin Street Coffee), The Atlantic (Moxie and Hannah-Drullard), and Twitter (Moxie on Middle Path.)