Here begins a diatribe against cats.

Beyond the hard-to-refute argument that they are the world’s most useless animals, cats appear to have everything going their way. In the past 20 years, they have overtaken dogs to become Britain’s most popular pet, relentlessly raised their social profile, and colonised the internet to such an extent that Google has now installed special programmes to monitor their advance.

Cats are the first choice pet of anyone with an independent soul. Aside from their total dependency on being fed, the need to clean out their cat box and their perfect indifference to the welfare of others, cats are easy to have around, don’t wake up the neighbours and are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. That they munch their way through billions of their fellow mammals along with a few billion birds a year is just the law of nature. If Obama thinks he has a fight over ridding the US of guns, just let someone try to get rid of our moggies.