I was reading this afternoon when the cat jumped up on my lap. Not long passed before I let loose with a ripper of a fart, a sure leftover of my bean-filled lunch. But the cat seemed unaffected. I could sure smell it. But the cat just sat there on my lap, contentedly licking away at its private parts.

Could it be that cats only smell certain flavors of farts, the way dogs can only hear certain pitches of sound? Perhaps my fart simply wasn´t on the cat’s wavelength. I perceive a money-making opportunity here — just as dog whistles are made to annoy our canine companions with a ridiculously high-pitched shriek, so too it must be possible to create an artificial fart smell that only affects cats.

The Pied Piper of Hamlin had it all wrong. If he had simply isolated the correct smell of fart most objectionable to rats, he could have rid the town of rats (and cats) by simply eating the correct combination of foodstuffs for lunch.