This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Editor's note • Robert Kirby has taken his nonsense on the road. This is a reprint of an earlier column.

In a column last month I accused cats of being liars. This did not sit well with some cat owners — actually only one — who wrote to accuse me of being a cat bigot.

According to the reader, if cats were people, my comments about them could logically be construed as bigotry.

I did not say that all cats lied, only that enough of them did for it to be a generally accepted fact. Everyone knows that cats comprise the majority of perjury convictions in this country.

As racist utterances go, this was nowhere near as serious as pointing out that at least one NFL quarterback that we know of is possibly an African-American.

Before I am forced to resign a la Rush Limbaugh, you should know that the second place award for lying — if there were such a thing — would go to politicians. Meanwhile, newspaper columnists come in third.

My own cat, Bob Valdez, lies even when the truth sounds better and could save his life. Every morning when I let him in, the first thing out of his mouth is a denial of the facts.

ME: "Morning, Bob."

BOB: "Prove it, four-eyes."

Caught red-pawed on videotape and with a dozen witnesses, Bob will still lie. I once caught him on my bed with a tooth-punctured field mouse.

ME: "Hey!"

BOB: "He fell down the stairs and got hurt. I was just checking to see if he has insurance."

Dogs, on the other hand, lack the moral flexibility to tell serious lies. Or maybe it's just that they aren't smart enough to tell believable ones, especially labs.

I hear my flabrador retrievers all the time telling the UPS guy that they won't bite him if he would just stick his leg inside the fence. He never does.

I am not bigoted toward cats. I simply point out what everyone already knows about them. There are some animals I am totally bigoted towards, and so should you be.

Cows are evil. I hate them all and do not want to live next door to any of them. To varying degrees, my neighbors all feel the same way. Property values would nosedive if cows moved in.

A rat is another animal totally deserving of discrimination. If you do not think so, try letting a rat run around inside your house during a real estate showing and see what happens.

Although I do not have this particular form of animal bigotry, some people are very discriminatory against snakes. But it is wrong to hate an animal for no other reason than its appearance.

For example, I do not believe it right to segregate bears from the rest of the population based solely on the fact that they have teeth large enough to treat our skulls like jawbreakers — OK, maybe it is.

I am actually partial to some animals. I like pigs. You might even call me a hogophile. They are smarter than a lot of people and have better table manners than all of my friends.

Look, we all have our animal prejudices. The important thing is to make this blatant discrimination perfectly legal through zoning ordinances so tight that they exclude even politicians.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.