Should a Mass Feline Beeline Shake Us Up?

I don’t like to seem immodest, but I think I am entitled to point out that I am the only psychic who correctly predicted that there would be no devastating earthquake here in May.

The month has now come and gone without a noticeable tremor.

What I can’t understand is why my talent is so little recognized. For years I have been counterpredicting the predictions of all our most prominent seers, psychics and astrologers, and I have never been wrong yet.

Why don’t I get no respect?

During May, the people at Griffith Park Observatory and at Caltech Seismological Lab were driven half out of their minds by queries from anxious Angelenos wanting to know whether it was true that the big one was coming that month.

This scare was caused, mostly, by a movie on Nostradamus, the 16th-Century French astrologer, in which a couple of his notoriously vague quatrains were interpreted as predicting a great earthquake in Los Angeles because of an alignment of five planets in May. There was no such alignment, and if there had been, it would have had a minuscule effect on Earth. Earthquakes are not related to the positions of the planets.

Unfortunately, we seem to be a people who, having lost our faith, believe more and more in soothsayers. As we have recently seen, this folly has gone all the way up to the White House.

Maybe we would be wise, instead of watching the planets, to watch our cats. George Wright sends me an article from Cats magazine about Jim Berkland, chief geologist for Santa Clara County, who thinks he can predict earthquakes by watching the Lost and Found classifieds in the newspapers.

Berkland contends that when the number of lost cat ads goes up sharply, it means an earthquake is imminent. Evidently cats can sense the preliminary stirrings, or something, and they light out. Berkland uses the state’s three largest newspapers for this science, including The Times, so you can check The Times Lost and Found yourself if you want to know whether a quake is coming.

According to Cats magazine, Marsha Adams, a research consultant and former biologist at the Stanford Institute, made a study of Berkland’s theory and reported that, statistically, it seemed to work. However, she noted, the earthquake usually occurred on the same day the lost cat ads reached a peak--too late to serve as a warning.

She suggested that people who see their cats acting funny ought to have a cat hot line, so they could warn the populace earlier. It takes a day or two for an ad to appear in the newspapers.

I see another weakness in Berkland’s theory. I have never known a cat that did not act funny all the time. If people called a cat hot line every time their cats acted funny, or ran away, we would be on earthquake alert 365 days a year.

My wife’s cat acted funny all through the month of May, and if there had been a cat hot line I’d certainly have reported him. Most of the time he didn’t even show up for his food, which is very funny indeed for a cat.

Another thing that makes me skeptical of Berkland’s notion is where do the cats go when they leave home? Do they imagine that they can escape an earthquake by moving down the street? Certainly they must feel whatever they feel wherever they go. And, fearing trouble, I’d think they’d want to come home.

The notion that animals can predict earthquakes is not new. The Chinese have believed it for centuries. Back in 1977, two UCLA scientists, a geophysicist and a biologist, started out with a $23,000 grant to study whether pocket mice and kangaroo rats can predict earthquakes. I haven’t heard from them since.

The main thing to remember about the big one is that it probably will come: whether today, tomorrow or 50 years from now nobody knows.

The one statistic that would make sense for Angelenos would be a rise in the sales of bottled water, first-aid kits, non-perishable food, portable stoves, matches, flashlights, medicines, portable radios and batteries, and an adjustable wrench for turning off gas and water.

Of course if you want to go first class, you can also lay in some champagne.