(Image: Supplied)

The cats of Australia have made their choice… and the choice is that they don’t believe teenage schoolgirls are identifying as them and demanding kitty-litter trays in the school toilets.

Crikey readers will recall that Herald Sun culture wars correspondent Susie O’Brien had the shocking exposé that a “private schoolgirl” in Melbourne was identifying as a cat, and that the school was supporting her in her choices. The girl was “phenomenally bright”, the report said, as an added dig against swotty weirdos. 

The “phenomenally bright” bit was a nice touch — because it was the only new bit in what was a repeat of a culture war urban myth that had ricocheted around the US in 2021. Had O’Brien googled what was clearly a hoax tip-off of an extremely unusual story, she would have found it popping up in a dozen US states, and debunked in all of them. 

The story quickly snared usual suspects, such as Cory Bernardi and new United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet, before getting the ultimate accolade in Australian journalism by being shamelessly plagiarised by the Daily Mail. 

The Mail’s “story” is still up, but O’Brien’s “original” piece has been deleted (leaving a rewrite of it in the “parenting” section of the lifestyle pages — so foot soldier Jessica Wang is now the apparent author of this fabrication. O’Brien’s most recent contribution is now a piece on allegedly false allegations of racism against Big Bird (don’t even).

Who was the last of the conservatoriat to fall for the story? Take a bow, Bill Muehlenberg in the Spectator Australia, for “Society is going to the dogs … and cats“, which restates a few old furry stories, Germans identifying as dogs, etc, before repeating the “schoolgirl cat” story verbatim. 

Now this is a great get, because Muehlenberg is one of the very, very old stagers, a foot soldier for BA Santamaria, running Santa’s NCC front group the Australian Family Association for five years. Santa was wont to despair at the talent he had to work with. You can see why. 

Mind you, it gets better. In his Speccie piece, Muehlenberg asks what these crazy kids will identify with next:

If someone wants to identify as a Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, who are we to judge?

Which reminds us of that classic piece by another Santamaria acolyte, Greg Sheridan, when in 2014 we were buying a bunch of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from the US, widely regarded as useless. Not by Sheridan. The original piece has long since disappeared, but Loon Pond kept the gist:

If I believed in reincarnation, I think I’d like to come back as a Joint Strike Fighter. Lean, sinuous, sleek, intimidating, the best in my class. 

Of course he would. Because these people are all stark staring mad. Does this story have nine lives? Let’s see if next week there’s still a flap.