Mr Sir Orange, that outstanding cat now Minister of Art & Fisheries, when asked about his religious orientation had the following to say. “First,” he explained, “as you know I am by ancestry related to the House of Orange for reasons that are to obvious to recall. The House of Orange played a leading role in the struggle for independence of what was to become the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. Prince William of Orange (Willy for his friends) led the fight for economic and religious freedom against the King of Spain until his untimely death in 1584 when he was slain in Delft by the infamous Balthazar Geradsz, an assassin of the Spanish suppressor. The Spanish were Catholics; many Dutch were protestants seeking separation from the Catholic mother church which, according to the original protestors Luther and Calvin, had lost the true Christian faith and replaced it with ungodly worldly interests and vices. We, house cats, follow the faith of our masters and I therefore am protestant.”

Asked which of the numerous protestant denominations was his Mr Sir Orange replied: “Some say I belong to the Born Again variety. The Pentecostals. They say this because I, being a cat, have nine lives. Cats, these people say, are the cherry of the cake when it comes to be born again ability. Humans only do it once and cats can do it nine times. I refute the Pentecostal claims. I am plainly Dutch Reformed; these days with a penchant for the ecumenical. Our doors are open to all Faithfull that can sing the national anthem.”

Mr Sir Orange, after a pensive break, continued: “Concerning the nine lives,” he revealed, “I had an illuminating discussion with the Dalai Lama, the Buddhist leader of the Tibetans.”

“Cats have a special place in Buddhist religion,” explained the Dalai Lama. “This is because cats have stable Karma. They enter the world as cats and are reincarnated as cats. Hence the nine lives. Yet within this stability is diversity. A black cat may return a yellow, orange or white cat. It rarely happens that a reincarnated cat is green or blue. Spiritually green cats, however, are on the rise and are known as eco-cats. Outwardly they may have any colour of the rainbow. We now even have pink cats. Beware, however, of GMO cats. Those are not what they appear to be. GMO cats can be, for example, cat plus fish; in itself an abomination and a flagrant violation of the Kantian principles of classification. Even if we subscribe to the deep truth that life is meaningful because it is meaningless; we, at a more superficial level, do not accept artificial substitutes for the real thing. Therefore, let us now enjoy our cup of tea and butter.” (Apologies, dear reader, for this heavy stuff when you are just in for a laugh. But what else do you expect when someone on top of the world speaks?).