Date: March 1, 1999
From: CNN.COM 


NEW DELHI (Reuters) -- Two cats which pranced around the 
central hall of India's parliament during a televised presidential 
address last month are to be punished with sterilization, a 
newspaper report said on Monday. 

"A special drive has been launched to punish the cats in Parliament 
House for their appearance before live cameras during the president's 
customary address to a joint sitting of the two houses of parliament,"
 the Asian Age said. 

"The cats will be sterilized." 

The paper said the appearance of the cats, among 10 to 12 believed 
to be living in the Parliament House canteen and central hall, had been 
construed in political circles as inauspicious. 

"Our primary objective is to keep the number of cats under control after 
sterilization and not to eliminate them because they keep control over 
the growth of rats in canteens," Reeta Kaul of the Frendicoes Society 
for the Eradication of Cruelty to Animals told the paper.