As a former cat owner, which is to say that at one time I owned cats (insofar as anyone can be said to own cats, curse their feline independence yea unto the seventh level of Hades), and a long-time bearer of a rather handsome mustache, I feel uniquely qualified to suggest that mustaches are inherently superior to cats. While there may be significant differences between mustaches and cats, given that one is a splendid bit of facial foliage and the other is a foul-tempered four-legged pestilence, I believe that it is still possible to compare the two using exhaustive modern scientific method. By this I mean, of course, presenting my views in a purely logical and unbiased fashion. I am confident that after reading the following carefully reasoned statements, you, dear reader, will be in complete accord with the pristine laser-like brilliance of my observations. Such as:

When you have to leave town for a few days, you can take your mustache with you, and never have to worry about whether or not your hotel has a no-mustache policy.

A mustache will never have an unfortunate accident on the rug while you're at work.

Mustache has two spellings (mustache and moustache), whereas cat has only one. If you add an o into cat you could wind up with coat, which might get confusing if you start accusing your coat of having an unfortunate accident on the rug while you were at work.

A mustache will never yowl at the moon or attack company, at least not on it's own.

A mustache will never leap on your back when you're trying to sleep in on a Saturday morning, and sink it's savage razor-sharp claws into your tender precious human skin.

A mustache will never contract rabies, heartworm, distemper, or croup. I'm not sure whether or not a cat can contract croup, or even what croup is, exactly, but I'm darn sure that mustaches are immune.

If you hit a mustache with your car, nobody cares, unless it happens to be attached to a person at the time. The mustache, that is.

If your mustache irks you beyond all reason, you can take a razor to it and end it's miserable existence, and the Humane society won't give a darn.

When you're old, you don't have to worry about who's going to look after your mustache when you die. Of course, once you're dead you're not going to worry about a cat, either, but hey. Advantage mustache.

You never have to have your mustache neutered in order to avoid bringing little bundles of unwanted facial hair into the world. Unless you're a woman.

A mustache will never cough up hairballs. It is a hairball.

If you want, you can just yank a hair at random from your mustache. If you try this with an actual live cat, you're likely going to get severely scratched.

If you wear a cat on your upper lip as a fashion statement, people will think you're weird. Except in places that you don't want to go to, because they don't think it's weird to do that there. If you see what I mean.

You don't need a litter box for a mustache.

Your mustache will never slink into the garden next door and have a bowel movement among the tomato plants and get the neighbours really steamed at you and call City Bylaw Enforcement, the bastards, and get you slapped with this ridiculous fifty-seven dollar and fifty cent fine, for Pete's sake, and extract some sort of nonsense promise to keep the blasted thing on a leash. I mean, really.

Mustaches never grow up. They stay cute forever.

A mustache will never wander off by itself and get lost the night before you're moving to Vancouver, and have you combing the woods all bloody night calling for the wretched thing for hours and hours and hours, and make you re-book your flight about a zillion times.

You will never develop a really annoying allergy to your own mustache. Other people might, but you'll be okay, and that's all that really matters.

Your mustache will never decide for no good reason that it suddenly doesn't like what it's eating, and drive you crazy trying to figure out how to feed the horrid little ingrate.

Your mustache will never develop a profound case of feline flatulence and embarrass you at your own soiree by seeking out the largest knots of guests and dropping silent but lethal bombs.

Your vacuum cleaner will never get clogged with mustache hair. Unless you have a really impressive mustache, in which case clogging the vacuum cleaner would be something to brag about.

At Christmas, you can hang tinsel and ornaments on your mustache instead of on a tree. If you try decorating a cat, people will think you're peculiar and cruel, which sort of spoils the Christmas mood.

If you are asked a question which has you utterly baffled, you can always stall for time by stroking your mustache and looking intelligent and pensive. A cat may not always be so readily available.

Your mother-in-law will never decide spontaneously that your mustache needs to be bathed, and drag it screaming and kicking downstairs to the laundry tub. She may look at your mustache with pity and loathing, but she can never bathe it against your will. Just let her try.

If you shave off your mustache, what you're left with is an ordinary human lip. If you shave a cat, on the other hand, what you have is something that looks like it starred in Alien. Don't ask me how I know this.

You can style and train a mustache with a special kind of wax made for this purpose. If on the other hand you try to train a cat by brushing wax into it's coat, all you're basically doing is wasting wax and annoying the cat. On the other hand, the cat will be nicely waterproofed.

You will never be harassed by having some bleeding-heart phoning you at dinner time, trying to get you to cough up a donation for the Society to Prevent Cruelty to Mustaches. Although, in my view, this would be an extremely worthwhile cause.

Your mustache will never give you the willies by suddenly staring at something that isn't there, especially when you're alone in a really creepy house at night by yourself. And there's a thunderstorm raging, with branches rapping on the windows and the whole nine yards. Sheesh.

So there you have it. Pretty much conclusive, I'd say. The poor darn cat never had a chance against the glory of the human mustache. -Jon Park-Wheeler