The audience at the 1945 International Science Consortium was stunned into silence when my great-grandfather, Schnapsidee von Genesplice, presented his thesis. The theme that year was Quadrupedal Temperature Change and he had stumbled upon an ingenious plan to keep tender paws warm and toasty.

These twisted kittens would never again lose their mittens, for they had been genetically altered to have woolly mitts where tiny paws should be! Their misshapen heads and a suspicious lack of any discernible noses or mouths shook fellow scientists to the core. Suddenly, panic broke out in the front row as the “cats” approached them, their crooked torsos being dragged along the stage by five stumpy legs. The marked absence of any tails was just too much to bear and convinced many that science was best left to the fiction writers.