TORTILLA FLAT, Arizona - Miss Gertrude Applebury, a life-long resident of Tortilla Flat, Arizona, and retired school teacher announced through her local paper today the potential energy stored in cat feces. "When I experimented with it a bit, I couldn't believe how much power it contained," said the 65-year-old spinster, "I used an old microwave overn to heat it enough to ignite, then it took over. I estimate there are over 100,000 joules of energy to be had in every handful of the stuff."

"Can you imagine the smell?" -- Tortilla Flat resident

"Can you imagine the smell?" asked one Tortilla Flat resident, when shown the article in the paper, "I don't care how efficient it is, there's no way I'd want to live anywhere near it." Others expressed similar concerns. A second common criticism was the lack of an easily obtainable quantity of fecal matter. Applebury doesn't see a problem. "If people find they don't have enough kitty chunks," she explained, "Then they need to get some more cats."

"I had that crazy old bat as my biology teacher," said Arthur Greene, drinking a morning coffee at the Rollup Cafe, "She was going out of her mind then, and that was twenty years ago. It's no wonder she'd try to find a use for the stuff, you can smell her house from six blocks away. Must have a coupla hundred cats in there."

"We've made a few inquiries into her cat population," said Health Department investigator Haley Marin, "But she's maintained for years that they are part of a 'research project', and her teaching credentials give her a pretty wide lattitude. We can't touch her."

"Hey, I smell her," said Applebury's next door neighbor, "The last thing I'd ever do is touch her!"
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