Furbi et Lorbi?
I
T IS SNOWING here in Western North Carolina. That's the weather and now here's the news...Nothing yet on Snopes marking this as an Urban Legend, but it's making the rounds faster than that kid that wants a world record in cookie recipes.
Benedict XVI is a cat lover.
Friends in Rome and in Regensburg, Germany -- where he once taught and still owns a home -- say the pontiff also attracts felines.
"I went with him once" to visit a cemetery behind a church, said Konrad Baumgartner, the head of the theology department at Regensburg University. The graveyard "was full of cats, and when he went out, they all ran to him. They knew him and loved him. He stood there, petting some and talking to them, for quite a long time. His love for cats is quite famous."
He doesn't have a cat, however. And Agnes Heindl, his brother Rev. Georg Ratzinger's housekeeper, doesn't think he can keep a cat in the Vatican.
When the then Cardinal Ratzinger visited Regensburg "he was always content to play with the street cats," she said. "I don't know much about Rome, but I know there's no shortage of cats there."
Roman cats: Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who had worked as Ratzinger's top aide at the Vatican, described how the new pope always paid attention to the street cats around St. Peter's and how they sometimes followed him as he walked to his office. Bertone joked: "One time the Swiss Guards had to intervene: 'Look, your eminence, the cats are laying siege to the Holy See.' "
First Estonia, now the feline conspiracy is creeping intot the Vatican.