In a small village, two candidates were competing to become mayor, and between them they had managed to turn the whole campaign into a single, endless argument about parking. Each of them had a plan, each plan was worse than the other, and the villagers, who had to listen to both every day, were exhausted. So a group of bored teenagers decided to liven things up. They printed posters of Mr. Whiskers, the baker's enormous orange cat, and pinned them to every wall in the village. "Vote for Whiskers," they read. "He has no opinion about parking."
It was meant as a joke, but on election day something odd happened. Tired of the shouting, the villagers walked into the polling station, looked at the two serious men on the list and quietly wrote the cat's name instead. Mr. Whiskers won by 212 votes. The council held a solemn ceremony, at which the new mayor was presented with a tiny sash. He accepted it by yawning.
His decisions, as it turned out, were made by sleeping on whatever document happened to be on the table. Council meetings moved to the bakery, where there was always something warm to eat, and finished at five sharp so that nobody missed dinner. A fish stall opened in the square. And the arguments faded away, because nobody has ever managed to stay angry with a cat who is sitting on the agenda.