My sweet tuxedo cat, Lacy, thought that I took the sun with me to work. I asked why.

“Because when you leave in the morning, the sun is in the front door. When you come home at night, it’s in the backyard where we sit.”

I explained to Lacy that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west – it’s merely a coincidence that the front door faces east and the back door faces west.

Lacy twitched her nose in disbelief.

“Does Steve Stivers have something to do with the sunrise?” she asked.

Huh?

Lacy told me about the new TV commercial for Stivers, Ohio 15th District candidate, which opens with:

“It’s morning in Ohio. A National Guard Colonel, Steve Stivers, is reminded daily the sacrifice made to keep the sun rising over our nation.”

Explaining Political Hyperbole to Your Cat

It took a few minutes and an old astronomy textbook to explain that Stivers doesn’t make or help the sun rise.

“So why did he say that?” she asked while licking her left foot.

“It’s called hyperbole,” I explained. “All politicians use hyperbole during the election. He simply wants to say he believes in defending our nation.”

“Do all politicians say they keep the sun rising?”

“Maybe Stivers went a little far,” I pondered, “because he has sun in Aries. His moon could be in either Sagittarius or Capricorn. Sagittarius would suggest out-of-control hyperbole (among other out-of-control activities) while moon in Capricorn would suggest extreme reverence for authority. If he does have sun in Aries and moon in Capricorn, then he very well might be a one-man military.”

“So he could keep the sun rising if he wanted?”

My kitty is a little slow at times.

“Maybe,” I conceded, patiently. “The commercial has a lot of coffee in it, so he maybe he keeps the sun rising over Mexico and Guatemala as well.”

“I like the sun, and Stivers,” Lacy said, yellow eyes staring in challenge. This is typical of her. She likes to play devil’s advocate in political conversation, taking the opposite view of her partner.

“I like the sun, too,” Lacy, “but Stivers might want to be careful with the sun hyperbole and stick to his record of sponsoring job fairs or something more practical.

It’s a lot sunnier in Iraq than in the 15th District of Ohio.”