Catfishing
by Mittens Romney

Mittens Romney, Mitt Romney's cat.
Cripes!  People used to catch on a lot sooner.

Greetings and salutations everybody.  It's me, Mittens.  I am grateful to Emma and the Maine Coon Revolutionary Council for giving me space in this blog to make a necessary revelation.  Not like the religious Revelations Mitt and Ann have.  More of a confession, really. You see, I get bored.   I like to create pranks and make jokes on people.  It's really not malicious; these things just occur to me, and I have a sort of compulsion to make them happen.  Anyway, this particular joke has gotten way out of hand, and Emma said that if I let it go on I would have to confess to Oprah, and I know Mitt wouldn't like that kind of publicity.  So I am using this blog, which no one reads anyway, to make my confession: I, Mittens Romney, am Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend.

I didn't plan on a long term prank.  It was supposed to be a simple goof, but the thing kind of snowballed.  And of course I wasn't dead to start with.  Here's how it all happened:

Many people of Mormon faith come in and out of Mitt's realm.  He is a big deal in the church, and people come for advice or just to see him. I don't want you to think that all Mormons know each other, but the brown skinned ones stand out pretty good.  I mean in any Mormon gathering there is so much white that you have to wear sun glasses.  Anyway, Manti was around a few times, and it became clear to me that his religion requires that he save himself for a nice Mormon girl, but even in this day and age nice white Mormon girls don't seem to be interested in brown men of any faith.  Old cultural norms die hard in Utah.  I guess I understand.  You would be looking at those brown kids for eternity.  So I got the idea that maybe he would just like to talk to a nice girl once or twice, and that I could be that girl.  Just for a lark, nothing cross gender or cross species. Just a prank, and not for more than a week or two.

Youth and stupidity go together.
Science has proven that the area of the brain that under-
stands consequences is not fully developed in young
human males, and never fully develops in feline males.
Sports fans should forgive young and stupid.

Problem was, I sort of got in to it.  I mean, it was very Shakespearean really.  A guy falls for a girl, who is a guy playing a girl, who is really a pedigree cat.  This is the stuff of great storytelling.  But unfortunately, being me, I let it go on too long.

Old and stupid is another matter.
Shakespeare would call his story a tragedy,
not a farce.

It was cool how I set it up, though.  I have several false online identities.  The world still hasn't warmed up to dealing with felines on a business level, so I often use other identities.  Bainsy and I create the names by spilling the Scrabble board. Most human names sound ridiculous to me anyway.  Especially the ones you give your cats.  So that's how I got the name Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.  I mean, really people, that should have been the first clue!  Who has a name like that?  How can you blame me for any of this?  Anyway, that's the account I used.

When I was communicating with Manti Te'o
as his soon to be dead girlfriend Lennay, I used to
make Bainsy dress up as a hula dancer.  It wasn't
 necessary for the prank, I just liked doing it.

So I was having a good time, and this thing went on for a while.  I learned a lot about football, and I learned an important lesson, which is, the narrative is more important than the truth.  Somewhere along the line Manti Te'o figured out that this story might further his career.  You can't get to the finals on American Idol without a compelling tear-jerker back story, and Manti reasoned that you can't win a Heisman without the same.  I believe this might be true, as veteran reporters were happy chasing a popular story with legs and didn't bother to check the simplest things.  You didn't need Urim and Thummin to closely interpret this one.  But there's big money in sports for everybody involved, and nobody wanted to upset the apple cart.  Or in my case the Apple iPad cart.  And evidently a dead grandma isn't enough anymore.  But a dead grandma and a dead girlfriend on the same day, and he won the game? Wow. They probably wanted to engrave that beefcake bronze trophy right then and there.

Oprah and I are friends, and I
would hate to have to tell her the
stupid things I've done.  I'd rather
 tell Google+ users with similar
impulse control issues.

Of course, I didn't know about grandma, I was just trying to end the thing gracefully at that point to have more time to devote to Bobby Jindal's political career.  I was actually considering saving the sick/dead sweetheart thing for him to use in the next Republican primary, and I didn't want to over do it.  God knows he will need all the help he can get when he announces.  Anyway, I decided to take the quickest way out and kill Lennay (my alter ego, 9 points) but the timing was terrible, with grandma kicking it on that same day.  But that was fairly Shakespearean too. Ultimately, an artist can't question.

The Maine Coon Revolutionary Council asked me to
emphasize that this is real cat fishing, and the only kind
they endorse.

Manti Te'o is a talented young football player whose only failing is that he is young and stupid, and I am sorry that I took advantage of that.  I am also sorry for grandma, who was very real and who is very dead, and now no one mentions her.  I regret dead grandma, and I regret any bad feeling I may have caused football fans, or people who live vicariously through the fictitious life stories of would-be sports heroes.  I would also like to apologize to the Mormon Church, which really had nothing to do with the story.  I promise in future I will consider the consequences of my behavior, and have already changed my ways. Well OK, I did tell Bobby Jindal that his best bet for the Republican 2016 Presidential Nomination was to start telling the party that they were stupid, but I don't intend to follow up on that.  I am truly humbled, and would be grateful for your forgiveness.  By the way, I haven't taken performance enhancing drugs since 2006.  Thank you for your time.

Most Humbly, 
Mittens Romney

P.S.  I would also like to publicly apologize to Mitt Romney.  Mitt, I know when you read this you will be upset, and I know I promised to never do anything like this again after I put that truckload of laxatives in the horse feed on Pioneer Day.  If you think about it, this wasn't exactly like that, but I get it, and I promise to not cook up embarrassing schemes in the future.  I am sincerely sorry. -- Little Mitty

P.P.S  Manti, I never properly thanked you for the beautiful red roses.  Bainsy enjoyed the candy, although he got excited and ate the whole box in one sitting and horked up a huge wad of sticky goo on Ann's white satin settee.  Still, it was lovely.  You are a fine young man, and I know one day soon you will find the right cat.  Keep in touch. --M.

Bainsy and I make up online user names using Scrabble letters.
We also use this method to come up with names for Ann's horses.
Rafalca was a 24 pointer on a double word score.

“Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun;

 it shines everywhere.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night.