We asked Reuben (the cat) who would win the Champions League final tonight.
I don’t normally turn to cats for wisdom, or think they’re particularly clever (which is where the similarity between me and ancient Egyptians ends, sadly) but when you’re sat on the fence and don’t know what to think, they can be useful.
They must be useful for something. Reuben mostly sits around all day, sleeping, and when he’s awake he’s pulling up the corners of the carpets, sometimes vomiting on them, and using the litter tray five minutes before we have visitors. That can’t be all that he is, surely.
I began forcing Reuben to predict the outcome of football matches about 12 years ago and his success rate was fairly impressive (so much so that I set up a WordPress site to document it).
He was no Paul the Octopus. As we all know, the more arms you have, the more likely you are to predict the outcome of football matches correctly. Scientists proved that a long time ago (that’s why, if you go digging, you’ll find that most betting companies have octopuses in tanks in their offices).
I’m not sure Reuben has any arms because all four of his limbs are legs. The odds really were (and still are) against him, which makes his achievements all the more remarkable.
Anyway, he let us down tonight. He walked straight to the flash card with ‘Arsenal’ scrawled on it and ate the treats in front of that, and for a good while it looked like he was going to be right.
He’d likely argue that he was let down by Arsenal’s anti-football approach and the commentators being weirdly complimentary of it), but if he was doing his job he’d have seen that coming and simply eaten the PSG treats.
We’re not yet sure if we’ll be seeking his predictions for the upcoming World Cup. Reuben is a notorious anti-Trump cat and has suggested he might boycott it, or go on strike. But aren’t all cats on permanent strike over everything anyway?