By Bud “Ombudsman” Ombudsman | National Media Monopoly Service

A recent Death Notice of the Month, featuring now-deceased Bass Lake feline Kitty Murphy, contained an erroneous (and perhaps widely-misused-yet-accepted) semantic flaw.

The late-Murphy’s age at the time of her death was not “80 in cat years.” That description was intended to demonstrate how old Kitty would be if she were a human being (which she most certainly was not), but it should have been presented “the other way around.”

“A 14-year-old felis catus is roughly the same age as an 80-year-old person (adjusted for inflation),” said Fargus Coxley, an earth-science major at Bass Lake University, during a compare-and-contrast midterm assignment, for which he received an “A” for effort.

The Beacon regrets the misleading information, and will immediately establish a policy to reduce occurrences of anthropomorphism, as they apply to zoological chronology.

•  Related: 17-year-old kitten for sale by owner. See the Beacon print edition.