Coming soon to tv: “catnado”

It’s Shark Week, with a forecast of cloudy with a certainty of sharks — seven glorious days of endless sharkumentaries. Last year the Syfy Channel launched its own charcharinid adventure with Sharknado, where sharks fall from the skies of Los Angeles. Sharknado was so well received by its television 5.3 million viewers, Syfy Channel unleashed a sequel, Sharknado 2: The Second One.

The 10 biblical plagues have nothing on Sharknado, the product of a mating (if movies could mate, and on Syfy anything is possible) between Jaws and Twister. What’s not to love? Think Attack of the Killer Tomato Sharknadoes.

I live in tornado alley, so I have a fascination for severe weather, and who doesn’t love sharks? The idea of a freak weather system developing tornadoes that rain sharks is irresistible.

Lower your technical expectations. You couldn’t find an intelligent storyline in a Sharknado movie if you watched it through electron microscope. Not that Syfy Channels movies have ever been hindered by logic or those pesky laws of physics. People who obsess on points of continuity or accuracy are advised to sit down with an adult beverage before viewing a Sharknado movie.

Any meteorologist will tell you a water spout doesn’t have the ability to draw a 60,000-pound mature whale shark or a three-ton great white out of the water, carry it for miles and drop it unharmed on a Manhattan street so it can feed on pedestrians. A large shark ejected from hundreds of feet up would splat against the pavement like a sack of cherry Jell-O. So let’s check our brains at the door and simply climb aboard for the ride.

Celebrities pepper Sharknado 2: Billy Ray Cyrus, Andy Dick, Subway spokesman Jared Fogel, Judd Hirsch as a taxi driver, Robert Klein, the Naked Cowboy, Kelly Osbourne, Rachel True, Robert Hays, Perez Hilton, Richard Kind, Matt Laurer, Al Roker, and Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan. All true Trekkies cheered when we watched Wil Wheaton consumed at the movie’s start.

The protagonist, a guy named Fin, uses chainsaws to kill the bloodthirsty sharks and detonates bombs inside the tornadoes to dissipate the storms, of course.

Rumor has it that Syfy Channel has already contracted for a third Sharknado movie. I think they should consider a different angle of the animal tornado disasters with a screenplay written by yours truly. You might encourage Syfy to give me a call and we can talk about Catnado: A Natural Force for Good. My script might not embrace the laws of nature, but will at least give them a courteous nod.

Catnado is not as far a stretch as Sharknado. After all, there are catsharks and tiger sharks. Catsharks are bottom dwellers about the size of a domestic kitty with feline eyes. Both sharks and cats are efficient predators. There will be no dead cat bounce in Catnado, unless it is tied to a financial investment. Lucky cats can actually survive falls from heights, whereas in any other world besides a Syfy movie, sharks would splat into a nasty gelatinous blob of red and gray.

So, what’s the plot?

An Oklahoma farm town (the native habitat of free-roaming tornadoes) is overrun by mice and rats because the EPA has outlawed effective pesticides. People are getting sick from hanta virus. Two townspeople have already contracted bubonic plague. The crops are being eaten. The farmers pray for relief.

Protagonist Catherine has just discovered a starving colony of feral cats next to a Captain D’s. Days earlier someone had dumped a hoarder’s pets behind the restaurant. During a severe thunderstorm, a tornado sweeps up the feral cats and then blows through the nearby granaries.

The kitty cyclone also hits a big cat sanctuary and whisks up a 400-pound Bengal tiger named Fred. Fred lands on his feet (of course) inside a bookstore where the Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan is autographing his latest bestseller. (Hey, I don’t have to explain how he got in the bookstore. This is the Syfy Channel.) Fred immediately consumes Millan but is subdued by Jackson Galaxy, who is ironically promoting his new book on the other side of the store. Jackson encourages the store manager to catify the place in the event of another catnado.

The feral cats eradicate the rats in the grain silo. The lonely children of the community put down their iPhones and develop feline friendships. A lonely old man adopts a stray calico and names her after his late wife. The last scene shows the town gangbanger, who was saved from flying debris by an old tomcat. He picks up old tom, hugs him and they both start life anew. Alley Cat Rescue sends vets to spay and neuter all of the kitties. A rainbow forms from one silo to the next. Happy ending for everyone but the rats.

Catnado will have its share of celebrity walk-ons: Pamela Anderson, Halle Berry, Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfeiffer, Anne Hathaway, Katy Perry, Jay Leno, Christopher Walken, Freddie Mercury (remember, physical laws are partially suspended), Christina Ricci, Neil Patrick Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Brigitte Bardot, Hillary Swank, Leonard Nimoy, Fred Willard, Taylor Swift, and Paris Hilton. And of course, we would have to kill Wil Wheaton.

Catnado: A Natural Force for Good. Coming to a screen, sometime.

What would you add to my masterpiece? Let me know in the comments!

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