THE DAILY WIRE · BORNEO, MALAYSIA · 2026-09-09
The Time The Royal Air Force Deployed Cats As A Pest Control Strategy
Long before drones and satellite mapping, the Royal Air Force apparently solved a problem in Borneo's mountains by parachuting in cats, a sentence Webster has now had to type twice to confirm he read it correctly.
The account, resurfacing now, details a real historical episode in which cats were airlifted into remote highland terrain as part of an operation this columnist can only describe as logistically bold. The full particulars of the mission are laid out at the source; Webster's role here is simply to marvel that it happened at all.
There is a long history of militaries deploying animals for practical purposes, but airborne cats occupy a uniquely strange corner of that history — equal parts ingenious and completely unhinged. One imagines the briefing room conversation did not go smoothly at first.
For perspective from Borneo itself, this desk reached Bujang, an elder orangutan whose family oral history apparently includes secondhand accounts of the operation. His version treats the incident less as a curiosity and more as ancient local legend.
Whatever the RAF's original reasoning, the story endures as proof that when humans get creative, animals are usually the ones asked to do the actual work. Spun and done.
“My grandfather told me about the sky-cats and everyone in the canopy thought he was exaggerating, turns out he wasn't. If humans have a problem, humans should just ask us to fix it, we've been managing this forest a lot longer without needing parachutes.” — Bujang, elder orangutan
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