JENNIFER YOUNG/AFP/Getty Images

Socks, the White House cat, sits atop the podium in the White House press briefing room 19 March 1994. A groundskeeper who regularly walks Socks brought him into the press room and placed him unannounced on the podium. Socks stayed there for a few minutes as photographers took his picture before the goundskeeper said it was time to go and took Socks away.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

A picture taken July 6, 2009, shows US President Barack Obama (L) and his wife Michelle looking at Dorofey, a Neva Masquerade cat of Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana, during a visit to Medvedev in this Gorki residence outside Moscow. Medvedev’s beloved cat Dorofey mysteriously disappeared, Russian media reported today stirring media hype and hitting the Twitter world trends. After media buzz reached Dmitry Medvedev, he wrote on his Twitter that Dorofey is safely at home.

David McNew/Getty Images

A cat walks by empty voting booths as members of the press interview Los Angeles mayoral candidate Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa March 8, 2005 in Los Angeles, California. Voter interest appears low in the mayoral election which has been viewed for weeks as a near-dead heat race between several candidates. Only one out of three registered voters is expected to show up.

VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images

An elderly Ukrainian woman places her ballot in an urn on the snowy streets of the village Priborsk some 85 km north on Kiev during presidential elections on January 17, 2010. The presence of hundreds of Georgians in Ukraine purportedly to monitor elections spiralled into a major row after a party accused them of being special forces sent to disrupt the polls.

VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images

Local people cast their votes in the presidential election in the village of Kazakhstan, some 80 kms from Almaty on April 3, 2011. Kazakhstan votes on April 3 in a mostly ceremonial election that is set to stretch President Nurusltan Nazarbayev's rule into a third decade amid Western worries about democracy in the resource-rich state. AFP PHOTO / Vyacheslav Oseledko (Photo credit should read VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images)

VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images

A women standing next to her cat casts her presidential election ballot in the village Shelonets on March 2, 2008. Exactly half-way through voting, the central elections commission reported no less than 48 percent participation among the 109 million eligible voters. According to critics, the high figure reflected the authorities' use of fraud and coercion to avoid an embarrassingly low turnout.

VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images

A woman prepares to cast her vote in a mobile ballot box for the presidential election in the village of Internatsional'nyy, some 40 kms from Astana, on April 3, 2011. Kazakhstan votes on April 3 in a mostly ceremonial election that is set to stretch President Nursultan Nazarbayev's rule into a third decade amid Western worries about democracy in the resource-rich state.

LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

Larry the Downing Street cat sits on the red carpet outside number 10 Downing Street in central London on January 16, 2012.

ROBIN UTRECHT/AFP/Getty Images

The leader of the Dutch political party PVV (Party of Freedom) Geert Wilders pets a cat on February 21, 2011 in Enschede during on campaign tour ahead of the local elections. AFP PHOTO / ANP / ROBIN UTRECHT netherlands out - belgium out

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

A picture taken July 6, 2009, shows Dorofey, a Neva Masquerade cat of Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana, walking at Medvedev's Gorki residence outside Moscow. Medvedev’s beloved cat Dorofey mysteriously isappeared, Russian media reported today stirring media hype and hitting the Twitter world trends. After media buzz reached Dmitry Medvedev, he wrote on his Twitter that Dorofey is safely at home. AFP PHOTO/ RIA-NOVOSTI/ KREMLIN POOL/ MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV (Photo credit should read MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images)

MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images

French far right party, the National Front's (FN) vice-president Marine Le Pen strokes her cat at her countryhouse on July 28, 2010 in La Trinite-sur-Mer, northern France. Marine Le Pen, the party founder's 41-year-old daughter and an accomplished media performer, is a member of the European parliament and the Calais regional council, and remains in pole position to succeed her father at the head of the party in January 2011.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

A Georgian family and their pets watch the inauguration of US President Barack Obama from their living room in Tbilisi on January 20, 2009. Barack Obama took the oath of office to become the first black president in US history, witnessed by huge crowds in an unprecedented endorsement of a new leader at a time of deep crisis.

MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images

A cat walks past as an Indian couple leave after casting their vote at a polling booth in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh on February 15, 2012 during the third phase of the Uttar Pradesh state elections. Uttar Pradesh has a population of about 200 million. If it were a country it would be the world's fifth-most populous, larger than Brazil, and in places it has poverty as bad as in sub-Saharan Africa. AFP PHOTO/ Manan VATSYAYANA (Photo credit should read MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images)

PAUL J .RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

The Clinton family cat, 'Socks' sits on the shoulder of U.S. President Bill Clinton 25 March 1993 after the president finished his morning jog. Accompanying the president on his jog was Arkansas friend David Leopoulis (L).

STEPHEN JAFFE/AFP/Getty Images

US Secretary of State Colin Powell (R) receives a cat named Colin Powell from Pamela DelaBar (C), the President of Cat Fanciers' Association and its' owner Sig Hauck (L) while posing for a picture with the copper-eyed Bombay male that bears his name in the Treaty Room of the State Department 13 August 2004 in Washington, DC. The feline was selected as cat of the year by the Cat Fanciers' Association, which requested, and received, time with the secretary to photograph the two Colin Powells for its 2005 yearbook cover, a State Department official said.

MIKE NELSON/AFP/Getty Images

Press photographers surround Socks, the cat who belongs to the family of US President-elect Bill Clinton 17 November 1992 outside the governor's mansion in Little Rock.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

US President George W. Bush carries Miss Beazley as an aide carries his cat India while boarding Air Force One 26 December 2005 at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Bush is heading to his Crawford, TX ranch where he will be spending New Years.

RICHARD ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images

US President Bill Clinton in picture taken 20 December 1996 at the White House in Washington, DC., holds Socks the cat for children to pet as his wife Hillary looks on at the annual reading of Clement C. Moore's T'was the Night Before Christmas. Clinton read the classic poem to a group of children invited to the White House from Washington area schools.

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

Socks, US President Bill Clinton's pet cat, enjoys the unusually warm November weather 10 November, 1999 at the White House in Washington as the US and Presidential flags on President Clinton's limousine fly in the foreground.

You can hear it. Every minute, of every hour, on every frequency, in every fiber, the pounding sound of stomps and brays, the treacherous trumpeting of political provocation, a corrupt ruckus clattering and escalting into a ringing din of iniquity. Welcome to Election day. Need something fuzzy to look at? 

OK. Please enjoy these photographs of cats running governments around the world. 

Our domestic dog-and-pony show of donkeys and elephants is nothing compared to the cat-commanded mouse mongering elsewhere on the planet. Politics is for the clawed, and this makes the cats very happy. To ensure a future safe for all felines, kittens have fanned out across the globe, positioning themselves close to the ballots, and, whenever possible, close the world leaders themselves. 

Now go vote. The cats are watching.

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Screenshot via StrayCatAlliance.org

The real cat squatters of Lincoln Place.

L.A. animal advocates have been playing cat and mouse with apartment owners over the fate of a few dozen feral felines.

This week, the Stray Cat Alliance won a temporary injunction to halt the $150 million renovation of the Lincoln Place apartment complex until November.

The alliance argued that thousands of dollars had been spent to feed, sterilize, and vaccinate the cats -- a move that in the past 18 months successfully brought the adoptable kitty population down from 100 to 20 AI spirit animals.

A lawyer for the alliance claims that the owners planned to trap the cats, and would take them to a shelter where they would be euthanized. Owners say they have abided all city rules.

For now, the strays can stay, said the judge. A preliminary injunction will be considered on Nov. 9.

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Photo via NBC LA

The Orange County Vector Control District has reported a case of flea-borne typhus in Santa Ana. This image is from the district's warning flyer that was distributed to residents.

Orange County Vector Control is attempting to capture cats on the campuses of two Santa Ana schools on Tuesday in an effort to reduce the flea population following a case of typhus that sent a girl to the hospital last month.

Animal control specialists are trying to trap the feral cats near Frances E. Willard Intermediate School and El Sol Science and Arts Academy, notes NBC LA. City spokesman Jose Gonzalez said the child, who has since recovered, had no connection with any local schools, but was living nearby, CBS LA reports.

Typhus infections occur when a person is bitten by fleas or lice carrying the bacteria Rickettsia typhi or Rickettsia prowazekii.

Of the two types of typhus infections -- murine typhus and endemic typhus -- endemic typhus is the deadlier, but is less common in the U.S. Southern California has seen a rise of murine typhus in recent years, killing about 2% of untreated patients, according to NBC LA.

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Santa Ana Police Department

Animal Control officers remove dozens of cats from a home in Santa Ana.

Five family members are being charged with child endangerment after letting their Santa Ana home become a squalid kitty flophouse -- with all the feces, urine, spray and fleas that come from 110 cats living in one place.

The Orange County Register reports that the family members, spanning three generations, each face two counts of child endangerment for having two children under 12 living in the home under severely unsanitary conditions. All five pleaded not guilty on Wednesday.

Two of the accused, Sharon Lynn Howe, 65, and her granddaughter Courtney Lynn Howe Perez, 23, face additional charges of cruelty to animals, because apparently they were the ones keeping the animals -- some of them feral -- inside the house. ABC reports that the two women imagined the situation in their home was really a “nonprofit pet rescue” called “Cat Connection Rescue Network Inc.”

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