My favorite G-Rated "cat pictures" that ended up on the cutting room floor:

A sage CAT being suitably sarcastic to something (ANYTHING!) Swopes might have said...

Another CAT in the wrong place at the wrong time when Swopes exited his bathroom sans fur...

A couple of the bands that performed at the "after set"...

A show-stopping solo effort by a rockin' little CAT...

Thank goodness Swopes was long gone, or we might have had another call to the police. Even I suspected that the CAT below had possibly been sniffing the catnip. Not content to simply mellow out, this CAT decides to put on an exibition...

Madam CAT President being catty, donning shades to signify the potential bright future in store for Cairo School District Number One...now that hopeless has been replaced by swopeless.

BTW: If you mistook the picture above as me? Nah, look to the paws...pink doesn't suit me.

However, I was going to make an appearance...in my best formal attire! (Hey, if Swopes can go au naturel, I figure "go with it!"

And, yes, back in the day, when I was attending CHS proms...there was always a photographer. I was going to display various portraits of attendees in their finest attire. Those pics were truly lame and did not even make this wrap-up edition.

Except one!

The attendee voted "CAT Person of the Ball"...

...I think you will agree, was one cool CAT!

Finally, two pics which came very, very close to making the cut:

First up...

I just couldn't spoil the levity of the day by introducing "Judas CAT", a concept that failed the "smell" test...no such animal.

I considered an alternative, using the CAT above as one who accepted Swopes' bribe under false pretenses..."take the money and run", but CATs have already been portrayed by Cairo School District officials as greedy and only interested in the money, so I invoked the powers of my position as CAT Tracks editor to pull the plug on the entire episode.

Last but definitely not least...

...the one I really, really wanted to use because in the current education reform climate it is so apropos.

When Swopes arrived at his office at 8:45 a.m., he was going to find a "supervisor CAT" sitting behind his desk:

If you think the evaluation that the Cairo Board of Education gave Leotis D. Swopes last year was bad (before the hired him back and gave him a raise), well you should have seen the one given by CAT!!!

However, the "SUP FOO" CAT won out in the end. (The "thug CAT" seemed a better fit for my boom-box exit scenario.)

There were also two R-Rated pics that missed the cut: