WASHINGTON- US Customs has decided to abandon the training of cats for sniffing out drugs and other illegal contraband entering the United States. The cats did little more than sleep through most of the training or fought with each other.

Trainer Steve Alford has attempted to work with the cats for seven years now and has little to show for his efforts other than scratched hands and piles of dead mice. "It was a labor of love trying to train the untrainable for the first three years, then it became a hell on earth. I literally wanted to die every single day and, in fact, tried to kill myself eight times," Alford said. "I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I lost my desire to watch 'Boy Meets World', it was horrible."

The reason the government looked in a new direction in the first place, was that it was believed that drug sniffing dogs were prone to bribes from the large drug cartels. A feeling that was bolstered by the now infamous "New York Laddies", a group of six German Shepherds that were caught intentionally not sniffing out a large shipment of opium in exchange for eleven million Hong Kong dollars in 1993. All six dogs are currently awaiting appeal.