I have to be honest — the DCist staff was about 95 percent sure that the Craigslist ad for a 16-cat Dupont sublet which we featured yesterday afternoon was a fake. And that was well before I received an email from one “Fred Decatt” (get it?) last night, claiming to be the poster and asking me to be “more receptive and tolerant of cat enthusiasts such as myself” in future posts. Of course, by the time another reader forwarded us an email exchange in which the photo to the right was proffered as a photo of Bitnum, one of the cats listed in the ad, well, the inauthenticity of the ad was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

“It’s always about people.” So goes one of the more famous quotations attributed to nonviolent activist Cesar Chavez. Of course, we’re relatively certain that Mr. Chavez didn’t have parents of children at a Washington charter school which bears his name when he made that enlightened statement.

Last week, in our end of the day roundup, we linked to an NBCWashington.com story about that guy who had been standing at a busy intersection in Tysons Corner wearing a sign that read, “I CHEATED. THIS IS MY PUNISHMENT.” Tailor made for local broadcast news, the story was picked by nearly every outlet in town, and ended up getting some national and international coverage as well. But, it turns out, the whole thing…