The cat salesman III
Investing in a carriage is your next problem. And also my next problem, it’s really hard to calculate how many animals fit on a carriage.
The carriage
After searching upon searching upon searching I found a source claiming that a standard carriage is 5-10 ft wide and 10-15 ft long. I don’t speak freedom units, so lets firstly calculate the average of this and then convert to meters.
(5 + 10) / 2 = 7.5
(10 + 15) / 2 = 12.5
One foot is 30.48cm, which is now our basis for conversion:
7.5 * 30.48 = 228.6
12.5 * 30.48 = 381
We then convert this to meters:
228.6cm = 2.286m
381cm = 3.81m
Then we round both of these up to full meters, becoming 2m and 4m. Now, we need to calculate the area of the carriage using:
2m * 4m = 8m²
So the area of the carriage is 8m². I couldn’t find the average area of a cat nor a goose, but none of them – on average – have a larger area than 50cm², so we could just assign all of the animals a set space of 50cm². We can then use a calculation to calculate how many geese fit in the carriage, and since the number of cats is dependent on number of geese (0.5x where x = # of geese) in the carriage:
8m² = 800cm²
800 / 50 = 16,
16 geese make for 8 cats, 8 cats make for 32 ceiniog. The maximum number of ceiniog per carriage (ce/ca) is 32.
Capital
With all that said, what would you need to pay upfront for this business to work? What does the capital cost? Well, firstly, there are the cats. One cat is four ceiniog. Two cats are 4 * 2 ceiniog, 8 ceiniog. Add that to the expense list! Then, we need our horses. I was not able to find any concrete price for a horse, but I know that a baby horse (a foal) costs the same as a cat, that being 4 ceiniog. If horses where to follow the same chart for the price as a cat (or basically the same chart), I would get this:
4 * 2 = 8
8 * 2 = 16
Meaning that an adult horse following the same chart as the cat would cost 16 ceiniog (not sure what the “until it starts catching mouse” step would be tough). Add that to the expense list! The carriage is… Ambigous. I’d like to say it would be somewhere in the 20s of ceiniogs, but I couldn’t know for sure. A good estimate would probably be 25 ceiniog. That’s your initial capital! Calculating the cost of starting a cat business is then pretty easy:
(8 + 16 + 25) = 39
So that’s the price! If my calculations are correct (which, to be honest, they’re probably not) the price for starting this cat business (or at least the price of the initial capital) is 39 ceiniog.
Next chapter: The cat salesman IV
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