The Federal Republic of New Caterse is a massive, socially progressive nation, ruled by Mx Camille Gustav with a fair hand, and remarkable for its smutty television, state-planned economy, and soft-spoken computers. The compassionate, democratic population of 2.79 billion Caterseans are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The enormous, liberal, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Environment. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of New Port. The average income tax rate is 90.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The all-consuming Catersean economy, worth 267 trillion guilders a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is highly specialized, is mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing and Tourism. Average income is 95,872 guilders, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Crime is on the rise as DNA sampling has been all but outlawed, any body part that can be cut off a person is no longer considered to be their property, dog breeding has been banned in accordance with recent animal experimentation laws, and there's never enough space in space. Crime is totally unknown. New Caterse's national animal is the cat, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

New Caterse is ranked 118,791^st in the world and 3,058^th in the West Pacific for Largest Trout Fishing Sector, scoring 703.57 on the Nemo Depletion Efficiency Index.