Feed a cat, starve a person?
January 29, 2004 ~ 5:44 p.m.
I left the following message in someone�s guestbook. Despite the journalist in me that aches to do so, I will not link to this writer because I�ve learned my lesson from the last dispute I had here on Diaryland. Unless you�ve got something positive to say about a person, don�t link to them. That�s my advice.
Any road, here�s what I wrote:
�Oh yes, I totally agree. Hell with animals. Humans are the only species on this earth that count! Yep, these damn hippy animal-lovers are the only things keeping us from ruining this earth even more. Oops, gotta go run to feed the pets ...�
The diarist in question had written an entry slamming pet owners. To him, the ownership of a pet requires �tons of food and attention.� And I thought people were the biggest drains on physical and emotional resources. Silly me.
I once wrote that having no children�and no car, I might add�allowed the wife and I to use our spare money for travel. Yet this individual has written: �I get to go on those spur of the moment adventures. They�re damned fun�some of the best times of my life. While you�re picking up another one of your dog�s endless stream of bowel movements, your pet-less friends like me are in France or Florida or Fiji or Finland�without you.� Well, if you make friends with other animal lovers, close friends that you can trust, you can have them feed your critters, change their water, sprinkle fresh litter into their trays and then they can be off on their merry way for the rest of the day while you soak up the sun in the south of Florida or the south of France. Let�s not even pretend that pet-sitting is as complicated and nerve-racking as baby-sitting is. As far as I know, it�s the people with kids who don�t have much opportunity for travel�or even for much fun. The wife and I have pet rats and a large rabbit. We go on more trips in the space of one year than most folks with children do in a lifetime. My parents have two cats. They also manage to do fun, productive things with their lives. And that�s not all�my sister and brother-in-law have a guinea pig, five birds and several fish. And yes, even they will tell you that they�re perfectly happy and don�t feel hindered by all the animals they�ve taken on.
The author of this charming ditty also screams, with infantile leftie rage, �What better way to say �fuck the poor and dying� than with a pet?� If you ask me, what better way to say that you think far too much of your fellow humans, most of whom would not only not give you the time of day, but stomp you if they thought they could get away with it or become a millionaire for doing so. He goes on to bawl:
�What if we took all the extra money that American people spent on pet food, toys, and accessories each year and put it towards cancer research or to provide free condoms in Africa, a continent whose population may be reduced by as much as 30% in the next thirty years due to the spread of AIDS. What if we took all the money we spent on pets and used it to build homes for refugees of civil wars or funded a system to provide health care for the poor?�
Now I am not insensitive. I believe in a social safety net for people who�ve fallen on rough times (all I ask is that we weed out and severely punish those who cheat the system, and to not keep people enslaved to it by having a time limit on welfare. But I digress �). This quote is a dead giveaway as to how he feels about animals. Now then, he�d have all the money we spend on our pets to be diverted to cancer research. Hey, how about we simply give our pets up to research? That way, we can cut out the middleman and even more money won�t be wasted in breeding lab animals to perform vivisection on! Brilliant!
AIDS research? For the most intelligent � ha ha ha! Sorry, couldn�t be helped � species on the planet, we�re remarkably poor in controlling our instincts. It�s simple�keep it in your pants or risk catching a disease. Simple enough for you? How about this quote that appeared right after he bragged about how the pet-less can enjoy going on trips:
�And they�re probably naked, having sex, getting drugs pushed into every one of their orifices, laughing, and generally having the times of their lives. And they�re doing it on beds and couches and carpets that are completely free from pet hair.�
Having sex, doing the nasty on pet-hairless carpets and pushing drugs into every orifice? Hmmm, would this drug-taking include mainlining�you know, using needles? And yet he laments that people have AIDS. Gee, do you think this fellow has trouble putting two and two together?
And there is health-care for the poor. It�s called Medicaid.
He then goes on to describe how amusing it is that gerbils may eat their young. This guy is a real compassionate person, all right. So long as you�re not a �lesser being.�
It�s true that animals learn to love you only after you�ve regularly fed them. But that�s the main basis of trust with animals. Once you�ve earned their trust, they are the most loving, loyal and completely unconditionally accepting souls that you could ever hope to spend your home with. No cat, dog, rabbit, rat or bird ever judged me.
So, all you pet owners, as you feed your beloved animal(s) tonight, just think that there�s someone out there who thinks you want to starve the poor, deprive the homeless of shelters, see people drop like flies from AIDS, deny people health care, and that you approve of tyrannical governments that breed refugees.
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
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