It is a Sunday afternoon, 11:22 am, there is a grand prix race on TV where there are 4 classes of cars, but I can’t keep track and it is just on for ambient background noise for the cat, I have head phones on and I am catching up on all the podcasts on my shuffle I need to catch up on, most of them are 3-4 minutes, the cat climbed between a sheet I have covering the couch, ( the texture irritates my arms and legs) sometimes the cat for what ever reason burrows his was in-between and is attacking something, I thought it might be an insect, but I have yet to find one and after his attack he goes to sleep, so be it.
Recently an incident reminded me that there is life outside my own sphere of selfishness. There have been many stories of shootings in the news, there was even a family killed last week. Starting with the killing of 4 cops in Oakland, 3 in Pittsburg, Immigration center in NY, and 3-4 families scattered throughout the US. The reasons given were varied, some feared (or so they claimed) the loss of their guns, so their response was to kill a bunch of people. Some lost their job and instead of d=facing the struggle head on they killed their kids, which is a very common murder-suicide going ways back to the depression, another common one is the marriage disintegrates, usually over money, and the man kills the kids, kills himself and sends a message that he hopes her new love is worth it. It is not lost on me that a few days ago the 2nt remembrance if Virginia tech and tomorrow is the 10th of columbine.
I don’t understand this level of thinking; I read an article that the rate of mass murders hasn’t really changed. What has changed? We have become numb, these things don’t even really grab out attention. A school shooting may capture out notice, but it is usually the police reaction, or the anticipation for a video or note explaining why he did it. A distant war, economic collapse, frustration with out elected leaders over the last 12 or so years, all this puts us a fingertip out of reach of compassion. On a local level we all do something to help out, even if it is a donation, as a society we tend to come together to help when asked, but it aren’t always humans. The interchanges on the interstate have been rebuilt and the critters that lived in the area (prairie dogs and the like) were relocated and I checked to see what happens and I saw links to no-kill groups and they had web-pages that showed kitties and puppies of every shape and age, and they are asking for 25-100 a month. These bother me a bit, I can see putting up the cost of a single animal running about 250.00 a year, but I don’t know the scope of the no kill shelters. The pages are set up like those commercials for cute kids that have nothing and a $10.00 a month pledge will provide vaccinations, schooling, and meals. This has the opposite effect where I wonder if the same kid has several sponsors, or if it is an economy of scale scenario. I always have a bad feeling when I hear of an animal suffering, but if someone is found dead it goes over my head if I don’t recognize the name. A couple of weeks ago I was driving in the predawn darkness and saw a cat that I had seen darting across the road on many times, lying in the road, I circled back and honked the horn and he didn’t move so I continued on to work and I felt bad I returned to see if I could move him before he became part of the road and he was already gone, and I am hopeful that his owner took him.
This is a long way of getting to something that happened a couple of weeks ago. But first backtrack a year or so. According to the source, the cry of a desperate and very hungry was uttered by a black cat, a black cat already lives at the residence. My mom hates to see animals suffer and when she noticed the cat only had ½ a tail she started to feed it and it would disappear, return eat, and eventually would sleep on the front or back porch, this confused because I once came to visit saw the cat on the porch, who ran as I approached and I entered the house, saw another black cat. My mom told me that the outside cat won’t let them get near it but it cries in the morning and it broke my mom’s heart. Fast foreword over a year, the cat we thought was a he, is a she and left kitties, 3 of them, in the shed. My mom put them in a towel and the cat moved them to the garage, my mom put a towel and the cat moved them to a very tiny space next to a vent. So the cat has had a warm place all Along to sleep during the winter.
Here is the problem, there are three kitties that have to be given away and we all know what happens to kitties who go to the pound, and now the cat has to go because it would be cruel to let it continue to reproduce. But the cat is feral and no one will want it so it will be put down. Now I have no emotional attachment to the cat, but I feel a connection. The cat was doing what cats do, especially wild one, pure existence, sleep, breath, eat where ever it can, and part of it is reproduction. I could not stand by and let the human society take the cat and put it down, and I understand that there are too many cats out there, and the cat will likely not live much longer, but it gives my mom a purpose in the morning, and my dad also likes when the cat cries in the morning, but does not like the other cats coming around for a free meal.
I checked and it is possible to set a trap and get the cat fixed and it is very cheap, and the cat can be released the next day. Problems one solved, the kitties may have homes, I am hopeful, and that is a problem I will address later.
A co worker is an animal activist but does not like no kill shelters, she thinks is kinder to put animals down than to subject them to foraging for a living, or get a warm home, plenty to eat, and cast out on their own when they have to move or become inconvenient. That is cruelty, it isn’t right to do that to an animal and there are parts if the city where there are colonies of dogs and cats that are abandoned and eke out a lying aided by well meaning people who won’t let the will ones get trapped.
The essence of existence is to think, to survive, and to live; if I get the cat fixed she can not make more kitties, obviously has a place to stay warm, and brings a measure or normalcy to the household. If the cat dies in an accident, it is fate and while the cat does not have the consciousness to know what I will do, it will sleep, wake up, slep in the sun, and live.
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