You’ve heard the stories of pets caught in the crossfire. They’re family dramas where someone loses touch with their humanity and acts against a family pet to demonstrate their anger. It’s horrible and it happens all the time. In fact, violence against animals is proven an indicator of the capacity to harm people. There is no denying anyone intentionally wounding non-human species without justification will, given time, develop an interest in expanding their heartless enterprise to more challenging prey.
Um… That would be us. Following? Good.
I ran across a disturbing story today and immediately realized it’s a perfect example of where it all starts, why it’s unimaginable, and what kind of worry it invokes. Where does that ability to snuff out another life find its limits? Do we trust the person wielding such violence to control the anger that inspires them? When do we stop making excuses for cruelty in any form and start addressing it like the problem it is? When does it matter?
Anyway, the story goes as follows. Tiffy is a kitten recently adopted by Melissa, the parent of another adopted cat, Gucci. The most recent indication (in photos with cartoon dialogue) was that the two felines were doing well and in a good home. Both appear to be in excellent overall health.
The next update (again in photos with cartoon dialogue) shows Tiffy in excellent overall health and apparently quite comfortable.
A follow-up (yet more photos, but sans the cartoon dialogue) shows two very comfortable cats learning to enjoy each other’s company. (This includes a link at the bottom to a previous post of photos showing the day Gucci’s home was first invaded by the kitten Tiffy.)
The next thing we see is someone’s father has entered the picture and apparently whisked Tiffy off to some shelter as “a stray” because she was not yet completely litter trained and had defecated in some inappropriate areas. The change in tone of these updates likewise shifts dramatically.
My heart sinks at this point. What? Wait, let me rephrase that: What the fuck!? Are you kidding me? Is this a joke?
Apparently not. Tiffy is dead. She was quickly put to sleep by the shelter because they had no room for her.
For but a moment in time, grant me audience…
I have enjoyed the opportunity to provide shelter and family to a great many animals. I truly was blessed as a child to have been raised in a household where pets of many sorts were welcomed and loved. When I began living on my own, this did not change. I thank my parents each and every day for educating me on the wonder and beauty of sharing a snippet of our existence on this planet with creatures who will love us in their own special ways, beasts from all genres of imagination who bring joy and wonder into what could otherwise be a dull and dreary existence. In many cases publicly and in some cases only privately, every creature will show its appreciation, and most common pets will additionally demonstrate the unconditional love humans more often than not fail to demonstrate.
In that time, and certainly as I alluded to in this comment response to Mom, she taught me to have a heart. It is her I credit for giving me the ability to see beyond myself, my species, to enjoy and protect that which we might otherwise abuse and destroy. It is from her I received life’s lessons regarding animals, both how to interact with them and, more importantly, how to treat them. She taught me true love. She instilled within me the kind of real love that grips us deep inside, an emotional python’s enfolding of the heart, the real universal empathy required to claim any semblance of humanity, the kind of love that brings wonder and joy and pain and sorrow beyond description. Only this intimate knowledge of true love can define the very best of us, that compassion within our being that ultimately reveals who we are as individuals in those moments when it matters most. It is the true indicator of good and evil.
For what is truly knowledge of the universe, I thank my mother for teaching me this kind of love.
Through the conduit of that education, the intellectually spiritual aspect of all life, my ability to love granted me opportunities galore to share this mayfly existence with all types of living beauty. Whether horses, dogs, cats, fish, snakes, spiders, ferrets, guinea pigs, hamsters, sea horses, mice, rats, or a great many other cosmic expressions of living called species, my life has been and always will be full of beings not credited with the same respect selfish humans enjoy.
When it comes to cats, never in my life has it been difficult to teach them the basics of life. That includes what they should and should not scratch, those limited places to which they should not go (e.g., in the toilet!), and where they should execute their biological imperatives. In more than three decades of living, I have never felt it necessary to hit a cat harder than a very light swat on the ass. Only one such strike has ever been necessary under any circumstance, and it was never as hard as the force used to swat at a mosquito.
Mark, Christy, Drew, Derek and his entire family, and a great many others always found amazement in my ability to have any kind of furniture or other possession without fear of the cats destroying it. Sure, there are occasional mishaps, but who can claim to be perfect? Not I. And if I can’t do it, I sure as hell don’t expect it from my children.
Training a cat to use a litter box likewise never has been difficult. It can take time, I agree. Don’t a great many things take time for us to learn? You know, like how not to defecate in inappropriate places? Or how to speak? Or general propriety (something more than a few apparently never learn)? Or a lot of other aspects of human life?
It is people like this sorry excuse for a father who embody maliciously selfish intent. Where would he be if his parents had discarded him the first time he messed his diaper? What if in the same spirit they awoke one evening because he was crying in response to a dirty diaper, and in that moment they decided he was simply too much trouble and would get rid of him like he did the kitten?
We spend our entire lives forgiving others and validating our own patience. Are these qualities reserved only for other humans? Is there no room to show we can in fact be humane to all living things? When we adopt a pet and accept responsibility for them, do we place limits on the love we purport to show?
For those like this father who are so childish and self-absorbed that they can not refrain from punishing the innocent and uninvolved for problems too unwieldy for cold hearts and small minds, I have no tolerance or room to forgive. This is well beyond the pale of compassion and humanity. It is evil, plain and simple. He surely must hope his family does not treat him likewise when age and health make it impossible for him to tend his own business and life in that he requires living assistance. I can only hope the words “You’re too much trouble” fall on his ears before he becomes too geriatric to appreciate them fully.
Finally, may his children have the sense to comprehend the horror of what has been done and its resounding implication. Accepting the religious tone, this is best explained by Saint Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and the environment: “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”
