A Cause for Paws

"As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought:  in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis.  The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right."
-Isaac Bashevis Singer

I feel the need to respond to an episode of A&E show Hoarders that I just saw.  It was the episode with the young guy and his alcoholic father/the abominable cat lady and her husband.  I can safely say I am absolutely disgusted.  First of all, I only caught the last half hour so maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to write this as I haven’t seen all the information but I honestly don’t feel I need to.  I saw all I needed to see to form my opinion and form this entry.  So, basically, this disgusting waste of humanity named Shirley is a hoarder who not only collects garbage, but cats.  She claims to take care of them but from what I saw, she was not only not taking care of them but abusing them via neglect.

I could barely watch the scenes in which animal control came in and had to catch cat after cat, some that looked unhealthy, some with missing eyes and some that were feral.  What was left of my heart sank into my stomach.  Although this wretched woman was looking at all of her abused cats in their cages, moaning and whimpering, she was pointing out the ones she wanted to keep!  Really?  Really?  As cat after cat is being collected and caged all around you, you really feel like you are capable of keeping and taking care of these tortured animals?  No.

Animal control came because of a call by one of her neighbors to investigate a report of animal cruelty.  Well, as they were capturing the live cats, they came across skeleton after skeleton of cats that had died due to the abhorred conditions.  Adult cats.  Newborn kittens.  Bones and shriveled tissue.  Feces everywhere.  Urine.  Death.  Decay.  And this horrible woman wants to keep these cats, knowing clearly that she cannot take care of herself, much less the dozens and dozens of poor cats that live, if you can call it that, in her toilet of a home?

The part that pissed me off the most was even after they collected all of these cats, alive but diseased, dead or dying, they still didn’t charge this piece of garbage woman and her feeble husband with animal cruelty because there was “evidence that she attempted to provide proper care” for the cats.  This is where I have to call bull.  How is it that they could see that she was attempting to provide proper care for these animals when these animals are not only living in absolute filth but having to exist in an environment full of decomposing cats?  How is that proper care?  How is that sanitary for them or the animals?  Just because her husband lays out a plate of food here or there does not equal proper care.  I was outraged.  From what I can remember, they removed around forty something cats the first day and most of them were dead.  After they thought they were finished, they started the clean up process the next day and ended up finding even more cat skeletons.  The total, I think, was around seventy-five cats, twenty-something of them were alive.  And I’m sure the majority of those twenty-five cats were put to sleep.  One of the ladies from animal control even said that the cats needed to be put down because they all had respiratory problems and were dying anyway.  She said to keep them alive was cruel.  Oh, now the old bag is being cruel?  How about she was being cruel when she allowed them to develop those respiratory problems by allowing them to live in filthy, disgusting conditions?  How about it being cruel that she allowed all of these cats to accrue on her property?

I find it absolutely appalling that she was not charged with animal cruelty.  She might not have actively killed or tortured the cats but she sure enough neglected them, which is a form of cruelty.  Tell me the likelihood that this decrepit whack job of a woman or her half-gone husband cleaned out the cats’ litter boxes.  Tell me the likelihood that they ensured every cat was properly fed when they couldn’t even keep track of how many they had.  Tell me the likelihood that the cats were spayed and neutered and given their appropriate shots and vaccinations.  Tell me the likelihood that any of them went to the vet at all.  Zero percent.  Neglect.  Abuse.  Cruelty.  It is that plain and simple, that black and white and nothing anyone can say will convince me otherwise.  Dead baby kittens born only to die and then thrown into a trash bag like yesterday’s half-eaten leftovers?  Live cats eating dead cats?  How senseless.

If it was a mother with a bunch of children living in squalor then those little kids would be scooped up with a quickness and then the mother would face a multitude of charges.  But because it’s cats it’s not that important.  It doesn’t matter that this piece of trash woman was the cause of the suffering and eventual end of multiple lives because it was a bunch of cat’s lives.  Who cares?  People should care because she still caused a living creature to suffer.

Just because an animal cannot communicate with a person through language, we automatically assume them to be less intelligent and less intelligence equals less importance which equals less worth which equals less caring.  Animals might not be able to articulate through language how they feel but they can still scream.  They can still moan and whimper and limp and cower in the presence of cruelty.  PETA president and total loony tune, Ingrid Newkirk, says, "When it comes to having a central nervous system and the ability to feel pain, hunger and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy."  Although she is an extremist that gives animal activists a bad name, she is one hundred percent correct.  Animals feel just as much as you do.  News flash: if you inflict pain on an animal or allow it to starve, they will feel it just as much as a person would.  I know that’s a hard concept for some insensitive a-holes to consider but it’s true.  And speaking of considerations, for humans to be so intricate and intelligent, it’s astounding to me how they can’t comprehend the basic concepts of other creatures relating to us physically and mentally.  And yes, cats feel mentally as well.  They feel fear.  They feel sadness.  Just because you don’t see tears doesn’t mean their hearts aren’t hurting.  They get anxious, too.  How conceited are humans to assume the role of head honcho of the world and that every creature below us is soulless and emotionless.  If anything, we are emotionless.  We are at the top because we tore down everything below us, categorizing creatures as less worthy just because we can.

I mean, after all, what are animals but props and toys?  We treat them like we treat any plaything.  It gives us something to do, something to look at and play with until we get tired of it or get lazy and don’t want to bother with maintenance so we throw them away, whether it be tossing a bunch of newborn and unwanted puppies out of a moving vehicle or taking the broom to an accidental litter of kittens.  We get bored of animals after a while or find they are too messy so we’ll drop them off somewhere and leave them behind or shoot them because, after all, they are just animals.  They are not creatures that can create emotional connections like we can.  So, they need food and water?  So, they are slowly dying of malnutrition or disease?  So what?  As long as we don’t have to see it or hear it or deal with it, it just does not matter because our mental well-being and emotional stability is way more important than theirs.  If only we would consider the feelings of animals.  Albert Schweitzer says, "Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight."  But we don’t because we are so self-involved that we have no room too consider other people, much less disposable animals.  We are far beyond that.  You know, ’cause humans are such great creatures with our wars and rape and murder and lying and stealing and cheating.  It’s clear that we are far superior.

We are light years ahead of creatures that only need food, water, shelter and love.  How basic and unworthy of our time!  No, you obviously need to fill your life up with desires and delectables to be worthy of consideration.  Let’s only deal with creatures like ourselves that crave perfection and money and things, stuff, objects.  Who needs affection when we have sex.  Who needs support when we have alcohol.  Who needs companionship when we have television.  Who needs love when we have fear and respect.  Who needs security when we can simply attack something we consider below us or belittle someone enough until they become below us.  We are so much better, so much smarter than dumb dogs and frivolous felines.  Because, let’s face it, how are animals improving the world?  How are they benefiting society, and more importantly, ourselves?  They eat and crap and shed.  People are more refined than that.  We spend our time doing more sophisticated things like killing and conquering and hurting everything we touch and that means we are better.  The fact that animals can inflict harm but do not unless forced means they are wasting their potential.  Humans, on the other hand, take advantage of that capacity to hurt whenever they can.  Humans have to trample everything in order to make it to the top.  A little known man by the name of Mark Twain agrees, saying, "The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot."  And all they want is to be petted, which is so annoying.  There is no time for petting when pillaging and personal preservation takes top priority.

You know what, let’s take it up a notch.  Because humans are so much better than cats and dogs and horses and birds and every other thing that lives and breathes, and since we’ve already established our dominance over every other species,  why won’t we go ahead and start weeding out other humans who we consider to be below us?  Let’s don’t even act like "all men are created equal" because we know that is not true.  How about the mentally retarded?  How are they benefiting society?  They are not.  They don’t have the capacity to understand how other people feel about them so how do they know if they like themselves?  It’s sad, really.  How about those annoying people with depression?  They definitely aren’t helping out humanity with their whining and moaning.  Since they are so suicidal, so ready to welcome death, why don’t we just encourage instead of condemn it?  They are useless.  Don’t they understand that we cannot acknowledge their pain because we have our own problems?  Man up and start drinking to dull the pain, just like everyone else.  Get over yourself.  I don’t understand why we don’t pull the plug on people who are in a coma.  They just lie there.  How can they validate our feelings when they can’t talk back?  They can’t even bathe.  At least cats can wash themselves.

C.S. Lewis says, "If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies or capitalists for the same reasons."  Let’s go with that.  How about we just throw the deaf, dumb, blind, retarded, depressed, handicapped, Jewish, gay, black, and annoying people into a filthy garage filled with old mason jars and turds and urine and forget about them, just like that lady did with her cats?  As long as we don’t have to see it or hear it or deal with it, it just does not matter because our mental well-being and emotional stability is way more important than theirs.  With our meetings and deadlines and affairs, there is no time to be compassionate.  Oh, wait, we can’t weed these people out?  Why not?  Because it’s still a life, no matter how seemingly useless it is?  Interesting.  So, if the life of a person who cannot communicate their thoughts or feelings should be spared, why not a cat?  If this person cannot handle complicated calculations nor communicate through language, if this person’s intelligence is equal to a lamp post, if this person only wants to be loved and cared for, and at the end of the day, despite their limitations, can provide us with love in return, aren’t they worth keeping around?  If so, what makes them different from cats or any other animal?

To make things more interesting, that horrendous woman was able to keep three of her cats.  Seriously?  Even if she wasn’t charged with animal cruelty, even if she wasn’t admonished or given a slap on the wrist, she should have had her cats taken away and given to homes that would provide a safe and healthy environment in which those poor animals could thrive.  She should have been provided with some punishment.  Basically, those people are telling her that what she did wasn’t that bad, that she simply made an “oopsie” but it was okay because she only helped kill sixty-plus animals.  That’s like allowing a babysitter to take care of a newborn after previously accidentally letting a child drown in the tub after she went to answer the phone.  No.  What that lady did was neglectful, irresponsible, and ultimately deadly and yet they give her those cats with no repercussions.  To me, that is their inadvertent way of condoning her inexcusable behavior.  The fact that she believes she’sbeen taking good care of what animals she has just proves that she’s incapable of logical judgment.  

I have no sympathy for that woman or her compulsion to hoard garbage and cats.  While she might not have the capacity to control her collection of junk, she should have taken action once she realized she was in over her head when it came to cat collection.  She claims she’s taking care of animals that no one else wants but she isn’t taking care of anything but her own conscience.  She can feel good about herself by slinging some Fancy Feast in all directions but the number of cat corpses in her garage is climbing.  She claimed she couldn’t get rid of them but I say she’s excusing her despicable behavior, rationalizing her laziness.  “But, Brannon, she’s just a poor old lady who got in over her head.  She has a problem.  Give her a break.”  No.  I’d give her a break up until she becomes responsible for the neglect, abuse and eventual death of innocent animals.  She wants to act like she’s so secluded and has no option but to take the animals in but she has a husband that is mobile and an adult son that could have helped her out.  She is not an innocent victim.  She is an enabler of suffering.  The fact that she considers these cats her children just proves she’s a freaking nutcase.  But, let’s go ahead and give her three more cats to slowly destroy.

My words might sound harsh but I think it’s about time someone got harsh because this kind of activity absolutely breaks my heart.  No one stands up for animals and because of that, incidents like this happen all of the time.  There is just no sense in harming anything or anyone else.  Human violence is just as despicable to me but that kind of violence is covered more often.  Isn’t it a shame that those kids got shot up at that school?  Isn’t it terrible that those women were strangled and thrown into a shallow grave?  Those bombings in some country that we don’t care about was pretty awful, wasn’t it?  But no one reports animal abuse because it is considered unimportant, not valid news.  Who cares about a couple of drowned cats?  Does anyone’s heart actually break over a puppy thrown off a cliff?  Sure, it’s sad but we have more important things to concentrate on like hopping in tanks to see who can outkill each other and damaged iPhones and Prada bags and how much money we can make so that people will like us because ultimately it’s all about us.  Seriously, people, where are our heads and our hearts?  Right up our butts, that’s where.  We do not care about anything or anyone unless we are affected, unless it causes a traffic jam or holds up a line, unless our day is inconvenience and then we want to take a stand, want to see some sort of action take place.  Of course, I’m just as guilty as anyone else.  Don’t get me messed up now, I’m not claiming to be above self-involvement but at least I have enough sense to point it out to the senseless.

And for the people that think “it’s just a stupid animal,” you are the stupid animal.  It’s the people that have no compassion for other creatures that open up the doorway for insensitivity and that insensitivity in turn builds into a tolerance for cruelty.  That cruelty eventually translates from animals to humans.  When you learn to treat one thing with less respect than another, that sends a message to the person that respect is an option, that it can be given or withdrawn based on our predetermined qualifications.  That flexible application of respect snowballs into superiority, which in turn causes chaos.  You know how serial killers often abuse/kill animals in their youth?  I see little difference between that and how “normal” people grow up viewing animals. From our earliest beginnings, we learn that some lives are more important than others.  We learn that dead dogs can be replaced the next day and cats should only be adopted if they are adorable.  We go from learning how people are more important than animals to eventually learning that certain groups of people are more important than other groups of people, whether it be through racism, social class or religious preference.  We are conditioned to believe that, in fact, no one is created equally, that someone is always better than someone else.  And deep down inside, no matter how much we want to deny it, we all believe that to be true.  Going back to serial killers, since people are at the top of the food chain, to take out a person is the ultimate thrill, the ultimate validation of superiority.  And as we grow up, we grow to learn that taking out people mentally and emotionally is our form of validation.  St. Francis of Assisi has my back by saying, "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."  Cruelty tolerance always translates.  Because animals are so minimal, so small in our scope of significance, we do not care if they are abused or killed.  What a shining example of our conceitedness.  If a person is killed it’s a big deal because people are “important” but if it’s an animal, no one thinks twice.  “But, Brannon, where is your compassion for human suffering?”  Sure, I feel for people, even if sometimes they don’t deserve it but, if the innocent are hurting, my heart goes out to them.  But, for me, if you can show compassion for such an insignificant creature like a small kitten, if your heart can bleed for a wounded bird, that is the sign of true compassion.  And I feel people nowadays have very little true compassion. 

I feel there needs to be a change in how children are raised to view animals.  They shouldn’t be seen as replaceable or disposable.  They should be seen as living creatures, just as they live and breathe, and that they can feel emotional and physical pain.  Animals should not be treated roughly or cruelly.  Children should be taught to respect animals because I can guarantee that respect for animals will transfer to a respect for people.  Bradley Millar says, "Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar."

I’m outraged by the cruel treatment of those cats but I’m more outraged by people’s apathetic attitude.  If we are so superior, so intelligent, if we are so far advanced, why don’t we use all of our resources to be compassionate toward those who are "below" us?  To me, it is a gross abuse of our advancement to treat others, animals and humans alike, with disrespect and cruelty.  It’s a shame that we are so progressive in so many aspects of technology and medicine yet we cannot master the simple skills of care and compassion.  I know this entry has been quotespalooza but when I was looking up a few supplemental quotes for this entry, I found so many that fit with what I was talking about, so many that I found so appropriate and inspiring.  I want to end on one final quote by Pierre Troubetzkoy that goes, "Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by what is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him?"  

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