Being at the top of the food chain isn't all fun and games.
"Thou art God." -Valentine Michael Smith…
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Doing Your Godly Duty: Cats Need Killed - Comments Page 2
Being at the top of the food chain isn't all fun and games.
"Thou art God." -Valentine Michael Smith…
Article comments
26 - roger
i think what got lost in all the hubbub over at the Slate Fray (gosh, what an aptly named forum) is the number of feral and homeless cats in the US. The most conservative number i've seen is at least 30 million. 30 million?! how can anybody waste time and money on one cat when there are at least that many in shelters or roaming around American countrysides. i'm sure there are plenty of homeless cats that would make better companion pets than Tuff Guy could have ever dream of being.
if i had the resources and i knew the lil' thug's mama, i would have offered to take that cat off her hands but then, in this zero sum world with millions of homeless cats, i would have condemned a deserving kitty to the gas. there are plenty of pets that could use rescuing and sadly, it looks like Tuffie would just have been a drain on other people's resources had she been pawned off on a shelter or some miserable, cat-piss smelling 'catlady'.
i do think Thug mama and Yoffee aren't entirely comfortable with their choices or they wouldn't have written such heartfelt but slightly defensive essays. however, i'm sure the defensiveness is most likely due to the response they were expecting. like yelling, 'where all da white women at!' at a klan rally. you know it's gonna raise some hell, but hey, it's worth it.
sorry, non-sequiter. i should be in bed instead of poorly writing comments on some dude's blog. anyway, tell thug mama she wrote a good essay.
27 - Nancy
I do think it would be both appropriate and for the betterment of society if we also take out useless humans - the shiftless, the lazy, the stupid, the criminal - and just blow their brains out in the backyard(s) too. God knows it would be a LOT more beneficial to society than killing cats is, since said humans use up so much more in resources, & cause so much more damage.
28 - Al Barger
Thank you Roger, you definitely are getting a significant point about the tens of millions of cats. Going to extraordinary lengths over one cat like this would be a human emotional indulgence, not a reasonable effort to the welfare of catkind.
Again, as you picked up, Thug's Ma was not happy about doing it, or taking it lightly. That's part of why she went to the effort of writing her essay.
She's rather burned out on this at the moment, having absorbed some serious hatin' over at Slate, but I'm sure she'll end up reading our comments here.
Thanks for your kind words, which were in fact quite well written.
29 - paul
I hope you go to hell..............
30 - Victor Plenty
Feral cats can be wiped out by releasing millions of dogs into the wild. After the dogs eat the cats, we release pythons to eat the dogs. Then, we release gorillas to eat the pythons.
And the beauty of it is, when wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
31 - Terit
To press a gun to the back of the head of a creature you share your home with is more than unholy. I don't care how quick it was--that critter loved it's life. Ultimately, all these behaviour issues could have been solved so easily--the problem is people are generally prone to be stupid and react like the limited minds they are and not think a little broader. A combo of omega 3 oils and DMG (dimethylglycine)--a couple dollars a month, can help with almost all cat and dog behaviour problems. You see, we feed these omnivores and carnivores too much corn and peanut shells which is what most commercial food is made of. It causes mental and behavioral problems because the brain is misfiring. Live on twinkies and your brain will misfire too...The cat was hunting wildlife because it was being starved of nutrition and it knew it! I'd like to see how your brain and body would function, let alone how your behaviour would change if you folks were put on a diet of Ritz crackers and grain by- products. By the way, you can't get toxoplasmosis unless you put the infected feces in your mouth, so don't hold that up as some sort of heroic risk she took...
32 - Rob
I think this is great, check out this site
www.feralcathunt.com
It has people hunting cats.
33 - Squeaker
I hope the ghost of Tuff Guy comes to Mama's house in the dead of night and steals the Thug's breath... An eye for an eye..
34 - Al Barger
Dear Squeaker, in but a couple of dozen words you manage to be stupid, malicious and self-righteous simultaneously. I'm sure your Mama must be SO proud.
35 - judy stanley
hey, i own 6 cats,6 dogs,and 8 birds,and no they don't all get along, get over it and do what u have to do to keep the peace, we do, it's lots of work but we love them,peace
36 - Samantha Jackson
God is the foundation of all evil
37 - Marcia L. Neil
You should all be doing your own singing, rather than waste food (a certain %age killed creatures) and energy fixating on other people's music. Share your own--the record stores are filled with other people's, most seized and sold without accurate or appropriate copyright process.
38 - Savage Man
CATS are one of the WORST housepets EVER. The shit and piss everywhere, they're one of the nastiest creatures... I have one, and can't wait for it to die.
39 - Marcia L. Neil
Small cats should be no problem at all to feed and release -- help enforce the truth-in-advertising laws in the entertainment industry rather than tuning instruments and lining up at the labor-union hall whenever the factories pirate a new album.
40 - Lauren
You raise some valid points, however I must point out some flaws in your argument.
1)No one (not even scientists) can assert with absolute certainty that animals "don't have our forward projected fear of death ... that goes with our high level human consciousness." Since our perception of animals' "consciousness" is limited by our own senses and consciousness, it is impossible to claim to understand how animals think. We may speculate, but we will never really know. As a physician, I am continually stunned by the hubris of science.
2)Your statement: "animals are great, but people come first" is a bit vague. For me, my cats and dogs come before many people. Allow me to explain:
Obviously the man who attacked me in my teens and attempted to rape me does not come before any animal. Nor do any people who treat me or my loved ones badly (there are more than I can count).
No animal (except maybe mosquitos, black flies, and exactly one hornet) has ever mistreated me. My cats and dogs have been there for me unconditionally. Only my husband and my children come before my pets. Even my friends have not enriched my life the way my pets have done.
My cat has been there for my father who has MS, even improving his quality of life and making him happy again. All of his "friends" are too busy or can't handle his illness. So should this cat come last for my father?
Just for perspective, people mistreat each other all the time, often inflicting immeasurable harm on one another. We also ravage and harm animals and every other life form on the planet, sometimes for legitimate reasons, and other times for completely frivolous reasons (e.g. pure sport or to make luxury, non-essential items).
Thus, I would not automatically agree that ALL people come first. Those I love, certainly. Those who would harm me, no way. Similarly, an animal that is bent on harming me would not come first, either.
41 - LLL
I don't see how it is up to you to decide that the life of a songbird is more important than that of a cat. That is just a lame justification on your part to excuse your friends POS behavior toward her cat.
I really hate people who try to justify doing whatever to animals because apparently "humans come first". Whether or not humans come first isn't the issue with your blog. The issue is that you want carte blanche to treat animals as disposable items at your whim and convenience. This is such a destructive attitude.
Your friend should not have gotten a cat at all if there was even the slightest possibility that it was all going to end with a shot gun in the back yard. I don't look at parenthood as an excuse to start abandoning your pets (or shooting them).
I have zero respect for people who get a pet, than when something else comes along, and life gets a little harder, so they just ditch the pet. People like that should never have gotten pets in the first place.
I also disagree with the whole hypothesis of humans being superior, given what we do to the planet and to each other, but I just don't have time to get into that.
Oh yeah, and just in case you were going to accuse me of being a hypocrite and eating the bacon, I am a vegan. -
And Al, just remember, we are top of the food chain NOW........but what if someday those aliens land with a taste for human? If a race came along that saw themselves as superior to us as we see ourselves to animals, and with the means to subjugate us, would you so willing submit to them?
42 - Cindy
hmmm, like that cookbook on that Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man.