[lbo-talk] One last note on animals.

[John Thornton]

I just received an email that I would like to share a portion of just to 
give some list members an idea of why I feel the way I do about the 
issue of animal empathy.
As a hobby, not a profession, I train therapy pets. It is for me a 
meaningful way to both save the lives of animals and add immensely to 
the lives of people.
The strictly animal rescue people I know tend to be a bit to 
misanthropic for my taste.
Anyway, I receive many emails per week with people offering me the 
animals they no longer want.
Many are too old for my purposes so I must reject them. I hate to, but 
it is a necessity.
Too many of the younger ones I am offered I am expected to pay for. 
These assholes buy a cat or dog, or adopt from a shelter, find it 
doesn't work for them, generally for the most asinine and trivial of 
reasons, and then expect me to repay them for the expenses they incurred 
in getting the animal shots, neutered, spayed, whatever.
Yesterday I received an email from a nasty selfish woman whose email 
dripped contempt.
She wanted $100 for her kitten.
I told her if she was unable to sell it for the amount she wanted I 
would be willing to drive 250 miles one way and retrieve the animal at 
my own expense but I cannot buy peoples unwanted pets. Her reply this 
afternoon was that rather than give it away they would have stir-fry 
tonight.
Now I know this asshole isn't going to actually eat this kitten but 
there is a high probability she will dump it somewhere.
One less animal that could be used to enrich peoples lives through the 
Pet Therapy program and one more stray animal increasing the population 
of strays. Assuming it isn't killed quickly.
I am called the most vile names imaginable for refusing to take someones 
arthritic 16 year old Bassett because the owner doesn't have the stomach 
to pay a vet to put it down and it would sooth their conscious if they 
could think of Fido helping other (at no inconvenience to them of course).
I am also called equally vile things for not reimbursing people for 
their mistakes in pet ownership. "If I really cared I'd buy Fluffy for 
$100 instead of letting him die" they tell me.
All of this boils down to some degree on people not expecting these 
animals to have feelings and to be able to experience empathy. Being 
agnostic on the subject as so many like to claim has real world results 
both for these animals and those who deal with societies throwaways.
It isn't just unwanted pets. I've rescued pets from landfills with 
tattooed control numbers and surgical incisions who were discarded by 
labs when the animals were not even dead.
It isn't going to harm your precious world-view to imagine these animals 
as thinking, feeling creatures and many of us are tired of wading in the 
detritus of their carcasses that are an unavoidable consequence of this 
level of convenient agnosticism.
Give them cancer, aids, test drugs on them, do what is necessary to help 
resolve the problems of our planet but treat them with dignity and as 
thinking caring creatures, not automatons.

John Thornton