Killing and Caring For Cats

EVERY YEAR in the U.S. more than a million and a half cats are murdered by the American people. That amounts to more than three thousand every day. Our so called "humane shelters" are badly named. More often they are death chambers, with the tacit but seemingly full approval of a majority of the American people. The word "murder" is rarely if ever applied to this situation, but is in fact quite accurate. We prefer the gentler, more palatable less guilt ridden term "euthanasia", or "putting them down". or putting themm to sleep", to conceal our self loathing and appropriately placed guilt. And make no mistake; we the Amerian people are directly responsible for this, by allowing it. But we needn't mince words. Murder is precisely what it is. I seem to have been misinformed. I had been given to believe that here in our loving and compassionate United States of Amnesia we had abandoned our barbaric brutality, had stopped pretending that we our a kind, compassionate culture, and pretending that, well, really, we are doing everyone a great service, including the milllions of ruthlessly murdered cats. I was wrong. We have not abandoned our murderous ways.. Some of the stray cats in my town,many of whom I feed, show up in my yard with a clipped left ear, the truncated triangle signifying that the cat has been spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and set loose in the community to make do as best it can. And indeed this practice has gained some degree of popularity. And yet, the feline genocidal extermination continues. Still we clip ears and set free too seldom, and kill too often. Don't they deserve a chance? I had mistakenly assued that animal "shelters" are tending to reform themselves to a "no kill" policy. Indeed, many have, but not all. These decisions are made, so I am told, at the local level. The fascist dictator who tragically governs our country has the power to issue an executive order prohibiting this slaughter, but doubtless has never given it a thought. And, even so, supposing that no federal court would step in and rule the order unconstitutional, the curret Supreme Court, riddled with Republican reprobates, most likely would, and the death ray would be turned back on. I don't even know how most of the unwanted, unloved cats are killed, by poisonous gas, presuably. In New Zealand the government has decided to elimate all stray and feral cats by the science fictiony sounding year of twenty fifty. There are surely millions of them, and the destruction to other species these best of all hunters on the planet cause in indisputable. Billions of dead birds, mass extinctions of mice and rats, and so forth. A picture appeared on Facebook, of a flatbed truck loaded with the corpses of cats,piled high, like dead rats in medieval bubonic Europe. Cats, of course, evolved in north Africa, and have become an "invasive species" in every corner of every continent on Earth, excepting Antarctica. And now, for some facts. Invasive species are neither now nor necessarily a bad thing, and the phenomenon occurs almost exclusively due to human activity. For thousands of years people, birds, and animals have been carrying seeds and eggs all over the planet. Arguably, what we call "invasive species" are nothing other than the inevitable result of the movement of animals, blowing in the wind, as it were. The salient fact in that we do not have a cat problem in america, nor anywhere else. What we have, dear reader, is a human being problem. New Zealand, in terms of habitat, would be far better off had the human plague not invaded the island. Much the same an be said of every land mass on Earth. As Bertolt Brect wrote in a poem: "they are strangely stinking animals, but, no matter, so am I." It is we who are the invasive species.