Sourpuss & Mutts are property of Patrick McDonnell. This is how Sourpuss fees about being property.
My career has been about the cruelty done to animals when there are too many of them.
Over-population made pet animals absolutely valueless, and that is the struggle of animal welfare. Trying to stop the hemorrhaging of domesticated, sentient life caused by human selfishness has been my 9-5 for years.
It’s a futile fight.
For every ignorant pet owner I am able to talk into accepting a free spay or neuter, a hundred more just bred their Chihuahua to make a few extra bucks.
I don’t know the antidote for the kind of truly thoughtless arrogance that makes someone think they should sell someone else’s offspring for a profit.
Every day, about ten thousand dogs and cats are euthanized for a lack of qualified places to put them. The solution is not just ending euthanasia; Shelters fill up immediately, adoption standards must be reduced, most qualified staff members quit, animal are abused and neglected in the process. Sent to substandard homes without resources and support to help them be successful, they’re abused and neglected further before being rehomed or returned to the facility to repeat the process.
And that’s in a no-kill facility.
The path to the euthanasia room in an open-access facility can be even more direct.
Regardless of which facility they land in, about 7 dogs and cats a minute are dying at the end of their experience in human kindness and do-goodery.
And those are the ones fortunate enough to be accounted for. There are countless others without ID numbers or witnesses. They live ignored and sometimes just plain tortured by circumstance, because there are just too damn many of them.
And I still have to have beg pet owners, on my hands and knees (I’ve done this literally dozens of times, sometimes with tears), to let me coordinate a free spay or neuter for their pet, to slow some hemorrhaging.
I can’t take any more.
I can’t work for this cause anymore.
I can’t be the gentle, willing educator this cause requires anymore. I am blue in the face.
Ignorant people see the ability to cause an animal to procreate and then sell its offspring to be a right. And I am un-American in trying to take it away from them and ask them to consider should over could.
It’s a war on terror and it does not have an end.
So, I quit.
I quit animal rescue, I quit animal welfare, I quit.
They broke me, momma. The rednecks and their bustedass Chihuahuas broke me.
Over the past couple of years, I have reasoned myself into a position that I’ve almost dreaded since I first saw it on the horizon; I oppose domesticated pets.
I know.
I’m sorry.
I don’t want to.
And I say this with the perfect little butterbean toes of my cat, Tobzilla, pressed up against my hip, as he twitches and flicks his whiskers in his sleep.
I’m heartbroken for every puppy and kitten I see. My stomach turns when I think of all the different homes and unkindnesses a kitty will see before he meets the end of a natural lifespan.
I recently tried to re-read Black Beauty. If you’ve never read the book or seen one of the movies, maybe you should give it a try. I couldn’t do it, but the attempt reminded me of the story from my childhood. A beautiful and loyal domesticated animal who lives a long life full of suffering and cruelty and terror. At the end of his life he finds peace with a friend from his past, but, jeezy peezy, y’all, this is a sunny, extended version of the story lived by most animals in the U.S. right now. Most animals in this country are victims of their own cuteness, only being forced into substandard lives because they amuse our very least evolved desires to squeal at baby things that cannot resist our will.
Every dog at the shelter would be lucky to escape that place with a Black Beauty ending, but we know what’s probably going to happen.
Even adopted animals are subject to so many horrors that no one criticizes. At best, they live in peace and kindness. On average they live misunderstood lives wherein they are shouted at, dragged by their necks, punished when they shit in the wrong place, and fed things that make them sick before they are euthanized for getting sick.
I just can’t be all right with it anymore. Pets don’t belong in our lousy care. I wish I felt differently, but if I’ve ever formed an expert opinion, this is it.
The ones unfortunate enough to be born into these horrible, little lives, of course, must be protected and enriched to the very best of our abilities. We have to feed them premium nutrition and support their health and enrich their environment and help them to remain stimulated.
At all costs, we have to prevent more from being born. We have to spay and neuter all pet animals and we have to resist the cuteness of puppies and kittens. Puppies and kittens are not something to covet. Old, seasoned dogs and cats with personalities and reliable behaviors have to be held up as the holy grail of pets.
Baby animals mean suffering is recent and inevitable.
As I lean back and catch his soft, gentle gaze he blinks slowly at me. I ask him, “Tob, am I your captor?”
He yawns big, and closes his eyes as he settles into a regal pose that could just as easily be contemplative, or asleep.
Even my perfect kitten prince, the love of my life and the highlight of my every day, should never have been born.
But since he was, he may as well be adored.
evzilla 