August 13, 2003 03:28 PM Rant # 5

One last word about animals, then I should be done for a few months. Five cats, a dog and some fish apparently aren't enough, as we have recently adopted two lizards. Eastern Collared Lizards, to be specific, a male and a female.

In light of that, we have decided to name them after couples from books, TV, etc that we both have enjoyed. We only came up with four choices, those being Homer and Marge, Mulder and Scully, Lazarus and Dora and, of course, Brad and Janet. We have decided on Brad and Janet. With that done, we should be done with adopting animals for a while. It would appear that the Siamese cat is indeed going to be named Gibson. The orange, three-legger, however, remains mostly nameless. Mostly because he always has a name, it's just usually in a state of flux. Laurie is apparently searching for the perfect name, but one is not forthcoming. I am hoping she will inform me when she is done.

I have noticed something. Whenever I take a new animal into my home, I experience at least a week of unnamable dread. It is a deep feeling that, were I to place it somewhere in my body, would be a little below the stomach. In this week of dread, any number of horrible scenarios goes through my head involving the new animal, most culminating in death, though I never actually go that far. It's more hinted at, which might be better than actually imagining it, but I'm not sure. Of course it doesn't help that it actually happened to one of our pets once. He was a little white kitten with one green eye and one blue one. We named him Bowie, which hardly anyone ever understood.
I'll spare the details, as they're rather painful to recall, but suffice to say I am more paranoid than ever about the well being of the animals we take in and having taken four in within a month has put me in a bit of a funk.. But not a good funk where I'm constantly muttering in angry tones but I'm more or less fine, just feeling a little nihilistic. It's more of a soul sickness that has no cure save time. The reason I am mentioning this now is because it's bothering me and I'm going to want to vent at some point or another, but I don't want to be constantly bitching and moaning about animals in this thing, so I'm trying to consolidate. With luck, this should be the last animal oriented rant for a while.

While on the subject of animals, I'd like to talk for a bit about animal cruelty. Aside from my wife and close family, I don't much care for people. Hearing about thirty people dying in some freak of nature doesn't move me. I can't relate to people who hear such things and gasp and say "oh, how horrible." I'm from NY and thinking back to the September 11th attack, all I remember feeling was a mild fear for my sister and brother-in-law. As it turns out my sister wasn't even working in the city anymore and my brother-in-law was much closer than I thought, but both were fine. At the time, I assumed my lack of feeling was shock mixed with an inability to process such a thing. Now I'm not so sure. Seeing those teary-eyed NYers talking on the news about this or that patriotic/brotherhood/whatever stuff, there was just nothing there. When I heard about people who had never lived in NY, didn't know anyone there, had no family there and they were calling in to work to say they didn't think they could work that day in light of the tragedy, I sneered in disgust. Later a profound sadness and a small, cold little ball of anger overcame me, but it was a while in coming. Perhaps I just haven't dealt with human death very closely. Maybe it's just the way I'm wired. I mention this only because I react in such a dramatic, different way when the subject is cruelty to animals.

Seeing animal cruelty cases on TV fills me with such sadness and anger that I often have trouble holding it back. I remember seeing one or two cases that were so bad, I thought, had I the means and opportunity, I would literally beat this person until they died. I don't quite understand why an animal being mistreated brings out such emotion where human suffering brings little or even none. After all, isn't what God/Mother Nature/Fate/Whatever does to people the same thing that these people do to their pets? Perhaps it's that Mother Nature doesn't have a face to associate with these things, or the lack of innocence displayed in your average person as opposed to the infinitely innocent animal whose only mistake was the bad luck of being paired with whatever asshole is mistreating it. Or, as I said, maybe it's just the way I'm wired and there's nothing I can do about it. It bothers me, though, sometimes.

Posted at 03:28 PM | Comments? (421)