The Luxury to be Silly

We Americans are wealthy people. Our wealth has bought us the luxury to be silly. We are the silliest people in the world. While nearly 2.6 billion people of the world's population live on 2 dollars or less a day we worry about things like animal cruelty.

Groups such as PETA become a political force that push their extreme views into mainstream America. Laws are being passed across the country on local and state levels strengthening penalties for those who are convicted of animal abuse.

Locally, the city of Beaumont has passed ordinances against tethering dogs in your yard. There are cities in California that tried to pass ordinances requiring all animal owners to spay and neuter and in the case of cats declaw, their pets. Ridiculously, the SETX Humane Society requires that all cats be adopted as an inside pet only.

In the past two months, two cases of animal abuse went through the Jefferson county court systems: the cat beating case and the horse dragging case. In both instances the defendants could have faced jail time. The defendants in both cases plead to lesser charges and were sentenced to probation and community service.

Two trials of Mr. Guillory, accused in the dragging death of his horse Bobby, ended in hung juries.

Some in the community, amplified by the local media, expressed outrage at what they perceived to be light sentences. Some blamed the juries in Mr. Guillory trial of being "provincial" or implied they were a bunch of dumb rednecks. I guess it never really occurred to them that maybe some people with a perfectly sound mind and, pardon me, "horse sense" on the jury were reluctant to send a man to jail for possibly up two years for animal abuse.

Do the people that want tough laws for animal abuse realize that statistically 95 % of animal abusers are male teenagers? This statistic is supported locally when you look back at the animal abuse cases reported over the past 5 years.

Do they want to put teenagers in jail?

-------------------------------------------

When I was a kid we had cats.

We had lots of cats because we never spayed or neutered any of them. At one time when the female cats all had kittens at the same time we had about 30 cats. They all had names. Not one of them starved. They were all yard cats and they eventually dispersed as animals that occupy a space with too many other animals will do. Some of them we were able to give away. Some of them probably got run over as well. The cats were free to do as they please. They were freer than us. They had access to plenty of food including dinner scraps so that left them with not a care in the world other than to roam, play, hunt and produce other cats. They were happy cats.

Much happier than the cats I see of "responsible" owners who keep them confined to the house, never to go outside.

On an evening bike ride you see them peering out the picture windows of West End homes. These poor animals live a life of boredom and drudgery. The humans that occupy the house with them become the end all and be all of their lives. Their owners buy them stupid toys with feather and fur that the cats may play with for a few minutes before becoming bored with them. Cats like to hunt. Cats like to kill small creatures. Cats like to prowl and mark their territory and look for female cats willing to propagate the species. Tomcats like to howl in the night at other tomcats to show them who is boss. Sometimes they actually fight and occasionally end up with serious injuries. The old toms get abscesses and nicks and tears in their ears. I had one old tom we called "Bruiser" that just about didn't have any ears left. There must have be 20 around the neighborhood that looked like him. We had another tom that did strange things to the kittens that he was probably responsible for. We told our mother and shortly after that the tom disappeared. I now realize why. I guess we were a family of animal abusers.