A needy family

Sometimes generalizations become vividly clear and easy to understand. This month, according to PETA, is adopt-a-cat month. The most casual reader among us knows that shelters are filled with cats and in some areas, feral cats can be targets for elimination, rather than TNR (trap, neuter, release).

OK: a zillion cats need care and homes. Knowing such things, some of us probably look at our own companion cats, know we’re doing our best and conclude, “I can’t do anything more.”

But then, we see an unexpected sight that tears at our hearts. A garden tour in Trenton’s Mill Hill section yesterday provided that sight. And it sticks in the mind.

Rounding a corner while looking for the next sign signaling a back yard ready for visitors, we saw a shuttered house with furniture and junk filling the yard. Standing (briefly!) on top of a high point was a fuzzy little gray kitten: bright eyes, ears perked. Then s/he was gone.

Seconds later, two gray kittens appeared in a different spot of the littered yard. Then, along the inside rail of the fence walked a black, long-haired and green-eyed cat – maybe “mom.” And who knew how many other feline family members watched from under cover.

The sight of cats without a home – and maybe food too – stopped me in my tracks. I understood. I felt the urgency. Then, regretfully, I realized there was nothing I could do.

Sure, maybe I could figure out a person or an agency to contact, but I’m betting (1) these cats have been reported already and/or (2) they’re un-catchable, un-trappable. If in fact that was the mother, obviously she hasn’t been spayed, and before long any kits will prove they weren’t neutered either.

What to do? Except keep thinking about that family, and feeling lousy at being unable to help.
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Sightings

Driving back from Princeton at twilight, in gentle rain, I passed a big “critter” (groundhog or opossum?) between the sidewalk and the curb along the park. He (I’m sure it was a boy) was gobbling the moist spring grass, which must be the very best ever. I wished him well – may he make it through the dry summer season, may he not get caught by a dog and may he not lose more habitat, now that the big house has gone up next to the park and some of the adjacent woodland has been leveled.

Next came a number of robins, on the other side of the road, no doubt flushing worms from the porous ground. This has been a big robin year – lots of them, and early. They never seemed to have left town last fall; I saw them in December and January. Has the climate changed enough for them not to leave?

A terrier-sized dog was running alongside a bike ridden (too fast, I thought) by a man. I told myself they may just have started and/or maybe they’d stop soon for a breath. That terrier looked ready to pause. I’ll hope I misread his appearance and he was lovin’ it.

Then, home, and the two winsome pussycats I hadn’t seen for hours. Even though they’d had dinner halfway through that time, they wanted me to believe they’d been forgotten at the food bowl. Again.
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Trust yourself

“You do not have to be good./You do not have to walk on your knees/for a hundred miles through the desert repenting./You only have to let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves.” --Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

Is it natural and instinctive, then, for humans to love (non-human) animals, even though too often that instinct is smothered? Such a natural love seems reasonable, given humankind’s reputation in some circles for innate goodness. Then again, the second part – about suppressed instincts – also seems true. (Just think about the newspaper stories of people who abuse animals – cock fights to Michael Vick’s dog fights to setting dogs and cats on fire, to drowning kittens. . .)

These first five lines from the poem remind me of a slogan I’ve learned and liked from the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance (NJ-ARA.org): “No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.” In other words, don’t wait to be perfect or till you can do it all before reaching out; instead, reaching out contributes to whatever perfection humans might be capable of.

Even though Mary Oliver may have been writing about admitting love for other humans, I’d like to think she was trying to summon our better selves, to remind us of our kinship w/ animals and to treat them in the right, humane way. That humans sometimes have dominance over animals is just a quirk of fate and doesn’t ever make us better than them.
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All in together

“ 'You animal!' she exclaimed angrily.” In that context, “animal” is intended as an insult. But in the bigger picture, is it?

Don’t animals usually do what comes naturally – even if that may include turning us off for one reason or another, or even eating us? But still, what they do is natural.

On the other hand, don’t we spend a lot of time wondering what’s natural for humans to do? Implicitly, we might idealize humans, at least till they explicitly disappoint or hurt us. For good reason, we may regard other humans as abnormal, sub-human, or worse. Which is natural?

And do animals, when angry at one another, snarl, “You human!”

These thoughts were prompted by my musing about the word “animalia,” which I’ve learned is the plural form of the Latin word for animal, “animalis.” Animals are the group of organisms that constitute the Kingdom Animalia. And, colloquially, “animal” is often used to refer to all animals other than humans. . . according to “knowledgerush.com.”

I enjoy thinking about Kingdom Animalia as one “comprising all living and extinct animals,” per another on-line source. So (despite the colloquial exclusion above), we humans are linked to our domestic companion animals (not “pets,” please!) as well as to the elephants and other creatures that fascinate us, and the dodo and passenger pigeon too. One big, sometimes happy, family.
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Cowardly, at least

It’s easy to agree with a letter writer in today’s Times of Trenton. Reporting that someone had fatally poisoned a feral cat colony located in a Trenton cemetery, he closed with this: “I hope karma exists, because whoever did this deserves to be smacked by fate.”

How restrained the letter writer was! How easy it would be to bitterly rant against the “depraved individual” who fed the cats poisoned food. Cowardly comes to mind. Pathological too. Shall we add “sociopathic”? Where does such a person stop?

Why do humans seem so often to choose violence over reason, research, investigation, negotiation – whatever other ways would be appropriate to deal with a situation? In this case, alert an animal rescue group? look into TNR if “trap, neuter, release” had not already occurred?

But poisoning. That’s just dastardly. Hurry up, karma!

There are animals and animals

Late last month, the Associated Press reported “Pets raised Russian girl, police say.” Found in a filthy apartment, imitating the cats and dogs she was shut up with, the little girl “barks like a dog, laps food directly off the plate and seems to have been raised by the animals.”

Of course, “raised” means different things to different “animals.” The human animals – “her father and other relatives” – who left this child in such squalor are most culpable for what has happened to her. But if they were going to abandon her, they might have done much worse to leave her w/ some humans (images of child slavery, prostitution and death…).

The “pets” she was found with did not molest her, physically or mentally. The worst they did, apparently, was what she had to do too: they all relieved themselves as necessary, creating the “unsanitary conditions” and “horrible stench” reported. Such conditions are easily remedied.

But what if the girl had been consigned to humans who believed “You’ve got to be taught to be afraid/of people whose eyes are oddly made/and people whose skin is a different shade/you’ve got to be carefully taught,” as the lyric from South Pacific has it. Then this girl would really have been warped!

As it is, she may be young enough to lose her “feral characteristics” and be taught human behavior – with luck, the best kind! May she grow up to become a (human) friend to all other (non-human) animals.
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Mothers of them all

Although I finished watching the 6-part series on"Naturer's most amazing events" last night, I kept thinking about it -- what repeated (besides those awful commercials) and what impressed me. One overriding impression is that in nature, mothers prevail.

All sorts of animal mothers were shown protecting, teaching, feeding, leading, birthing, mourning, starving so their offspring could eat. Fathers were generally out of the picture. In the last 2 programs of 6, the only males I remember being described as such were the bull elephants that turned up just in time to stir up the bottom of a dirty pond the females and babies were carefully drinking from.

For so many of the animals shown, life seemed like nothing more than cycles of starve, fight, search for food and water and finally, die -- with lots of random bad luck thrown in. Some may think this pattern applies to humans too (as in Lynn T's old saying, "Life's unfair and then you die."), but I would disagree.

Even though the same pre-death events happen to all of us, to some degree, we also have music, poetry, memories, hope, consciousness of beauty, etc. Unlike those of the animals in the series, our lives are not solely "Nature red in tooth and claw." We have reasons to live besides eating, making it to the next water hole, laying our eggs . . .
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