I'm Tired Of The Excuses, Everybody Uses, He's Their Kid, I Stay Out Of It, But Who Gave You The Right, To Do This?

--"What's The Matter Here?", 10,000 Maniacs

All the furor over Eight Belles' death at the Kentucky Derby--what with PETA getting involved and calling for a reassessment of the practices employed in all of horse racing--prompted me to start a discussion at work the other day. I merely stated the facts as I'd heard them. Namely, I recounted that people were questioning if the horse could have had a pre-existing condition and, if so, if the trainer was accountable by either overlooking it or not catching it in the first place. I wasn't arguing. I was curious to see what people thought of that theory. One of my co-workers shrugged it off, much as he always does, and said that groups like PETA always have to stick their noses in just to drum up more attention to themselves. He went on further to state that fairly soon they were just going to ban horse racing altogether.

I kind of took offense at this stance since it's contrary to what I believe. I'm not in favor of banning horse racing. But if it does turn out that this particular trainer in this particular instance was guilty of being negligible or even intentionally cruel by trotting out a horse that wasn't ready to be running, then, yeah I think he deserves to be questioned and ultimately found guilty. I'm not a zealot when it comes to animal cruelty issues, but issues such as this do tend to affect me more than the average person. For my co-worker to chalk it up to groups being nosy and troublemakers is far too simplistic of a viewpoint and, as far as I can tell, a twitch response when presented with people cracking down on any type of popular entertainment. Hopefully, he's not anti-animal rights because that would seriously color my view of him.

Like I said, I'm not participating in any rallies and I'm not usually one to even stick my head out to voice an opinion when it comes to animal rights issues. However, if directly confronted with a question of morality when it comes to animals, I'm almost always in favor of preserving their right to a rich and meaningful life over that of a human being. The way I view things, humans have some control over their state in life; animals don't. If a human being is a bad situation, there are ways for him or her to extricate themselves from it. If a dog, cat, or horse is put in a bad situation; it doesn't have the same luxury of freedom of choice. Their fates are tied to the whims and desires of the humans it comes into contact with.

A case in point was a situation that arose when I was walking home with my brother and his friend one day back in sixth grade. We usually walked my brother's friend home because it was on the way back to our house and he had always been a rather jovial kind of fellow.

On this particular afternoon we were about block from his house when I guess he spotted a cat he recognized on the street. At first, I thought he was friendly with the cat. He knew its name. He petted its fur. Overall, he gave off the impression that he was on a first name basis with the creature. What happened next changed my mind, though, as to the nature of their relationship. Indeed, it changed my perspective of my brother's friend as well. Taking the cat by its tail, he proceeded to lift it up to chest level. I was appalled because not only was the cat screeching fairly loudly, but it was obviously attempting to get away. Next, this boy started to pivot around, the cat's tail still grasped in his hands, and whip the cat around like he was a stick or something. Actually, it resembled the hammer throw in the Olympics because as the boy started to spin faster, the cat's posture got more horizontal. Finally, when the boy couldn't spin any more, he released the cat, flinging it a good ten to fifteen feet down the street.

Yes, it landed on its feet.

Yes, the cat didn't look any worse for wear.

And, yes, I couldn't say for sure how much pain he was causing the cat.

But I was mad. I sort of snapped. I started to yell at my brother's friend that that had been cruel. Then, instead of waiting for some kind of excuse, I punched him kind of roughly on the face. I don't know why I did it. I think my temper got the better of me. I saw what he had done to the cat and something inside me wanted to hurt him. It was almost as if I wanted him to feel as shocked and as hurt as the cat had. I didn't punch him as hard as I could--nowhere close. But it definitely had been a shot to the face I had meant to land.

Well, as expected, he began to cry and started screaming that he was going to tell his parents what I had done. I really didn't have any call to hit him. The justification that he had been harming the cat seemed enough for me, but, later on that night, it apparently wasn't enough for my parents. They forced me to apologize, both to this kid and this kid's parents.

I felt sorry that I'd hurt him. I wish I could have displayed my utter contempt in some other fashion. It was beneath me to hurt him for hurting the cat. But I'm not sorry I took immediate action. I'm not sorry that for that afternoon the kid was forced to see how much he likes it when somebody bigger decides to inflict some discomfort on you. I'm glad he felt what it's like to feel helpless and out of control.

That's how I feel about any story in which a person beats or starves an animal. The animal can't process why it's being treated like that. The animal doesn't know the idea of cruelty. It only knows the idea of suffering, but has no way to rectify it.

That's why I get a little emotional when it comes to people being negligible in regards to animals. If everybody sloughs it off like rain water, then pretty soon nobody will care enough to make sure it doesn't happen more. As long as I care, as long as somebody care, hopefully, it won't become an everyday occurrence.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers