Nature red in tooth and claw
Nov. 22nd, 2005 12:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deviIt's official, the cats hate me now. They are crouching behind me, looking balefully at me and hissing. I committed an unforgivable sin. I took away Winston's prey.
He came in and started to scuffle around behind the sofa. I thought he might be playing with the dice I gave him. I had a look down there but saw nothing moving. So I went into the kitchen and then, in the corner of my eye, I saw a mouse sprinting for freedom down the hallway, Winston in hot pursuit. I opened the door to let it out and closed it before the cat caught up. "Run, mouse, run!" I said. I hoped the delay while the cat got over his confusion and out through the cat flap would be enough. It wasn't. He strutted back in with the mouse in his mouth and proceeded to bat it about, swing it by its tail and other foul tortures. Now I love cats, but I also have great affection for mice and rats and I sure as heck wasn't going to watch one be beaten and nibbled to death in front of me. I pulled him away by his tail. He was alive, but there was a large hole in his neck. I wrapped the poor little guy up in a copy of Property Weekly and took him out to the roadside to die with dignity. But one horrible thought remains. Would you have had the guts to put him out of his misery? I certainly didn't.
"Mew," says Winston accusingly, and goes out slamming the door. He's a teenager, all right. Oh, hang on, he's back and on my lap. No one ever said cats were consistent.
He came in and started to scuffle around behind the sofa. I thought he might be playing with the dice I gave him. I had a look down there but saw nothing moving. So I went into the kitchen and then, in the corner of my eye, I saw a mouse sprinting for freedom down the hallway, Winston in hot pursuit. I opened the door to let it out and closed it before the cat caught up. "Run, mouse, run!" I said. I hoped the delay while the cat got over his confusion and out through the cat flap would be enough. It wasn't. He strutted back in with the mouse in his mouth and proceeded to bat it about, swing it by its tail and other foul tortures. Now I love cats, but I also have great affection for mice and rats and I sure as heck wasn't going to watch one be beaten and nibbled to death in front of me. I pulled him away by his tail. He was alive, but there was a large hole in his neck. I wrapped the poor little guy up in a copy of Property Weekly and took him out to the roadside to die with dignity. But one horrible thought remains. Would you have had the guts to put him out of his misery? I certainly didn't.
"Mew," says Winston accusingly, and goes out slamming the door. He's a teenager, all right. Oh, hang on, he's back and on my lap. No one ever said cats were consistent.
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Date: 2005-11-27 04:08 pm (UTC)I do feel that it's a bit disrespectful to eat meat and yet never kill something you eat - if the poor bastard's going to give up its life to provide a tasty meal, surely the least we owe it is to look it in the eye as we do it in. Thus it was that I found myself staring fixedly at a crab as I lowered it into boiling water. I didn't much like that either, but it tasted pretty good. Now I'm surrounded by people whose favourite weekend activity is shooting fuzzy deer with a variety of rifles, muzzle-loaders and bows-and-arrows (!) and am unsure how to reconcile that with my attitudes on doing the decent thing to your dinner.
In Utopia, all slaughtering and butchery is done by slaves and prisoners, so the citizens don't have to sully their psyches with all this. Human double standards being nothing new, obviously.