Re: another great addition to society!


"Ruthless" <roothliss@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:499e68de.764021343@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hey Chocolic,

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) - A Pennsylvania dog groomer has been ordered to
stand trial on animal cruelty charges for selling "gothic kittens" with
ear, neck and tail piercings.

If it's legal for a mother to take her newborn infant to a local
Claire's and get the baby's ears pierced by some gum-snapping stoner
with a punch-gun, why in the world should it be considered cruelty to
do it to a kitten?

Good point, I hadn't thought of it that way. It's a stupid idea to do
that to any animal and it really seems so cruel, but people do it with
their own kids. Although I never thought of it as cruel when people do it
with their babies/little kids, I think that is kinda stupid. But that's
just MO. And you are right, if it's not criminal to do it to a baby, why
should it be that way with an animal. Maybe what angered people was they
were trying to profit from it.

When I was in my early twenties, I was sitting at home watching the tube
when my cousin was visiting. I was popping my knuckles, and she gave me
the usual line about how doing that was going to give me arthritis. That
always sounded like horse*** to me, but I'd never thought about why until
then. It suddenly occurred to me, and I asked her, "If making popping
stiff bones to loosen them up will give a person arthritis, then why in
the world do you pay a chiropractor to do it to your *SPINE*??"

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OMG, I never thought of it that way. Both my girls are knuckle poppers. When they were teens it used to drive me bats. And they would have friends over and they would do the same thing. I was always telling them that it was going to make them get arthritis and they would get big ugly knuckles. It seriously made me cringe to hear them do that. They are both in their 30's now, still do it though not as much, and have no signs of arthritis. I do know a girl about their age that is seriously addicted to having her spine cracked. She goes to the chiropractor constantly.

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I think a lot of us get caught up by what's in front of us and don't stop
for a second to think if there are comparable situations that look
different, but aren't.

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You have a way of doing that that most of us don't.

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I doubt if the profit motive is what triggered people. I suspect it's just
a knee-jerk humaniac reaction. But even if the profit motive is the
problem, i's still ridiculous. People pay Veterinarians a fortune to ruin
a perfectly healthy Doberman's ears. They cut through the cartilage,
stitch up the wound, then tape the ears to sticks so they'll heal upright.
That's a hell of a lot nastier procedure than a piercing, and it rarely
looks good. I've seen an awful lot of adult dogs with keloid scarring on
their ears from the crop-job. And a six-month-old dobie pup with cropped
ears brings in a much bigger price than a six-month-old dobie pup with
natural ears.

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I've never liked the idea of cropping tails and ears of animals to make them "show" quality. I think that is sickening. I knew a kid, one that grew up like you did, that found one of his worst memories was his mom or dad (can't remember which) making him hold pups with their tail over the edge of a sink while they chopped the tail off. Sometimes they would make him do the chopping. He said that was more traumatizing to him than any of his abuse.

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And our culture considers all animals property. Every time I eat a
Whopper, somebody has profited off the life of some poor cow. People breed
*everything* for sale. So unless we are going to become a nation of
vegans, we don't have the right to judge some lunatic for piercing kitten
ears and making an American buck off idiots willing to buy them.

*Ponder*

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You are more sane than you realize. I would love to meet you.

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When I was working in a shelter a few years ago, the Shelter Vet shared an
experience withe me. She gave the monthly report to the Animal Control
Board, which included facts like, "this number of animals were
surrendered, this number of animals were impounded as strays, this number
of animals were adopted by the public, this number of animals were claimed
by their owners, this number of animals were adopted by rescue groups,
this number of animals were euthanized, and (that particular month) *one
animal died overnight in its cage*."

The board totally flipped out on her. They were absolutely livid. They
wanted to know how she'd fucked up so bad that an animal had actually died
in its cage. They took turns reaming her for 20 minutes. Finally one of
them asked her if it was a dog or a cat. She told them that it had been a
lizard. They started laughing. Oh... it was just a lizard! Why didn't she
*say* so?

She was infuriated by this attitude. In her mind, it was ridiculous for
them to assume that a death in the kennels automatically meant she was a
fuckup, but if a dog or a cat's life was important enough for them to
abuse her over, then a lizard's life should be equally important, and she
should have been abused for that too. Either she had fucked up or she
hadn't. The fact that it was a lizard had nothing at all to do with
whether or not she'd fucked up.

She's totally right, you know. We have "special" animals in our culture,
and if someone does something with those animals that isn't your standard
operating procedure, we get crazed and start screeching about inhumane
treatment. But if we do it to some critter that isn't close to our
hearts... a lizard or a cow or a snake or a rat or a pig... well,
whatever... it's not like its a child or something.

Makes us look pretty stupid, I think.

Davi
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Another example is the outrage on declawing a cat so a person can have the cat in their home without destroying their furniture. When I had cats, I always had them declawed. They never suffered from that. I could never figure out the outrage on that. They were never more sore than when they were spayed/neutered, or had a tooth pulled.

Yes, we can be stupid when it comes to animals. I'm one of the worst.

Chocolic

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