Cats are not special among animals

[Teenwolf]

I love cats. I owned a few growing up and felt special bonds with my cats. I used to look after my frequent travelling friend's cats, and my parents' cat, and always loved doing so.

But cats are no more special than dogs, pigs, cows, or chickens. They have no more discernable intelligence or emotional empathy than any of the animals listed. Maybe there's a type of IQ range of animals that are more or less intelligent than others. But I've seen real tangible emotion equal to what I've seen from cats from all of the normal animals processed into meat.

I've watched about a dozen vegan docs, but the one that hammers this point home best is Earthlings. It shows all of the ways animals are used by humans, how they're treated until they're killed. It's a very hard to watch film, but also very informative and illustrative. I think anybody who currently eats meat and wants their kids to live in a habitable world should watch Earthlings to understand exactly why we're so fucked. But I also realize that even hardcore lefties and environmentalists, people who understand the devastation it causes, continue to deny the planetary need to eat less meat, and continue to do so in their own lives. This illustrates just how fucked we are. You would think another meat market based pandemic would make us re-examine meat production, but apparently not.

So Nully, we agree the world is fucked. We disagree on cats. But I welcome your perspective.

[Gregg]

It appears you want to have a debate with Nully on cats. Although the title of the thread seems to be a bit...unkind or maybe of a trolling nature.

It then seems to switch over to a vegan rant and not about cats at all.

You Vegans seem to be an angry bunch.

[Gregg]

10 Reasons Why Cats Are the Best Pets- form Pethelpful
Cats Tend to Be Clean Animals. ...
Cats Are Quiet. ...
Cats Are Low-Maintenance. ...
Cats Don't Need to Be Taken Outside. ...
Cats Are Super Easy to Potty Train. ...
Cats Protect Your Home From Pests. ...
Cats Cost Less Than Dogs. ...
Cats Can Be Left Alone Longer Than Dogs

I am more of a dog guy, but agree with the list above. And of course our cat Phil is a special cat among cats.

[DMT]

My 18-year-old cat Billy (which means "cat" in Hindi) died last week after going into kidney failure. He was a tuxedo and everyone who met him liked him, even people who generally don't like cats. I'd had him since he was about two weeks old. Very sad day for my family.

No idea why I'm posting it in this thread, other than I figure the other cat lovers and here will see it.

[nots]

My 18-year-old cat Billy (which means "cat" in Hindi) died last week after going into kidney failure. He was a tuxedo and everyone who met him liked him, even people who generally don't like cats. I'd had him since he was about two weeks old. Very sad day for my family.

No idea why I'm posting it in this thread, other than I figure the other cat lovers and here will see it.

Sorry to hear that....losing a pet is a tough thing—especially one that was a part of your family for 18 years. I’m sure when the time feels right, you will adopt a new friend. RIP Billy!

[umjewman]

I'm not really a cat guy, but my ex-girlfriend made us get a cat when we lived together. When we broke up, the cat liked me way more than her, so I took him. My dad (who hates cats) loved that furball. And then he got out of the house and we never saw him again. Until two years later when someone down the street had a cat that looked exactly the same and even came up and rubbed up against my mom's leg when she was walking down the street. The homeowners were like "uhhhh, we bought this cat last year." Sure you did, buddy. But, I digress.

[Sour Masher]

I am not a cat person, but one of the most memorable moments of my life involved a cat. I was in 2nd grade and it was an afternoon and I was out in my neighborhood (I was a latchkey kid, so wandered around a lot). I was very upset at something bad had happened and I was sitting on the curb crying, with my head down into my folded arms resting on m knees. I suddenly felt something run against my leg. A stray cat that lived in the neighborhood that always shied away from me and other children had, for the first time ever, come up to me, rubbed against my leg and purred. I was struck, even then, by the certainty that this cat knew how upset I was and had come to comfort me. Maybe it was simply that I was still and not running around as I most often did. Maybe he was hungry. But never before or after did that cat give me or other kids I knew the time of day. It has always stuck with me as the first moment in my life that I began too believe animals had real emotional intelligence.

[Sour Masher]

Until recently, I had a bird bias. Of all the eatin' animals, I assumed the birds had, well, bird brains. I mean, after generations of breeding to sit and grow fat, on top of not seeming to be the sharpest tools in nature's toolshed to begin with, you'd think they would be among the easiest of the mass farmed animals to be detached from. But a woman I work with that was all about eating everything that moved on the face of the earth bought some chickens a couple of years ago. It totally changed her. She loves that chickens as much as anyone could love a dog or cat. She shows me pictures of all of them, tells me about their internal politics. She is a bright, thoughtful woman who never dreamed of seeing the chickens as pets initially, just as egg layers. But now she insists each and every one has a unique personality. They follow her around, come when called, jump into her lap, coo and cuddle. Bicker, fight, play. She is in her 50s and has now stopped eating chickens, though still eats everything else, because she has seen firsthand how smart chickens can be and she can't bring herself to eat them now anymore than a dog owner would eat a dog. I suspect that is why she won't get a pig or cow--cuz she might like them too and would have to stop eating them .

[Sour Masher]

Until recently, I had a bird bias. Of all the eatin' animals, I assumed the birds had, well, bird brains. I mean, after generations of breeding to sit and grow fat, on top of not seeming to be the sharpest tools in nature's toolshed to begin with, you'd think they would be among the easiest of the mass farmed animals to be detached from. But a woman I work with that was all about eating everything that moved on the face of the earth bought some chickens a couple of years ago. It totally changed her. She loves that chickens as much as anyone could love a dog or cat. She shows me pictures of all of them, tells me about their internal politics. She is a bright, thoughtful woman who never dreamed of seeing the chickens as pets initially, just as egg layers. But now she insists each and every one has a unique personality. They follow her around, come when called, jump into her lap, coo and cuddle. Bicker, fight, play. She is in her 50s and has now stopped eating chickens, though still eats everything else, because she has seen firsthand how smart chickens can be and she can't bring herself to eat them now anymore than a dog owner would eat a dog. I suspect that is why she won't get a pig or cow--cuz she might like them too and would have to stop eating them .

BTW, TW recently chastised my hypocrisy for not being a vegan when I posted my frustrations about the tremendous waste happening in the meat industry right now with 100s of thousands of animals being killed and left to rot (chastising potential allies on an issue, I have found, is not a great way to win folks to your side :P). I didn't address it then, but I see absolutely no problems with Angie's eggs, which I buy from her year round. She treats those chickens like her kids. They live a great life and don't seem to mind laying the eggs and having them taken. TW, if you want to disagree with me on that, I'm open to learning your perspective. Same with eating oysters, which I mentioned to you as a vegan, as they don't have brains or pain sensors, are pretty much plants, are highly sustainable and have a lower carbon footprint than most plants, and pretty much solve every nutritional challenge vegans have.

[Sour Masher]

One problem I have with ideological purists on this issue (like Jainist) on this subject is a lack of awareness, it seems to me, of how interconnected everything is. It is impossible to be totally non-violent in consumption. Everyone kills by existing to some extent. The purest vegan kills by living. Anything you consume affects others in some way. Plants are living things, and for some species, like oysters, the distinction between plants and animals isn't as clear cut as we may think it is. Also, even if you just want to be all about animals and chomp down on non-animals only, the harvesting and transportation process of those living things, in some cases causes more animal death than actually eating some animals. That doesn't mean we don't make food choices we think are best, but I think it does mean we should be a little less judgy of others, since it is never a simple binary of ethical or unethical consumption.

[The Feral Slasher]

My 18-year-old cat Billy (which means "cat" in Hindi) died last week after going into kidney failure. He was a tuxedo and everyone who met him liked him, even people who generally don't like cats. I'd had him since he was about two weeks old. Very sad day for my family.

No idea why I'm posting it in this thread, other than I figure the other cat lovers and here will see it.

Sorry to hear that. I really like tuxedo cats

[heyelander]

Sorry to hear that. I really like tuxedo cats

snob.

Sorry to hear about your kit J.

[Teenwolf]

BTW, TW recently chastised my hypocrisy for not being a vegan when I posted my frustrations about the tremendous waste happening in the meat industry right now with 100s of thousands of animals being killed and left to rot (chastising potential allies on an issue, I have found, is not a great way to win folks to your side :P). I didn't address it then, but I see absolutely no problems with Angie's eggs, which I buy from her year round. She treats those chickens like her kids. They live a great life and don't seem to mind laying the eggs and having them taken. TW, if you want to disagree with me on that, I'm open to learning your perspective. Same with eating oysters, which I mentioned to you as a vegan, as they don't have brains or pain sensors, are pretty much plants, are highly sustainable and have a lower carbon footprint than most plants, and pretty much solve every nutritional challenge vegans have.

I care very little about the animal welfare aspect in comparison with most vegans. I recognize the unnecessary suffering of animals, but I'm mainly concerned with sustainability. That's why I believe it may be less moral to support small farms than factory farms. At least factory farming is efficient. We receive 1/20th of the caloric content we feed meat animals, so we could easily solve world hunger as well as the planet. I have no delusions of changing any minds on veganism. I just want to crush the delusions of others, who seem to think all the science showing all of the disastrous effects of the industry are somehow avoidable if you hunt for your meat or eat bi-valves, or whatever. It cannot be scaled up so the only solution is to consume less. The only solution is to consume less, but humans aren't built for that. We deserve our impending destruction, black-hole world eating selfish shits that we are.

Oysters do not require creating food to fatten them, so that eliminates the waste of forests clear cut for meat animal feed. But it still can't be scaled up, so although it may be ethically fine, it's not a solution.

I couldn't do so much lawn cutting if I were a Jainist. We are bound by many societal factors to contribute to death, vegans and non-vegans alike. But talking grasshoppers is a distraction, the fact is that cows, chickens, and pigs have overwhelmed the planet's resources, not insects... besides, meat animals require more farming (killing field critters) to feed the cows and pigs than the amount of food I consume, so that's not a valid argument.

[GwynnInTheHall]

Nullnor is gonna take you to the shed.

[swampdragon]

We have 2 cats - sisters and they are a year and a half old - we had sister cats before that for about 15 years

I suggest that you get them in sibling pairs - not really much more work and they bond well during times when you are not at home

and as a special bonus you can teach the following cat biology lesson and watch people make a scrunchy uncomfortable face (at least my students do)
My cats look similarish to each other - but have totally different markings and colors - WHY? -Superfecundation

fun fact - They could have different fathers
when cats are ovulating the window of opportunity is a few days and if they are strays...