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More Weakmindedness In Favor of Bad Animals



 
 
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  #1  
Old June 21st 06, 05:26 AM posted to rec.pets.cats.rescue
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default More Weakmindedness In Favor of Bad Animals

Humans are the dominant lifeform on Earth. We have no right to
abdicate from what it has taken the Creator hundreds of millions of
years to do. We have the responsibility to continue the process onward
and upward.

Part of that is responsible stewardship of animals and the earth.
Responsible, that is, in regard to our own finite time and energy and
capacities. Domestic animals exist because for thousands of years they
were bred, and all but the most suited culled. Now we are weakminded
and won't cull the bad.

Finally, in this case, the responsible thing was done. This woman's
husband should have been a man and done what was responsible, shot,
shoveled and shut up. But no, we are an effeminized and weak people. So
it had to come to this.
)))))))(((((((((

http://www.slate.com/id/2126249/

Why I Killed My Cat
There are so many reasons. First, he kept peeing in my daughter's bed.
....
By Emily Yoffe
Posted Monday, Sept. 19, 2005, at 6:32 AM ET

We put down our cat, Goldie. Why? Because there was one bedtime too
many when my 9-year old daughter laid her head on her pillow and
remarked, "Mom, my pillow is wet." Because Goldie kept us all awake as
he howled through the night. Because he decided that instead of using
the litter box in our new house, he preferred to relieve himself in our
only bathtub.

I have spent 25 years caring for two successive sets of cats and have
always thought of myself as having an ancient Egyptian's admiration for
their grace, beauty, and mystery. When my beloved cat Shlomo was dying
of cancer at age 16, I kept her alive weeks longer than I should have.
Every time I called my veterinarian to make her final appointment, I'd
break down sobbing and have to hang up. Yet here I am, minus one
healthy cat, and not sorry about it.

Believe me, we tried with Goldie. During the four years we had him, we
spent hundreds of dollars on medical tests to get to the cause of
Goldie's refusal to use the litter box. There was no physical problem,
so we progressed to psychology. We tried Prozac (though the package
insert says nothing about it being a cure for a compulsion to urinate
on pillows), and a product called Feliway, a pheromone that is supposed
to reduce a cat's anxiety. Our anxiety increased as the treatments
failed. We moved on to home décor, spending thousands of dollars to
replace carpets so soaked with urine that they created their own
microclimate. Goldie turned his attention to bedding and area rugs.

Following the advice of cat behavior experts also didn't solve the
problem, but it did make me feel less alone. After I wrote about my
findings, I got an e-mail from one reader who said her cat had taken to
peeing into the toaster (I'm not going to brunch at her house). Another
had a cat so committed to wetting her bed that she made herself a quilt
of black plastic garbage bags fastened together with duct tape.

My veterinarian, who was pessimistic I would ever solve Goldie's
problem, suggested I consider moving. Recently we did, although it had
more to do with the school system than the fact that our house had
reached the saturation point. As we prepared for the move my husband,
normally a kind and forgiving man, started sounding like Pat Robertson
faced with a feline Hugo Chávez. "We're not taking ****-cat with us,"
he would declare while stroking Goldie, who, when he wasn't peeing or
screaming, could be an appealing, fluffy fellow. I couldn't bring
myself to actually agree to putting down Goldie, but I dreaded the
thought of decorating my new home with a plastic-bag-and-duct-tape
theme. I told him I didn't want to know, but that if Goldie wasn't
around when we made the trip, he didn't need to explain.

On the day of the move we loaded the car with our daughter, our frozen
food, our cleaning supplies, and crates containing our beagle, Sasha,
and the cats, littermates Goldie and Biscuit. As we made our Beverly
Hillbillies-like drive across town, Goldie howling, my husband admitted
he couldn't do it.

For two of our three animals the move went great. Sasha is happy
anywhere she finds a full food bowl, and Biscuit is a flexible and
delightful cat who immediately inaugurated the new litter boxes and
then eagerly explored our packing boxes as if he were in Disneyland.
Goldie became, as we feared, unhinged. On the third night in our new
home, to get some relief from the howling, we confined him to a
basement bathroom, with bedding, bowls of food and water, and a litter
box. From two floors away our stomachs churned as we listened for hours
to the desperate Goldie throwing himself against the door. When I went
down in the morning to let him out, I discovered that, Houdini-like, he
was gone. It turned out he had levitated himself into a hole in the
ceiling cut by a plumber repairing leaking pipes.

The hole was scheduled to be closed that day, but no amount of coaxing
with food, or attempts at yanking, could budge Goldie. Finally, a
county animal-control officer arrived and spent an hour wrestling poor
Goldie out. We were now forced to put Goldie outside in our fenced
yard, where he hid most of the day, then screamed most of the night. It
was oppressively hot and thunderstorms were forecast. We couldn't keep
him in the house, and we couldn't keep him exposed outside. My husband
said Goldie's time had come. He was going to take our cat to the Humane
Society shelter to be euthanized. Our daughter was away at the beach
with a friend, but we had discussed with her that Goldie might not be
there when she got back. "I understand Mom," she said. "He's just so
unhappy all the time."

Please don't tell me you would have taken in Goldie. You wouldn't have,
and he wouldn't have wanted you to. There are three things he couldn't
bear: change, other animals, and confinement. We never considered just
dropping him off at a shelter. According to the American Humane
Association, only about 25 percent of relinquished cats are ever
adopted. We weren't going to lie about Goldie's problems to make him
sound more appealing, because that would mean his unwitting new owners
would quickly return him. And we weren't going to find some no-kill
shelter and dump him there to spend forever locked in a cage in
torment.

And spare me the argument that Goldie was a member of the family and
nothing could justify my actions. I feel love for my animals, but I
maintain there is a distinction between people and pets. Goldie was a
pet, but he had ceased to be an acceptable one. He was miserable and so
were we. I believe my obligation was to give him a quick, painless
death.

It is awful that an estimated 10 million healthy cats and dogs are put
to death in shelters each year. But I am clinging to a study from the
Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, which distinguishes between
owners who give their animals to shelters and owners who bring in
animals specifically to be euthanized. This study found the latter to
be committed pet owners who had painfully concluded they had reached
the end. For the most part the animals were old and sick, but a
significant portion were brought in because desperate owners couldn't
live with them anymore. The usual cause was aggression from dogs and
soiling from cats. The authors of the study acknowledge such animals
are unlikely ever to find another home.

I regret I couldn't make Goldie happy, but since he's been gone the
feeling of dread I lived with for years has been lifted. My other
animals are a joy. I'd even say since Goldie's demise they've been on
their very best behavior.

Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly
Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or
comments to .
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.

  #2  
Old June 22nd 06, 12:54 AM posted to rec.pets.cats.rescue
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default More Weakmindedness In Favor of Bad Animals

On 20 Jun 2006 21:26:48 -0700, "Bret Ludwig"
wrote:

Humans are the dominant lifeform on Earth. We have no right to
abdicate from what it has taken the Creator hundreds of millions of
years to do. We have the responsibility to continue the process onward
and upward.

Part of that is responsible stewardship of animals and the earth.
Responsible, that is, in regard to our own finite time and energy and
capacities. Domestic animals exist because for thousands of years they
were bred,


nd all but the most suited culled. Now we are weakminded
and won't cull the bad.

And it won't be long before we "cull" the bad children from the
good,sedated ones.

Finally, in this case, the responsible thing was done. This woman's
husband should have been a man and done what was responsible,

they should never have had animals in the first place...when one
becomes an inconvenience,,get rid of it...yes,thats why the animal
shelters are so full of unwanted pets.

shot,
shoveled and shut up. But no, we are an effeminized and weak people. So
it had to come to this.
)))))))(((((((((

http://www.slate.com/id/2126249/

Why I Killed My Cat
There are so many reasons. First, he kept peeing in my daughter's bed.
...
By Emily Yoffe
Posted Monday, Sept. 19, 2005, at 6:32 AM ET

We put down our cat, Goldie. Why? Because there was one bedtime too
many when my 9-year old daughter laid her head on her pillow and
remarked, "Mom, my pillow is wet." Because Goldie kept us all awake as
he howled through the night. Because he decided that instead of using
the litter box in our new house, he preferred to relieve himself in our
only bathtub.

I have spent 25 years caring for two successive sets of cats and have
always thought of myself as having an ancient Egyptian's admiration for
their grace, beauty, and mystery. When my beloved cat Shlomo was dying
of cancer at age 16, I kept her alive weeks longer than I should have.
Every time I called my veterinarian to make her final appointment, I'd
break down sobbing and have to hang up. Yet here I am, minus one
healthy cat, and not sorry about it.

Believe me, we tried with Goldie. During the four years we had him, we
spent hundreds of dollars on medical tests to get to the cause of
Goldie's refusal to use the litter box. There was no physical problem,
so we progressed to psychology. We tried Prozac (though the package
insert says nothing about it being a cure for a compulsion to urinate
on pillows), and a product called Feliway, a pheromone that is supposed
to reduce a cat's anxiety. Our anxiety increased as the treatments
failed. We moved on to home décor, spending thousands of dollars to
replace carpets so soaked with urine that they created their own
microclimate. Goldie turned his attention to bedding and area rugs.

Following the advice of cat behavior experts also didn't solve the
problem, but it did make me feel less alone. After I wrote about my
findings, I got an e-mail from one reader who said her cat had taken to
peeing into the toaster (I'm not going to brunch at her house). Another
had a cat so committed to wetting her bed that she made herself a quilt
of black plastic garbage bags fastened together with duct tape.

My veterinarian, who was pessimistic I would ever solve Goldie's
problem, suggested I consider moving. Recently we did, although it had
more to do with the school system than the fact that our house had
reached the saturation point. As we prepared for the move my husband,
normally a kind and forgiving man, started sounding like Pat Robertson
faced with a feline Hugo Chávez. "We're not taking ****-cat with us,"
he would declare while stroking Goldie, who, when he wasn't peeing or
screaming, could be an appealing, fluffy fellow. I couldn't bring
myself to actually agree to putting down Goldie, but I dreaded the
thought of decorating my new home with a plastic-bag-and-duct-tape
theme. I told him I didn't want to know, but that if Goldie wasn't
around when we made the trip, he didn't need to explain.

On the day of the move we loaded the car with our daughter, our frozen
food, our cleaning supplies, and crates containing our beagle, Sasha,
and the cats, littermates Goldie and Biscuit. As we made our Beverly
Hillbillies-like drive across town, Goldie howling, my husband admitted
he couldn't do it.

For two of our three animals the move went great. Sasha is happy
anywhere she finds a full food bowl, and Biscuit is a flexible and
delightful cat who immediately inaugurated the new litter boxes and
then eagerly explored our packing boxes as if he were in Disneyland.
Goldie became, as we feared, unhinged. On the third night in our new
home, to get some relief from the howling, we confined him to a
basement bathroom, with bedding, bowls of food and water, and a litter
box. From two floors away our stomachs churned as we listened for hours
to the desperate Goldie throwing himself against the door. When I went
down in the morning to let him out, I discovered that, Houdini-like, he
was gone. It turned out he had levitated himself into a hole in the
ceiling cut by a plumber repairing leaking pipes.

The hole was scheduled to be closed that day, but no amount of coaxing
with food, or attempts at yanking, could budge Goldie. Finally, a
county animal-control officer arrived and spent an hour wrestling poor
Goldie out. We were now forced to put Goldie outside in our fenced
yard, where he hid most of the day, then screamed most of the night. It
was oppressively hot and thunderstorms were forecast. We couldn't keep
him in the house, and we couldn't keep him exposed outside. My husband
said Goldie's time had come. He was going to take our cat to the Humane
Society shelter to be euthanized. Our daughter was away at the beach
with a friend, but we had discussed with her that Goldie might not be
there when she got back. "I understand Mom," she said. "He's just so
unhappy all the time."

Please don't tell me you would have taken in Goldie. You wouldn't have,
and he wouldn't have wanted you to. There are three things he couldn't
bear: change, other animals, and confinement. We never considered just
dropping him off at a shelter. According to the American Humane
Association, only about 25 percent of relinquished cats are ever
adopted. We weren't going to lie about Goldie's problems to make him
sound more appealing, because that would mean his unwitting new owners
would quickly return him. And we weren't going to find some no-kill
shelter and dump him there to spend forever locked in a cage in
torment.

And spare me the argument that Goldie was a member of the family and
nothing could justify my actions. I feel love for my animals, but I
maintain there is a distinction between people and pets. Goldie was a
pet, but he had ceased to be an acceptable one. He was miserable and so
were we. I believe my obligation was to give him a quick, painless
death.

It is awful that an estimated 10 million healthy cats and dogs are put
to death in shelters each year. But I am clinging to a study from the
Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, which distinguishes between
owners who give their animals to shelters and owners who bring in
animals specifically to be euthanized. This study found the latter to
be committed pet owners who had painfully concluded they had reached
the end. For the most part the animals were old and sick, but a
significant portion were brought in because desperate owners couldn't
live with them anymore. The usual cause was aggression from dogs and
soiling from cats. The authors of the study acknowledge such animals
are unlikely ever to find another home.

I regret I couldn't make Goldie happy, but since he's been gone the
feeling of dread I lived with for years has been lifted. My other
animals are a joy. I'd even say since Goldie's demise they've been on
their very best behavior.

Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly
Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or
comments to .
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.


I don't "Suffer" from Insanity..I rather enjoy it!

CATTS
http://members.tripod.com/~thewebster/catts.html

WHY SO BLUE,PANDA BEAR?
http://www.serindaswan.com
  #3  
Old June 22nd 06, 05:43 AM posted to rec.pets.cats.rescue
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default More Weakmindedness In Favor of Bad Animals

sounds to me like the cat had FLUTD......if it was screaming and urinating
on anything but the box that's probably what it had and this even if it does
go away would have come back so I say the cat should have been put down
"BIRDS" wrote in message
...
On 20 Jun 2006 21:26:48 -0700, "Bret Ludwig"
wrote:

Humans are the dominant lifeform on Earth. We have no right to
abdicate from what it has taken the Creator hundreds of millions of
years to do. We have the responsibility to continue the process onward
and upward.

Part of that is responsible stewardship of animals and the earth.
Responsible, that is, in regard to our own finite time and energy and
capacities. Domestic animals exist because for thousands of years they
were bred,


nd all but the most suited culled. Now we are weakminded
and won't cull the bad.

And it won't be long before we "cull" the bad children from the
good,sedated ones.

Finally, in this case, the responsible thing was done. This woman's
husband should have been a man and done what was responsible,

they should never have had animals in the first place...when one
becomes an inconvenience,,get rid of it...yes,thats why the animal
shelters are so full of unwanted pets.

shot,
shoveled and shut up. But no, we are an effeminized and weak people. So
it had to come to this.
)))))))(((((((((

http://www.slate.com/id/2126249/

Why I Killed My Cat
There are so many reasons. First, he kept peeing in my daughter's bed.
...
By Emily Yoffe
Posted Monday, Sept. 19, 2005, at 6:32 AM ET

We put down our cat, Goldie. Why? Because there was one bedtime too
many when my 9-year old daughter laid her head on her pillow and
remarked, "Mom, my pillow is wet." Because Goldie kept us all awake as
he howled through the night. Because he decided that instead of using
the litter box in our new house, he preferred to relieve himself in our
only bathtub.

I have spent 25 years caring for two successive sets of cats and have
always thought of myself as having an ancient Egyptian's admiration for
their grace, beauty, and mystery. When my beloved cat Shlomo was dying
of cancer at age 16, I kept her alive weeks longer than I should have.
Every time I called my veterinarian to make her final appointment, I'd
break down sobbing and have to hang up. Yet here I am, minus one
healthy cat, and not sorry about it.

Believe me, we tried with Goldie. During the four years we had him, we
spent hundreds of dollars on medical tests to get to the cause of
Goldie's refusal to use the litter box. There was no physical problem,
so we progressed to psychology. We tried Prozac (though the package
insert says nothing about it being a cure for a compulsion to urinate
on pillows), and a product called Feliway, a pheromone that is supposed
to reduce a cat's anxiety. Our anxiety increased as the treatments
failed. We moved on to home décor, spending thousands of dollars to
replace carpets so soaked with urine that they created their own
microclimate. Goldie turned his attention to bedding and area rugs.

Following the advice of cat behavior experts also didn't solve the
problem, but it did make me feel less alone. After I wrote about my
findings, I got an e-mail from one reader who said her cat had taken to
peeing into the toaster (I'm not going to brunch at her house). Another
had a cat so committed to wetting her bed that she made herself a quilt
of black plastic garbage bags fastened together with duct tape.

My veterinarian, who was pessimistic I would ever solve Goldie's
problem, suggested I consider moving. Recently we did, although it had
more to do with the school system than the fact that our house had
reached the saturation point. As we prepared for the move my husband,
normally a kind and forgiving man, started sounding like Pat Robertson
faced with a feline Hugo Chávez. "We're not taking ****-cat with us,"
he would declare while stroking Goldie, who, when he wasn't peeing or
screaming, could be an appealing, fluffy fellow. I couldn't bring
myself to actually agree to putting down Goldie, but I dreaded the
thought of decorating my new home with a plastic-bag-and-duct-tape
theme. I told him I didn't want to know, but that if Goldie wasn't
around when we made the trip, he didn't need to explain.

On the day of the move we loaded the car with our daughter, our frozen
food, our cleaning supplies, and crates containing our beagle, Sasha,
and the cats, littermates Goldie and Biscuit. As we made our Beverly
Hillbillies-like drive across town, Goldie howling, my husband admitted
he couldn't do it.

For two of our three animals the move went great. Sasha is happy
anywhere she finds a full food bowl, and Biscuit is a flexible and
delightful cat who immediately inaugurated the new litter boxes and
then eagerly explored our packing boxes as if he were in Disneyland.
Goldie became, as we feared, unhinged. On the third night in our new
home, to get some relief from the howling, we confined him to a
basement bathroom, with bedding, bowls of food and water, and a litter
box. From two floors away our stomachs churned as we listened for hours
to the desperate Goldie throwing himself against the door. When I went
down in the morning to let him out, I discovered that, Houdini-like, he
was gone. It turned out he had levitated himself into a hole in the
ceiling cut by a plumber repairing leaking pipes.

The hole was scheduled to be closed that day, but no amount of coaxing
with food, or attempts at yanking, could budge Goldie. Finally, a
county animal-control officer arrived and spent an hour wrestling poor
Goldie out. We were now forced to put Goldie outside in our fenced
yard, where he hid most of the day, then screamed most of the night. It
was oppressively hot and thunderstorms were forecast. We couldn't keep
him in the house, and we couldn't keep him exposed outside. My husband
said Goldie's time had come. He was going to take our cat to the Humane
Society shelter to be euthanized. Our daughter was away at the beach
with a friend, but we had discussed with her that Goldie might not be
there when she got back. "I understand Mom," she said. "He's just so
unhappy all the time."

Please don't tell me you would have taken in Goldie. You wouldn't have,
and he wouldn't have wanted you to. There are three things he couldn't
bear: change, other animals, and confinement. We never considered just
dropping him off at a shelter. According to the American Humane
Association, only about 25 percent of relinquished cats are ever
adopted. We weren't going to lie about Goldie's problems to make him
sound more appealing, because that would mean his unwitting new owners
would quickly return him. And we weren't going to find some no-kill
shelter and dump him there to spend forever locked in a cage in
torment.

And spare me the argument that Goldie was a member of the family and
nothing could justify my actions. I feel love for my animals, but I
maintain there is a distinction between people and pets. Goldie was a
pet, but he had ceased to be an acceptable one. He was miserable and so
were we. I believe my obligation was to give him a quick, painless
death.

It is awful that an estimated 10 million healthy cats and dogs are put
to death in shelters each year. But I am clinging to a study from the
Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, which distinguishes between
owners who give their animals to shelters and owners who bring in
animals specifically to be euthanized. This study found the latter to
be committed pet owners who had painfully concluded they had reached
the end. For the most part the animals were old and sick, but a
significant portion were brought in because desperate owners couldn't
live with them anymore. The usual cause was aggression from dogs and
soiling from cats. The authors of the study acknowledge such animals
are unlikely ever to find another home.

I regret I couldn't make Goldie happy, but since he's been gone the
feeling of dread I lived with for years has been lifted. My other
animals are a joy. I'd even say since Goldie's demise they've been on
their very best behavior.

Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly
Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or
comments to .
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.


I don't "Suffer" from Insanity..I rather enjoy it!

CATTS
http://members.tripod.com/~thewebster/catts.html

WHY SO BLUE,PANDA BEAR?
http://www.serindaswan.com



  #4  
Old June 23rd 06, 05:46 AM posted to rec.pets.cats.rescue
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default More Weakmindedness In Favor of Bad Animals

On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 04:43:43 GMT, "Laura" wrote:

sounds to me like the cat had FLUTD.....


BUT are you positive...or should you kill the animal and worry about
being right later?


..if it was screaming and urinating
on anything but the box that's probably what it had and this even if it does
go away would have come back so I say the cat should have been put down



"BIRDS" wrote in message
.. .
On 20 Jun 2006 21:26:48 -0700, "Bret Ludwig"
wrote:

Humans are the dominant lifeform on Earth. We have no right to
abdicate from what it has taken the Creator hundreds of millions of
years to do. We have the responsibility to continue the process onward
and upward.

Part of that is responsible stewardship of animals and the earth.
Responsible, that is, in regard to our own finite time and energy and
capacities. Domestic animals exist because for thousands of years they
were bred,


nd all but the most suited culled. Now we are weakminded
and won't cull the bad.

And it won't be long before we "cull" the bad children from the
good,sedated ones.

Finally, in this case, the responsible thing was done. This woman's
husband should have been a man and done what was responsible,

they should never have had animals in the first place...when one
becomes an inconvenience,,get rid of it...yes,thats why the animal
shelters are so full of unwanted pets.

shot,
shoveled and shut up. But no, we are an effeminized and weak people. So
it had to come to this.
)))))))(((((((((

http://www.slate.com/id/2126249/

Why I Killed My Cat
There are so many reasons. First, he kept peeing in my daughter's bed.
...
By Emily Yoffe
Posted Monday, Sept. 19, 2005, at 6:32 AM ET

We put down our cat, Goldie. Why? Because there was one bedtime too
many when my 9-year old daughter laid her head on her pillow and
remarked, "Mom, my pillow is wet." Because Goldie kept us all awake as
he howled through the night. Because he decided that instead of using
the litter box in our new house, he preferred to relieve himself in our
only bathtub.

I have spent 25 years caring for two successive sets of cats and have
always thought of myself as having an ancient Egyptian's admiration for
their grace, beauty, and mystery. When my beloved cat Shlomo was dying
of cancer at age 16, I kept her alive weeks longer than I should have.
Every time I called my veterinarian to make her final appointment, I'd
break down sobbing and have to hang up. Yet here I am, minus one
healthy cat, and not sorry about it.

Believe me, we tried with Goldie. During the four years we had him, we
spent hundreds of dollars on medical tests to get to the cause of
Goldie's refusal to use the litter box. There was no physical problem,
so we progressed to psychology. We tried Prozac (though the package
insert says nothing about it being a cure for a compulsion to urinate
on pillows), and a product called Feliway, a pheromone that is supposed
to reduce a cat's anxiety. Our anxiety increased as the treatments
failed. We moved on to home décor, spending thousands of dollars to
replace carpets so soaked with urine that they created their own
microclimate. Goldie turned his attention to bedding and area rugs.

Following the advice of cat behavior experts also didn't solve the
problem, but it did make me feel less alone. After I wrote about my
findings, I got an e-mail from one reader who said her cat had taken to
peeing into the toaster (I'm not going to brunch at her house). Another
had a cat so committed to wetting her bed that she made herself a quilt
of black plastic garbage bags fastened together with duct tape.

My veterinarian, who was pessimistic I would ever solve Goldie's
problem, suggested I consider moving. Recently we did, although it had
more to do with the school system than the fact that our house had
reached the saturation point. As we prepared for the move my husband,
normally a kind and forgiving man, started sounding like Pat Robertson
faced with a feline Hugo Chávez. "We're not taking ****-cat with us,"
he would declare while stroking Goldie, who, when he wasn't peeing or
screaming, could be an appealing, fluffy fellow. I couldn't bring
myself to actually agree to putting down Goldie, but I dreaded the
thought of decorating my new home with a plastic-bag-and-duct-tape
theme. I told him I didn't want to know, but that if Goldie wasn't
around when we made the trip, he didn't need to explain.

On the day of the move we loaded the car with our daughter, our frozen
food, our cleaning supplies, and crates containing our beagle, Sasha,
and the cats, littermates Goldie and Biscuit. As we made our Beverly
Hillbillies-like drive across town, Goldie howling, my husband admitted
he couldn't do it.

For two of our three animals the move went great. Sasha is happy
anywhere she finds a full food bowl, and Biscuit is a flexible and
delightful cat who immediately inaugurated the new litter boxes and
then eagerly explored our packing boxes as if he were in Disneyland.
Goldie became, as we feared, unhinged. On the third night in our new
home, to get some relief from the howling, we confined him to a
basement bathroom, with bedding, bowls of food and water, and a litter
box. From two floors away our stomachs churned as we listened for hours
to the desperate Goldie throwing himself against the door. When I went
down in the morning to let him out, I discovered that, Houdini-like, he
was gone. It turned out he had levitated himself into a hole in the
ceiling cut by a plumber repairing leaking pipes.

The hole was scheduled to be closed that day, but no amount of coaxing
with food, or attempts at yanking, could budge Goldie. Finally, a
county animal-control officer arrived and spent an hour wrestling poor
Goldie out. We were now forced to put Goldie outside in our fenced
yard, where he hid most of the day, then screamed most of the night. It
was oppressively hot and thunderstorms were forecast. We couldn't keep
him in the house, and we couldn't keep him exposed outside. My husband
said Goldie's time had come. He was going to take our cat to the Humane
Society shelter to be euthanized. Our daughter was away at the beach
with a friend, but we had discussed with her that Goldie might not be
there when she got back. "I understand Mom," she said. "He's just so
unhappy all the time."

Please don't tell me you would have taken in Goldie. You wouldn't have,
and he wouldn't have wanted you to. There are three things he couldn't
bear: change, other animals, and confinement. We never considered just
dropping him off at a shelter. According to the American Humane
Association, only about 25 percent of relinquished cats are ever
adopted. We weren't going to lie about Goldie's problems to make him
sound more appealing, because that would mean his unwitting new owners
would quickly return him. And we weren't going to find some no-kill
shelter and dump him there to spend forever locked in a cage in
torment.

And spare me the argument that Goldie was a member of the family and
nothing could justify my actions. I feel love for my animals, but I
maintain there is a distinction between people and pets. Goldie was a
pet, but he had ceased to be an acceptable one. He was miserable and so
were we. I believe my obligation was to give him a quick, painless
death.

It is awful that an estimated 10 million healthy cats and dogs are put
to death in shelters each year. But I am clinging to a study from the
Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, which distinguishes between
owners who give their animals to shelters and owners who bring in
animals specifically to be euthanized. This study found the latter to
be committed pet owners who had painfully concluded they had reached
the end. For the most part the animals were old and sick, but a
significant portion were brought in because desperate owners couldn't
live with them anymore. The usual cause was aggression from dogs and
soiling from cats. The authors of the study acknowledge such animals
are unlikely ever to find another home.

I regret I couldn't make Goldie happy, but since he's been gone the
feeling of dread I lived with for years has been lifted. My other
animals are a joy. I'd even say since Goldie's demise they've been on
their very best behavior.

Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly
Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or
comments to .
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.


I don't "Suffer" from Insanity..I rather enjoy it!

CATTS
http://members.tripod.com/~thewebster/catts.html

WHY SO BLUE,PANDA BEAR?
http://www.serindaswan.com



I don't "Suffer" from Insanity..I rather enjoy it!

CATTS
http://members.tripod.com/~thewebster/catts.html

WHY SO BLUE,PANDA BEAR?
http://www.serindaswan.com
  #5  
Old June 29th 06, 10:10 PM posted to rec.pets.cats.rescue
Laura
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 28
Default More Weakmindedness In Favor of Bad Animals

I would euthanise the animal. Even if it was FLUTD it wouldn't be fair to
keep an animal in that much pain.
BUT are you positive...or should you kill the animal and worry about
being right later?



 




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