Several years ago our eldest cat Beardsley arrived home the night previous from an operation on his nose for skin cancer. We’d had him since 1993 when he showed up as a kitten in our yard. He was my first cat in Gales Ferry and although I was allergic to him, I loved him dearly. An outdoor cat who hated being indoors, he meowed and fussed, irritably hissing at our other cats and I worried that one would strike back at him with a claw to the freshly operated skin on his nose, before we reluctantly allowed him outside to breathe the crisp winter air and walk in the snow. He was still suffering the effects of anesthesia, but we thought we should allow him to enjoy the air on the deck outside the door. Unfortunately two dogs from several streets over came by that very morning to chase our cats. They were dogs we had seen a few times before, and each time the result was the same: cats running in cat doors, skidding around the corners and running down the cellar. Several cats skidded in through the cat doors and we could see they were panicked so we knew something was going on. I started to run outside as I saw the dogs exuberantly prancing and jumping around an oak tree and Beardsley climbing as rapidly as he could. He climbed over 30 feet, found a crotch in the tree, and hunkered in.
We were afraid he’d fall since he was still unsteady from the leftover anesthesia in his system. To get him down safely even our extension ladder would not reach him and he was not agile enough to climb down on his own. We brought out a shovel and a ladder to climb to the top of our workshop shed which was conveniently near the tree so we could carry up the long extension ladder to reach Beardsley. Bil shoveled snow and ice off the sloped roof of this 12 foot square shed near the 8 inch diameter tree, and worried about slipping off as it was sloping towards a steep cliff. Off the lower edge of the roof was a 10 foot drop to two feet of snow covered ground, which then fell another 35 feet to the bottom of the cliff. Perching the extension ladder then upon that shed placed its feet close to the lower slope of the shed roof, so a fall could cause great injury.
It was still slippery. We gingerly moved up there together to set the extension ladder on the roof sloping up to the treed cat. The ladder against the 8" round tree was not stable - Bil held the ladder steady so it wouldn’t slip off the tree at the top nor the slick roof at the bottom while I climbed up 20 odd steps, plucked the cat out of the crotch of the tree and carried him down, resting him on the edge of each rung of the ladder step by step down the ladder. This 15-pound cat felt like double the weight - I didn't even think about my fear of heights as we came down, down, down the ladder. Our neighbors next door Gene and Diane watched the drama as it unfolded as Bil grit his teeth and held the ladder from slipping. It was a huge relief and we all cheered as we all saw Beardsley was finally safe!
Beardsley would live for several years after the experience to continue to walk the neighborhood children to the school bus stop as he was a friendly cat and just wanted people to love him. The children had a nickname for him and indeed, he made the rounds in the area. To hear more about Beardsley and his Other life, see Beardsley, Memorial for an Old Warrior.
The owner of the dogs finally appeared and did his best to catch them and return them to his yard. When the dogs returned later that month to play in our yard, our blind cat Turnip was taking his daily walk in our backyard. Normally Turnip would walk around in a large 15-foot circle, then run around it. We loved to watch him run. He looked like a little lamb, kicking up his feet, stretching his legs. Turnip was 8 when we got him from a neighbor moving to Mexico. We’ve had him five years so he’s going on 13. The dog was possibly just playing, but when I saw Turnip’s head in the dog’s mouth, I was infuriated. After chasing the dog away I called Animal Control who contacted the owner of the dogs and he was fined.
This was not their first call on these dogs. Beardsley had a tough time and now Turnip. Other dogs in the area roam and occasionally visit, and they don't cause problems. To say it's a dog's nature to savage cats is not helpful nor accurate. They don't all do it! And if they do, they shouldn't be let loose as there are other creatures around: your dog doesn't own the neighborhood and must be controlled! Animal Control later told us that this breed of dogs needs a lot of room and exercise. Something like huskies. Samoyeds? Can’t remember.
I feel bad about this, but the dogs were causing problems. Dogs deserve to run and have fun but not at the expense of "our" cats, who are on "our" property and just want a quiet life. Like most people! Don’t menace our cats! To this day, we cannot get Turnip outdoors to exercise – he won’t go outdoors without being carried there, and then he is not willing to go far from the door. It’s been several years since the episode. I feel bad for Turnip, who besides being blind will not take enough exercise to stay healthy. And every time I see this man I also feel guilty that I caused him financial hardship, since he now must walk his dogs on a leash to get them their necessary exercise. Now I am causing him and his animals hardship as he can no longer let them run free.
{Update: Turnip passed away in 2011, never again running joyfully in our back yard, forever traumatized.}
Who will help the animals (and people, too) who silently struggle against human ignorance, human malevolence, and human neglect? We've helped a tiny fraction: practically nothing compared to many. How many more animals suffer and we know nothing about it. It goes on behind closed doors, in your neighbors' back yards, and you know nothing, I know nothing. You are respectful with individuals you see occasionally, knowing nothing about what he/she is really like or how they treat their animals, their children, their spouses. They are like most of us, private people. And either they're kind to animals and people privately or they're horrible. Or they're somewhere in between. Maybe they're ignorant, maybe they're unable to see what's going on. Why is that?
The man we met who was a rabbit owner appeared to be an independent thinker, a trait we often prize highly in others, but which led to his animals suffering, because he wouldn’t accept assistance. He truly believed his shed design allowed adequate ventilation. However he had not removed the winter storm windows nor installed the screens.
Qualities I thought were important fall short before the higher quality of kindness and caring. My worry is that the animals are still suffering or dead, and that the screens are still uninstalled. A quick death would be better than suffering a slow one in those miserable conditions. I didn’t meet this man but he impressed Bil and the man's neighbors as a nice man, seemingly intelligent, active in the world, and interested in other people. He did not appreciate that his actions were causing suffering. Being neglectful of the animals under his care effectively becomes abuse, even while he is unconscious of it. He claimed he had more than enough friends who would help him and protested to Bil that everything was fine. He wouldn't accept help. Bil called the animal control officer. It's their problem now. While those unhealthy conditions continued, he still never asked them for help. Or he was in denial.
Maybe mental illness is way more prevalent than anyone can believe. How do you combat it? How can you open someone's eyes to make them aware if they refuse to see?
You cannot save every one, and you’ll never know the worst, and probably most people wouldn't want to know it. I and many other people believe government spying on ordinary citizens is wrong. But how far should any of us go with our neighbors to prevent suffering like this? If we each reached out to get to know our neighbors, we might prevent some suffering. At the very least, when we see it we can report it. Beardsley, in his later years looked terrible, even after the nasal carcinoma was operated on, as did another of our cats, Teeny a few years ago. We did not keep them indoors: it was their choice. Closing the cat doors would curtail the other cats choice as well, for going out the cat doors. But the other reason is the most important one. Going outside was for them, their passion. These two neutered male cats had the passion or the joie de vivre, to go out and run around outdoors, just like Turnip. Anyone who says animals don't feel emotions hasn't seen the joy we saw in Turnip before his encounter with the dogs.
Do you tell your child who loves to run about outdoors, on his last few months of life, because you know he has incurable cancer, that he can't go outside and play because someone might say, "look at that awful cancer on that kid's nose. How dare they let him go play outside in the sunshine!"
And yes, people did say this, and the Animal Control Officer came over to assess the situation. And rightly so: that is their job, to ascertain what's truly going on. I would want to know if my actions or inaction was causing suffering; we're very glad they are out there, and we're especially glad that other people are noticing and making an effort to report their suspicions.
Part of me believes we all have a right to privacy, after all this is what liberty is all about, isn’t it? Very few of us want to spend our waking hours watching our neighbors' private lives. Unless the higher goal of alleviating suffering takes precedence, we risk becoming interfering busybodies.
Having been extremely charitable to folks I took in as tenants a dozen years back it still irritates me when I think of how much they interfered with my life, stealing things as well as my time and money. Bil also had this problem in his home in Massachusetts. How much time does it take to get to know a person? Do we become nosy and spy on them? When it happens, what is the goal? Is the quest to enable a higher ideal? The Inner Gestapo, my conscience, violated the rabbit man’s liberty by calling Animal Control. It's become self-righteousness because after all, suffering is wrong, and to allow animals to suffer needlessly is evil. To stop or prevent evil I acted and removed choice from him.
So I’m filled with contradictory impulses. I want to help but I don’t want it to become my life’s purpose. I work 40 hours a week, have household chores to do and a few hours for myself left over. If I really wanted to help I’d volunteer for more things. I treasure my own company and the few hours I have available to me – for my own selfish enjoyment to enjoy life in whatever ways I choose. Then I feel guilty that I'm not doing more.
If you’ve seen the movie Rising Waters about Hurricane Katrina, or been part of a rescue effort, you have seen estimates that 40-90,000 animals died horribly, over a long period of time during the Hurricane and afterwards. Those evacuated were not allowed to take their pets with them to shelters. People evacuated the area and left their pets at home, thinking they’d be home in a few days and could care for them. Instead it was more than a month before most people were allowed back into New Orleans and the vicinity. In the intervening period, it was hell on earth for the thousands of animals who perished, and the few who were rescued. More sadly could have been rescued except for the refusals of the police to allow animal rescuers to assist. That there are people out there actively engaged in preventing rescue, preventing the alleviation of suffering, in counterpoint to those who are aching to help, those who were turned away by the authorities. What is even more alarming is that even the Humane Society refused many volunteers who showed up from assisting in the rescue.
What happened was that the police were told to protect property and since property is more valuable in the legal mind than the lives of the animals, many more died and suffered lingering deaths.
As much as I hate television, in some part TV news removes the veils of privacy from our eyes: we see what the cameraman sees. The documentary was a video, so probably a bit more was seen than mainstream media. Transparency is a goal. Much TV is slanted in one direction or another, however, it's more difficult to lie with a video than with words. Every day more and more cameras operate and make privacy less and less likely.
There's even a book by one of my favorite authors, David Brin, that you can read excerpts from. The Transparant Society, published in 1998, is just as applicable today as it was 20 years ago.
His key concept is that we must not only have rights, but also the power to use them and the ability to detect when they are being abused, and that can only happen in a world that is mostly open, in which most citizens know most of what is going on, most of the time. It is the only condition under which citizens have some chance of catching the violators of their freedom and privacy. Privacy is only possible if freedom (including the freedom to know) is protected first.
Brin thus maintains that privacy is a "contingent right," one that grows out of the more primary rights, e.g. to know and to speak. He admits that such a mostly-open world will seem more irksome and demanding; people will be expected to keep negotiating the tradeoffs between knowing and privacy. It will be tempting to pass laws that restrict the power of surveillance to authorities, entrusting them to protect our privacy—or a comforting illusion of privacy. By contrast, a transparent society destroys that illusion by offering everyone access to the vast majority of information out there. That there is no better power equalizer than knowledge. You can read more about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
We were afraid he’d fall since he was still unsteady from the leftover anesthesia in his system. To get him down safely even our extension ladder would not reach him and he was not agile enough to climb down on his own. We brought out a shovel and a ladder to climb to the top of our workshop shed which was conveniently near the tree so we could carry up the long extension ladder to reach Beardsley. Bil shoveled snow and ice off the sloped roof of this 12 foot square shed near the 8 inch diameter tree, and worried about slipping off as it was sloping towards a steep cliff. Off the lower edge of the roof was a 10 foot drop to two feet of snow covered ground, which then fell another 35 feet to the bottom of the cliff. Perching the extension ladder then upon that shed placed its feet close to the lower slope of the shed roof, so a fall could cause great injury.
It was still slippery. We gingerly moved up there together to set the extension ladder on the roof sloping up to the treed cat. The ladder against the 8" round tree was not stable - Bil held the ladder steady so it wouldn’t slip off the tree at the top nor the slick roof at the bottom while I climbed up 20 odd steps, plucked the cat out of the crotch of the tree and carried him down, resting him on the edge of each rung of the ladder step by step down the ladder. This 15-pound cat felt like double the weight - I didn't even think about my fear of heights as we came down, down, down the ladder. Our neighbors next door Gene and Diane watched the drama as it unfolded as Bil grit his teeth and held the ladder from slipping. It was a huge relief and we all cheered as we all saw Beardsley was finally safe!
Beardsley would live for several years after the experience to continue to walk the neighborhood children to the school bus stop as he was a friendly cat and just wanted people to love him. The children had a nickname for him and indeed, he made the rounds in the area. To hear more about Beardsley and his Other life, see Beardsley, Memorial for an Old Warrior.
The owner of the dogs finally appeared and did his best to catch them and return them to his yard. When the dogs returned later that month to play in our yard, our blind cat Turnip was taking his daily walk in our backyard. Normally Turnip would walk around in a large 15-foot circle, then run around it. We loved to watch him run. He looked like a little lamb, kicking up his feet, stretching his legs. Turnip was 8 when we got him from a neighbor moving to Mexico. We’ve had him five years so he’s going on 13. The dog was possibly just playing, but when I saw Turnip’s head in the dog’s mouth, I was infuriated. After chasing the dog away I called Animal Control who contacted the owner of the dogs and he was fined.
This was not their first call on these dogs. Beardsley had a tough time and now Turnip. Other dogs in the area roam and occasionally visit, and they don't cause problems. To say it's a dog's nature to savage cats is not helpful nor accurate. They don't all do it! And if they do, they shouldn't be let loose as there are other creatures around: your dog doesn't own the neighborhood and must be controlled! Animal Control later told us that this breed of dogs needs a lot of room and exercise. Something like huskies. Samoyeds? Can’t remember.
I feel bad about this, but the dogs were causing problems. Dogs deserve to run and have fun but not at the expense of "our" cats, who are on "our" property and just want a quiet life. Like most people! Don’t menace our cats! To this day, we cannot get Turnip outdoors to exercise – he won’t go outdoors without being carried there, and then he is not willing to go far from the door. It’s been several years since the episode. I feel bad for Turnip, who besides being blind will not take enough exercise to stay healthy. And every time I see this man I also feel guilty that I caused him financial hardship, since he now must walk his dogs on a leash to get them their necessary exercise. Now I am causing him and his animals hardship as he can no longer let them run free.
{Update: Turnip passed away in 2011, never again running joyfully in our back yard, forever traumatized.}
Who will help the animals (and people, too) who silently struggle against human ignorance, human malevolence, and human neglect? We've helped a tiny fraction: practically nothing compared to many. How many more animals suffer and we know nothing about it. It goes on behind closed doors, in your neighbors' back yards, and you know nothing, I know nothing. You are respectful with individuals you see occasionally, knowing nothing about what he/she is really like or how they treat their animals, their children, their spouses. They are like most of us, private people. And either they're kind to animals and people privately or they're horrible. Or they're somewhere in between. Maybe they're ignorant, maybe they're unable to see what's going on. Why is that?
The man we met who was a rabbit owner appeared to be an independent thinker, a trait we often prize highly in others, but which led to his animals suffering, because he wouldn’t accept assistance. He truly believed his shed design allowed adequate ventilation. However he had not removed the winter storm windows nor installed the screens.
Qualities I thought were important fall short before the higher quality of kindness and caring. My worry is that the animals are still suffering or dead, and that the screens are still uninstalled. A quick death would be better than suffering a slow one in those miserable conditions. I didn’t meet this man but he impressed Bil and the man's neighbors as a nice man, seemingly intelligent, active in the world, and interested in other people. He did not appreciate that his actions were causing suffering. Being neglectful of the animals under his care effectively becomes abuse, even while he is unconscious of it. He claimed he had more than enough friends who would help him and protested to Bil that everything was fine. He wouldn't accept help. Bil called the animal control officer. It's their problem now. While those unhealthy conditions continued, he still never asked them for help. Or he was in denial.
Maybe mental illness is way more prevalent than anyone can believe. How do you combat it? How can you open someone's eyes to make them aware if they refuse to see?
You cannot save every one, and you’ll never know the worst, and probably most people wouldn't want to know it. I and many other people believe government spying on ordinary citizens is wrong. But how far should any of us go with our neighbors to prevent suffering like this? If we each reached out to get to know our neighbors, we might prevent some suffering. At the very least, when we see it we can report it. Beardsley, in his later years looked terrible, even after the nasal carcinoma was operated on, as did another of our cats, Teeny a few years ago. We did not keep them indoors: it was their choice. Closing the cat doors would curtail the other cats choice as well, for going out the cat doors. But the other reason is the most important one. Going outside was for them, their passion. These two neutered male cats had the passion or the joie de vivre, to go out and run around outdoors, just like Turnip. Anyone who says animals don't feel emotions hasn't seen the joy we saw in Turnip before his encounter with the dogs.
Do you tell your child who loves to run about outdoors, on his last few months of life, because you know he has incurable cancer, that he can't go outside and play because someone might say, "look at that awful cancer on that kid's nose. How dare they let him go play outside in the sunshine!"
And yes, people did say this, and the Animal Control Officer came over to assess the situation. And rightly so: that is their job, to ascertain what's truly going on. I would want to know if my actions or inaction was causing suffering; we're very glad they are out there, and we're especially glad that other people are noticing and making an effort to report their suspicions.
Part of me believes we all have a right to privacy, after all this is what liberty is all about, isn’t it? Very few of us want to spend our waking hours watching our neighbors' private lives. Unless the higher goal of alleviating suffering takes precedence, we risk becoming interfering busybodies.
Having been extremely charitable to folks I took in as tenants a dozen years back it still irritates me when I think of how much they interfered with my life, stealing things as well as my time and money. Bil also had this problem in his home in Massachusetts. How much time does it take to get to know a person? Do we become nosy and spy on them? When it happens, what is the goal? Is the quest to enable a higher ideal? The Inner Gestapo, my conscience, violated the rabbit man’s liberty by calling Animal Control. It's become self-righteousness because after all, suffering is wrong, and to allow animals to suffer needlessly is evil. To stop or prevent evil I acted and removed choice from him.
So I’m filled with contradictory impulses. I want to help but I don’t want it to become my life’s purpose. I work 40 hours a week, have household chores to do and a few hours for myself left over. If I really wanted to help I’d volunteer for more things. I treasure my own company and the few hours I have available to me – for my own selfish enjoyment to enjoy life in whatever ways I choose. Then I feel guilty that I'm not doing more.
If you’ve seen the movie Rising Waters about Hurricane Katrina, or been part of a rescue effort, you have seen estimates that 40-90,000 animals died horribly, over a long period of time during the Hurricane and afterwards. Those evacuated were not allowed to take their pets with them to shelters. People evacuated the area and left their pets at home, thinking they’d be home in a few days and could care for them. Instead it was more than a month before most people were allowed back into New Orleans and the vicinity. In the intervening period, it was hell on earth for the thousands of animals who perished, and the few who were rescued. More sadly could have been rescued except for the refusals of the police to allow animal rescuers to assist. That there are people out there actively engaged in preventing rescue, preventing the alleviation of suffering, in counterpoint to those who are aching to help, those who were turned away by the authorities. What is even more alarming is that even the Humane Society refused many volunteers who showed up from assisting in the rescue.
What happened was that the police were told to protect property and since property is more valuable in the legal mind than the lives of the animals, many more died and suffered lingering deaths.
As much as I hate television, in some part TV news removes the veils of privacy from our eyes: we see what the cameraman sees. The documentary was a video, so probably a bit more was seen than mainstream media. Transparency is a goal. Much TV is slanted in one direction or another, however, it's more difficult to lie with a video than with words. Every day more and more cameras operate and make privacy less and less likely.
There's even a book by one of my favorite authors, David Brin, that you can read excerpts from. The Transparant Society, published in 1998, is just as applicable today as it was 20 years ago.
His key concept is that we must not only have rights, but also the power to use them and the ability to detect when they are being abused, and that can only happen in a world that is mostly open, in which most citizens know most of what is going on, most of the time. It is the only condition under which citizens have some chance of catching the violators of their freedom and privacy. Privacy is only possible if freedom (including the freedom to know) is protected first.
Brin thus maintains that privacy is a "contingent right," one that grows out of the more primary rights, e.g. to know and to speak. He admits that such a mostly-open world will seem more irksome and demanding; people will be expected to keep negotiating the tradeoffs between knowing and privacy. It will be tempting to pass laws that restrict the power of surveillance to authorities, entrusting them to protect our privacy—or a comforting illusion of privacy. By contrast, a transparent society destroys that illusion by offering everyone access to the vast majority of information out there. That there is no better power equalizer than knowledge. You can read more about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
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