I have no idea if this is a good idea. It is not a science. If you love animals with a passion you’ll hate the abuse of animals with an equal passion. If you love animals slightly, you’ll dislike the abuse of animals to an equal extent.
The more you genuinely care about animals the more empathy you have for them. You can feel what they feel and that is not anthropomorphizing animals. It is simply being knowledgeable about them and connecting one’s emotions to that knowledge. It is a connection with nature and our roots.
The balance between loving and hating in respect of animals and what happens to them is very similar to Newton’s Third Law, which states that forces are equal and opposite. All forces come in pairs. When you push off the ground with your foot you exert a force on the floor. The floor exerts an equal force on your foot.
The same principles are in play in the balance between caring for animals and hating the abuse and the needless killing of animals.
This is why I hate people who hunt animals for sport. Yes, hate is a strong world but so is love. You can’t hate sport hunting and respect the person who does it. Sport hunting is a human self-indulgence. It cannot be justified. If sport hunters justify it by saying there is a need to cull animals to keep numbers down, I argue that is a false argument.
The only reason why wildlife populations need to be kept down is because human population numbers have risen resulting in an encroachment onto the habitat of wildlife such that the animal then becomes a problem to people. It is a self-induced problem and the solution should be focused on people.
Sport hunting is good for the economy. It is good for people. It is an abuse of animals.
In the long term the planet cannot sustain 7 billion people as the earth’s resources will be depleted in doing it. By 2050 the population will be over 9 billion.
The reason why I say Grumpy cat is exploited and rant about it is because I love Grumpy cat. Why do I love her? Because she is vulnerable. The more vulnerable an animal is the more we should love and care for that animal. There is an equality in that equation too.
I’ll end there.
What a lovely idea Michael, I hope you (and I) are around for a long time yet but you leaving PoC as a legacy for others is a wonderful and generous act which only a true cat lover would think of doing.
Your web site is full of valuable information on all aspects of cat care and is hugely educational and it would be awful if ever it was all lost.
I would be proud to become a lifelong member 🙂
I am working on an idea to make regulars “members” or “shareholders” of PoC so in the very long term, whatever, happens to me PoC will go on. Also, for shareholders to share in the income and to give it away to charities of their choice. I am working on this idea.
This means regulars can have a platform at PoC that is formally established. It would make the site a “community website” owned by cat lovers. That appeals to me.
You are welcome, Ben. Thank You for taking the time. (In the future, though, use paragraphs to frame your comments. It help those of us who care.)
I think think that you have a valid point, which many of us don’t want to validate.
Hi Caroline, no I don’t have a website, we used to have one for anti declawing which had a lot of members at one time but the host started charging for it so we closed it. Any spare money we have mostly goes to help local cat charities.
Michael kindly set up a PoC blog but no one much visited. There are other cat websites but there is no way any of them could be better than PoC for information and caring about cats, so I enjoy posting articles and posters and comments on here.
I started ‘The International Coalition Against Declawing’ group on facebook which has lots of members and I can post links to anti declaw articles here on PoC so they are shared far and wide.
Ben, my heart goes out to you. The fact that most of us? Human beings who think that we have a right to reach out to those who denigrate, abuse the feline domestic cat, let alone, the wild cat, who choose to hunt, as opposed to buying meat in the supermarket, we are all at fault. Am I wrong? including those who kill in the wild?
Whoa. Ben, this rant? Tuck it in, babe, What do you have You have, against loving animals?