By Barbara
Would you, as a cat caretaker, commit suicide?
In the news this week there has been a story about a desperate woman who could not afford to stay in the house she had lived in for eighteen years, she was only in her early fifties but unable to work through illness and since her son and daughter had moved out and she lived alone it was decided by the powers that be that she was no longer entitled to full help for a three bedroomed house and she was told she would have to find an extra £20 a week rent. This she could not do, as it was she couldn’t afford to feed herself, she had actually told a neighbour that she could no longer afford to live.
This lady had lived a happy family life in the house, a single mother she had brought up her children there, had friends around her and didn’t want to leave her home and garden where the cats she had shared her life with over the years had been buried, neighbours said she used to like to sit in her garden in peace, in the sun, and remember her cats. She also had a cat, Joey, at the time of her death and it’s said that on the morning she died she left him in her house, locked the door and put a note with her keys through a neighbour’s letterbox and then walked to her death on a motorway.
I find this so, so sad and it’s stayed in my mind because I keep thinking how desperate she must have been, to leave her cat, her family and her beloved home, to take her own life, and it made me wonder what other people’s opinions are on taking this way out and more or less abandoning her cat?
Speaking for myself, if I was ever inclined to commit suicide (and I think I would have to be more desperate than I’ve ever been so far in my life to even consider it, and I have had my moments of total despair from time to time) I know I wouldn’t be able to do it if by doing it I was leaving a cat, or a person, worse off for my passing.
So, is it selfish to kill yourself if you have a cat (or dog) totally relying on you for food and shelter, or is it forgivable if you’re desperate enough, or maybe does it comes down to mental health where the poor soul was incapable of behaving rationally and so couldn’t see any other way out?
There is one point about suicide that I think is rarely if ever mentioned. It takes guts and courage to do it.
Sure, if you are desperate that makes it easier but you have to overcome the survival instinct.
I don’t think people who take their own lives are cowards. It is more the opposite.
I totally agree Michael it takes a hell of a lot of guts when I hear of a suicide I always wonder what was in that persons mind to make them end their life if the death was a slow one what was going through their mind its just so sad 🙁
I’m pleased you agree because there is a stigma to suicide and there should not be.
A lot of people commit suicide by dressing it up as an accident to avoid the stigma.
In the early nineties I started work in a nursing home and one of the nurses who worked there was a bit out of the ordinary, she wouldn’t talk to anyone at break times if she could avoid it and if she did it was only about her beloved dogs and she was never really as clean as you expect nurses to be and was regarded as a bit weird and so nobody sought her out to spend time with, being an animal lover I didn’t mind talking about the dogs but I was new and didn’t know her very well and so I just went with the herd I’m ashamed to say, because one day when I went in to work I was told that she and her 4 dogs had been found dead in a van, she had done the hose from the exhaust thing and not only killed herself but her beloved dogs too. Poor soul, she must also have been desperate and maybe even though she worked with so many other women, who were supposedly of a caring nature, she just had no one to talk to, could see no other way out but couldn’t end it all and leave her dogs behind, so she took them with her. The thought how it must have been inside that van while it was happening to her and those dogs haunted me for a long time.
What a story. It is haunting and very sad. She sounds like one of us. Probably she had so much love to give and could only share it with her dogs. Poor lady and her dogs.
I think there is a way out from money troubles in every situation, if you are in good mental health. Mental illness is paralyzing. I have been very depressed for about a year after my realization that my father is unwell due to years of heavy drinking– unwell to the point that his body and brain probably can’t bounce back ever again even if he quits today. At the same time he makes it abundantly clear that if he’d had better children, and especially if I weren’t such a disappointment, his life would have turned out better. One of his biggest complaints is that I never “made the big bucks.” What I see as a steady upward climb due to use of my talents and gifts he sees as a life wasted and countless better opportunities missed. He only seems to feel better when he’s hurting me. I have hurt myself quite a lot in my life trying to punish myself enough to make him all better. Even recently, I’ve beaten the crap out if myself until I was so covered in bruises I was afraid people might think Jeff had done it. I was out in the garage one winter evening trying to start up my antique car and gas myself in there, but Jeff caught me. I wouldn’t kill myself over money troubles, but to see justice done, a justice that would set things right and save my father, I would do it. He’s more important to me than even Monty. But he thinks I don’t care at all.
And I’ve figured out that I am not God. I cannot save him. If I must be punished for causing so màny problems for him it will be for God to do it in His time, not for me to choose the time or method. When I hurt myself it upset Monty. He didn’t seem to know what was happening. He was just glad when I stopped doing it. Duringy lowest time I couldn’t even write any music and one day I had to just stop trying to practice organ because I couldn’t even play a hymn, much less Bach, so what was the point?
Add money troubles to mental illness and I think it could overwhelm a person easily, because depression takes away every aspect of yourself that could allow you to see the money problem as a challenge and help you dig out of it. But I have come to the conclusion that suicide is a uniquely evil act, in that all my friends who have owned property or lived in places where a suicide happened have dealt with feelings of dread, a sense of evil if not even seeing and hearing things to outright poltergeist type activity. Suicide is so evil it ruins the place where it happens. So I can’t do that here. It would ruin Monty’s home and his back yard paradise.
He is wrong but I don’t blame him. I guess it is the American way. Success is not measured in bucks. He seems to measuring you in the wrong way. You’re good and successful. My father was no good as a parent neither was my mother. Perhaps that is why we find solace in cats. They don’t judge you. They accept you and appreciate you. Parents are often misguided. You can’t blame them but who do you blame for the world’s ills?
I don’t think it is bad or evil. If I have dementia or a terminal illness, I will go to Switzerland to be euthanised and that is suicide, but it is neither evil nor bad. It is sensible. One day the world will agree that. In the UK we are heading towards it.
There’s a huge difference between knowing that your life is ending and recognizing that it is just time to go, and ending your life before it was supposed to end. I don’t think euthanasia is really necessary for humans because when you are really ready to go and the body is breaking down, you just go. If a person is still here, even in suffering, it’s because they still have some will to live, some reason to be here. But I have see it again and again. People choose when it is time to die. When my dear pastor friend chose not to treat his cancer for the third time, I did not fault him. When my grandmother made the same choice when her cancer came back I supported that decision. I don’t think we should take direct steps to end a human life, but I think we need to stop treating every illness and look at whether perhaps we are just thwarting God’s will. But you can’t really oppose what is meant to be and you just end up extending your own suffering. It’s complicated and different for each person, but I think we know when our time is up and we go. But if a person took their own life I don’t think they automatically go to hell. Christ payed the price for that sin too. But I wouldn’t bet my salvation on it. I don’t really want to be God. I would rather trust that He brought me here according to His good purposes and he will take me home at just the right time. I’m done listening to lies that things would be better without me here. And I also don’t fear getting old and sick, because the God who brought me this far will lead me through that also. Paul Gerhardt explained it better. I love his hymns the best. He went through a lot of suffering– lost his whole family more than once. War, famine, plague– he saw it all. His hymns are powerful stuff. I sang them all after my first husband died. When you’re suffering, his stuff is better than Luther, I think.
I can’t imagine committing suicide over money troubles, because as bad as things have ever been I have always been able to find a way to make ends meet. Usually, it has been a lack of money or a desire to have a little more of it, that has driven me into a calling. No, every time it’s worked like that. If I could have made decent money pressing clothes at a dry cleaner and making salads at a restaurant I probably would just have stayed doing those things forever. But playing organ payed $40 a service. Ok, I’m pretty broke, I’d better do it, even though I never slept we’ll on Saturday night for about the first twelve years and my whole body would shake sometimes I’d be so nervous. I tried for a job running the cash register at a music store. Instead, the proprietor hired me to teach. “It will pay more,” he said. I was really anxious about it. I still remember my first piano lesson. Could my student and her parents tell I’d never taught anybody to do this before? My whole life has been a series of my being very nervous about doing something, but really needing to do it because it paid a little better than what I was currently doing. Money troubles to me are always God telling you to be creative and to be brave.
Never forget you are a smart and good and everyone has doubts. We are all the same even the ones who pretend they don’t have doubts.
Thanks, Michael. I’m not good, because there are no good people. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The evil one constantly is our accuser saying that somehow we are worse than other people, other people are somehow doing a better job with their lives than we are. But it is all a lie. We are ALL in the same boat. Feeling suicidal is like being in your own little boat getting tossed around by the waves and nobody cares. A companion animal can be like your lighthouse or your life preserver, to continue the analogy. Because your cat will love you, even though you are evil. I do believe they are capable of love. My sister gave me a pendant that reads, “Kittens are angels with whiskers.” I believe that!
True, but in comparison to humanity in general, some are good and some are less good. All we can do it be in the first group. You are, I believe.
Cats don’t have to deal with that…
In the secular realm there are degrees of evil and it matters. We are all beggars before God, but we can make lives for our fellow beings better or worse by our actions.
Thanks for including me in the first group! This is a community of many “good” people who truly care about animals and want the earth to be as it was meant to be and for humans to behave responsibly as they were meant to behave. If everyone really tried to be good we still wouldn’t have Eden, but it could be a lot better. But the truth is, we’ve got a lot of people who go totally the other way, on purpose.
Ruth its not about doing whatever job you can to make ends meet I’m sure we would all do pretty much anything to earn money to feed our cats I know I would.
This is about that woman being too ill to work, too sick to do any sort of a job.
It seems the poor woman had such a fragile state of mind she had to put an end to it. She could see no other way out. I feel deeply sorry for her and also for her cat 🙁
If I was in that position and I had to end it all I would take my cats with me purely because once I was gone I could not guarantee them a safe cruelty free life 🙁
Mental illness can prevent a person from being able to provide for themselves. I said that in my following comment. A person in good mental health, even physically in fragile health, can find ways to make it work, even if that means relying on friends and family or begging next to the freeway onramp. You do what you have to do. But mental illness is so paralyzing that you can’t do anything. No person in good mental health would commit suicide over money problems. There is always a way to make it work, but mental illness can blind a person to solutions or make it just impossible to find the energy to carry them out.
I felt very sad when I read about this lady because I think we have probably all felt the deep despair she must have been feeling. I know I have, after bereavements and other life changing traumas I have wondered how I could possibly go on.
To me this puts it simply
‘I want to be dead but only until things in my life are better’
But we can’t do that, suicide is final.
I know I couldn’t commit suicide and leave Barbara, Walter and Jozef behind, but if I was all on my own with no cats I expect I’d feel that life wasn’t worth living.
This lady must have been in rational mind enough to make sure her cat was going to be taken care of, she maybe felt inadequate to care for her herself. She was in poor health, desperate for money, lonely, had to face the trauma of leaving her much loved home. I think she thought it out very clearly and decided she’d had enough.
The present government are cruel to people like her, she isn’t the only one they have driven to suicide!
The present government are disconnected from what it is like for real people. Many people are quite desperate. When you are Eton and Oxbridge educated you are distanced from the normal. Politicians so often fail the people this way.
We played rugby against Eton – I went to boarding school for 10 years starting aged 8. I went to a school called Ashdown House and then Marlborough College, where Middleton went for a period. I can’t tell you how terrible those places are for people like me. I was sent there from France when I was 8 and didn’t speak english all that well. It was awful. Alot of people come out of those places as total a**holes. I know plenty of them. I was so glad to see the back of all that – I think that’s why I just ran off to India for 3 years and sold my passport never planning to return. It did me in. Those politicians who went to those places may well have absolutely no clue about real life. When I left Marlborough at the age of 17 I knew nothing about real life and I knew it and I was horribly ashamed of it. I did everything I could to erase and counterbalance the whole 10 year affair. Even now I am paranoid that you here on POC that are English will now think less of me. I will always live with that. After 3 years in India with nothing, no shoes eventually, I came back to Europe feeling like I didn’t have that school upbringing plastered accross my face. Quite the opposite by that stage. But I have had personal problems with drugs my whole life until about 5 years because of being in those schools. I like animals and meeting people from other cultures and places and also not being English in such an old fashioned english environment just made me feel horrible and unable to cope – hence my need to mentally ‘escape’ from life.
I can categorically say that those who went to those schools from young til finish have no idea about a nice lady who committed suicide because she couldn’t cope. They are connected. Even now I know people in places where I could get jobs or whatever I want just cuz I went to school with them. This is not reality, this is knowing people and jumping to half way up the ladder without ever having been at the bottom. I hate it so much. Those politicians who do not understand reality as I have come to understand it should not rule a country. Now I don’t feel comfortable around those people. I don’t like the posh neighbourhoods and I feel much better where it’s a bit run down and people are different, more normal and on my level. I am so glad I managed to leave that all behind but it took quite a few years of disowning my entire identity to reach a more ‘real’ life and to be able to finally be and do what really was me. Michael is right – the politicians fail people because they don’t understand. They probably don’t even know who they really are themselves. They won’t ever know because they would have to overcome so many fears and prejudices and they are too old and past doing that.
I for one have alot of issues with the nature of education. I don’t know if it’s cuz I’m left handed or what but I just always found the whole system entirely built on negative principles. Starting from day one – making a child sit and write the letter ‘A’ 10 times in a row. It’s just not organic or natural. IT should not be this way. A good education in school is a bad education in life. IF you go to schools like I did you have a hell of a long way to go before having any chance of finding any balance with reality – and thats only if you want to. Most of them don’t even think twice. Others go on life journeys like mine but we are a small minority. 3 of my school friends committed suicide in their 20s. Others ended up like me with drug problems and being in far off countries unable to deal with the idea of returning to England or home or whatever. Then there are those who love the whole thing. The assholes who would be happy on the first day of term to be back at school. Not me. September will forever be the worst month in many ways for me.
I’m blabbing sorry – don’t hate me cuz I went to public school though. I’m really not like that at all. I guess I just have an inside view on the weirdness of it all. Look at Cameron. He was probably a prefect – lol. I don’t do politics, I just look at their faces and listen to their voices and feel happy that I am simple.
It’s a long weekend here and I’m about to leave the office and spend 3 whole days with my cats, yay 🙂
Man….you suffered. So did I. I think we have a lot in common. But it has made me very tender towards the vulnerable and more angry towards the establishment. These experiences haunt us. We survive them. Our cats help to keep us sane.
Boarding schools in England in the 60s were a kind of hell for many kids. We didn’t think of it that way but looking back I can see it more clearly. Totally crazy places. How they came to be is beyond me. I hated every day and I was at boarding school from about 10 to 18. You know I was beaten (punished) by a boy 2 years my senior. He hit me hard with a hockey stick many times. It was legal (allowed & part of the rules) but actually it was a serious crime. I accepted it completely because I was raised that way. The school damaged me.
Michael, I am sorry I didn’t know or even think you went through the same thing. Yes we got the metal ruler and the hard sole plastic slipper on the hands and ass and it was horrible. Alot of the people who work in those weird places are weirdos. Imagine being a teacher in one of those places or a house master and actually living there. It’s just strange. I’m sorry Michael I should have considered you went there too. I don’t know how you managed and I know I certainly didn’t manage in many ways but I am just glad to be through and out the other side many years later and able to enjoy the simple pleasures of my cats and my home and my perhaps my job. I never really wanted to get big time successful so I am doing just fine for me. Seems like you did great. I think POC is remarkable. Sometimes I explore whole new areas of the site through the ‘chitchat’ section. You have really created something good and proper and that one can absolutely say is a good thing. The world is a better place because of it. I want to one day have a similar effect through something I do or make. I’d like to be able to say I did something that was good for the world and for cats. It must be very difficult and time consuming to start up and set up such a great website and to keep it going. You have created a whole community which I for one value very highly. I am sure many many people who need information regarding their cat search google and get it direct from POC. It’s a powerful feat to reach so many people. Not just a matter of setting up a site using any old template and thats it. So much more than that and some but it really worked so well. We need more people like you 🙂
Thanks Marc. I was at boarding school throughout the ’60s. It was like something from a film 😉
“don’t hate me cuz I went to public school though”
No chance of that happening Marc, you’re a genuine, cat loving, interesting person, with a passport to Kattaddorra Cat Village, there is no better accolade than that.
Thank you – there are many people who are very judgmental in England – they smell public school on you and that’s it, you are no longer human. I do love cats very much 🙂
It’s what you are NOW that matters not what you were years ago, I don’t know you at all but I think you’re a good person.
Marc, I agree with you about preferring the run down neighborhoods. My cousin’s boyfriend won’t come to celebrate holidays with our family anymore because he says we are not “quality people.” See, the British don’t have the market cornered on snobbery! We’ve got it here in the US also. I think he’s actually being abusive towards my cousin and the whole thing about us not being good enough is an attempt to isolate her. Or he decided we are just too “south side” Milwaukee for him. He works as a nurse, so that’s kind of scary– how does he treat his patients if they aren’t “quality people” in his mind? I can’t even imagine being that way and working in any field with the public. You cannot have prejudices like that and do your job.
I don’t get the whole problem with anyone having gone to public school. The public schools in America are dismal failures, but some of my best friends went to public schools and they turned out fine. If the parents are involved and the child studies hard, he can still come of public school without being totally ignorant. Our expensive private schools are boarding schools. We don’t really have public boarding schools. If a kid is living at school in this country his parents are probably loaded. Really wealthy.
Ruth – sorry you know I forgot to mention something important which is that in England it’s called the other way round: Public School means an expensive boarding school and I have no idea why that is. It’s strange and doesn’t make sense. Perhaps there’s a historical reason for it.
That boyfriend of your cousin sounds like a pretty seriously prejudice kind of guy. I’m sure there are plenty who come from english boarding schools with similar attitudes and who don’t even realise it. It would be easy for them to remain in that same bubble their whole life. It really is a thing to think about – if these people allow their prejudices to come out in their jobs. If he’s a nurse I sure wouldn’t want him to be taking care of me. You are right that it is somehow so opposing what his job stands for to have a character like a huge snob. I hope your cousin is ok though.
Thanks, Marc. She lives with her parents. Our only worry is that she might marry the jerk. My cousin is brilliant, beautiful and could be with anyone. She lacks confidence, I think. That’s why she is still living with her parents. She trained as a medical death examiner, but with no local openings she will need to move to another state, probably, to get a job. I think she probably lacks a sense of smell, as I do, making her a good candidate for that field. We share a love of studying anatomy and languages– she is nearly fluent in Spanish. She could do so much more than live with her parents and hang out with a guy who belittles her closest friends and relatives. There are so many people in this world who will just kill your spirit. It’s a wonder there aren’t more suicides. It’s starting to be a trend in this country for kids who have been bullied at school to attempt suicide. Some of them succeed. Not once have I read of any of their bullies expressing remorse or guilt.
This is a very dark subject but it does raise some cat relevant matters. In answering your question, it must depend on the person and the circumstances.
If a person is so desperate nothing will stop them. I guess everything becomes meaningless even a cat they loved.
However, a true cat lover and animal lover may feel a lot of resistance to taking their own life because of the presence of her/his cat.
So a loved cat or companion animal probably saves lives. An interesting question is:
Can a true cat lover be truly suicidal?
If you love cats and animals, you can’t be so disenchanted with the world to the point where you want to take your own life because there is something in it to give meaning to your life.
If that is correct the answer to your question is No, if you truly love cats.
I don’t think the cat was meaningless – I think it was the last very hard thing she had to overcome in order to do it and I bet she asked her neighbours or somebody to care for the cat in her note.
It’s impossible to know what it’s like to be at that point so it’s not fair to judge. She was clearly a cat lover but some things are more powerful than us. Like I said, I bet her cat kept her here much longer and if she hadn’t a cat she would have gone much sooner. It must have been a very hard decision. But when your own life is so painful that you have to leave it clearly has a slightly stronger hold on you than your love of life, your cat. I like to think I would never do such a thing if I have cats but who knows what the reality is. She probably made arrangements for her cat as best as she could, firstly by locking it inside and secondly by leaving a note. IF you are so down you can’t even feel love anymore then you will feel terrible about it when you have a cat who is confused about your sickness.
I disagree – I think its possible no matter if you were a cat lover your whole life. What do we know about it. Almost nothing.
It goes without saying that she couldn’t behave rationally. I think that is the whole point.
Yes, agreed and if one becomes irrational because of severe depression one’s love of one’s cat is blocked out it seems to me.
I don’t think I made myself clear. What I am saying is bad depression can render even the most precious things meaningless. The mind becomes unbalanced and anything good is blocked out. Everything that had meaning goes. It is similar to the feelings of very old people who no longer want to live.
I am not saying that that happened in this case but I believe it can happen.
I’ve worked with a lot of elderly people in hospitals and nursing homes. Physical limitations that seem to break the spirit of some people are seen as a challenged and accepted by others. When I was a kid a good friend of mine had a stroke in his nineties and recovering from it seemed to bring him back to life. He kept talking to me on the phone about how he learned to walk again and he explained howthat was a significant accomplishment. Doing physical therapy after the stroke gave him something to live for, to focus on and to be proud of. Another person having a stroke at ninety years old might just have given up.
Michael I agree – I even think maybe they don’t have to be meaningless, just out of reach. If a person feels like they have no happiness or no love – if they feel they are incapable to be there in every way just about for their cat then it might be the tipping point. I have had particularly bad moments and my cat was always the clearest measurement of where I was at. Never that bad but still, when you feel so bad you can’t give your time to anybody around you it is significant.
Michael, you understand it far too well. We don’t ever go there again, do we? We simply were not meant to die, whether it be for our pets sake, our child’s sake, or maybe even our mother’s sake. (My mother doesn’t even know that I tried, at my age, thank God.) I have not spoken to my mother in months–she has six other children, who cares? Rest assured, we KNOW that we get unconditional love from our cats, whether (what do you say over there in England? “moggies,” that’s it), whether Moggies, rescues or otherwise, OUR cats have their best interest at heart! [sorry, that was an intentional slip. The Dears!] 😉
Bless your heart, Marc. I never thought that I would attempt such a stupid action. Life is a Gift. You don’t abuse that. My cats have meant the world to me, ever since I gained my independence, and was allowed to give myself that gift. A cat, a kitten, in my life. Life is a Gift. We do not abuse that. Ever.
nor do we [hopefully] abuse them, ever. Treat them even better than you have been.
I agree that having and loving a companion animal can be a life saver, for someone to know that their cat will be without love and shelter if they decide to die and leave them should surely sway their decision towards staying alive and tackling their problems, but on the other hand if someone is so low with fear, anxiety or depression are they capable of thinking so rationally. I don’t know.
For me, my cat would keep me alive. I could not leave him. I love him too much but it is a personal situation dependent on:
how severe the depression is
how connected to your cat you are
I think that you would, should, define “suicidal.” You had just commented that an individual could suddenly be outside of their own beliefs, and succumb. ?? It only takes 5moment that single, solitary moment to succumb and attempt the sad, sad action. It may be that the angels intervene.
Suicide ideation needs to separated from depression or other forms of mental illness. A person can consider suicide, even commit suicide, without being clinically depressed. If suicide ideation is used as a coping mechanism (and many people use it, though it is a poor coping mechanism) the person is in real danger without any mental illness present. On the other hand, a person can have mental illness but not suicide ideation. This is a problem in how we treat mental illness– quickly pushing meds on every depressed person because they might attempt suicide, but not dealing with the issue of suicide ideation as a very separate issue that can exist concurrently with mental illness or separately in otherwise mentally healthy people. No medication can fix suicide ideation as a coping skill and stopping the medication suddenly can actually cause clinical depression (temporarily) where there was none before. It only takes a couple of days off SSRI’s for the low you feel coming off them to stabilize, but in those few days the people who only had suicide ideation now also feel depressed. We have to do more for patients than just stick them on meds and suicide ideation has to be addressed separately from any other mental health issues. New coping skills need to be taught.
I don’t like the slant of so many articles on this story that suggest she was driven to suicide or had no choice. There is always another choice. Was she depressed and therefore could see no other options? Or was she a person who used suicide ideation as a coping skill all her life and when things got really bad she actually did it? Fantasize about anything long enough and a human being is likely to try it out. When I was 19 a woman from my church was killed brutally, dragged from her own home and tortured for hours if not days, by a man who had spent countless hours watching violent pornographic videos. Eventually, he had to try it out himself. Thank God they caught him. It is very important that we are not constantly thinking about things that can damage us.
Some of my FB friends said I should not have described the toad being eaten by a frog that I saw the other day because it’s too horrible to think of that. But how many things come across our own television screens that are too horrible to be thought of and we just accept it right into our homes? Marc is smart not to even have one. We need to focus on what is good and right as much as possible, because if we even think of evil things, pretty soon we are more accepting of evil or even become more likely to do it. Before this woman killed herself she thought about it, thought about it until it seemed like a good idea. When I start thinking about stuff that’s evil and not a good idea these days I just look at Monty. He can only live in the moment and do what is good and natural for him to do, so he is a good teacher.
Oops, I meant toad being eaten by a snake. I must still have frogs on my brain. The next day I went to that little pond it was frog mating season and nature gave me an entirely different show, which no one had a problem with my sharing it. But snakes needing to eat is as much natural as frogs getting it on. I don’t think we can find anything evil in nature, even though the world is not what it would have been without human sin and no animal was created to die. From the minds and hearts of humans come all kinds of evil.