Alleged: cat castrated without anesthetic in class by students at school

Sylvia Ann says:

Leah, you say you’re shutting the door and going away. Unless you’re truly gone, would you forgive me for asking where? (Or, as they say in my neck of the woods, ‘Where “TO”?)

Last week, or whenever, I wrote in a PoC-comment how much I admired someone from my student days, a history professor who confessed to me once that it was ‘impossible to like most people.’

Was he a curmudgeon? An ogre? No. Here are a couple of paragraphs from an article I wrote years ago for the Seattle P-I.

‘He hasn’t changed.

‘His eyes flicker with the same quiet humor that seems to distill what loud laughter dispels. His reluctance to talk about himself is as remarkable as ever in an era of intense self-searching. And his liberal views can still raise hackles.
‘Embellished by a wit that inspires respect, Giovanni Costigan’s love of learning and command of language combine to sustain the illusion that he is perennial. . .’

‘. . .As he was years ago, he remains an enigma: a humane and scholarly man who accepts what he considers to be the lack of evidence that human nature has evolved over the centuries. . .

. . . ‘Summing up what he has learned from his lifelong study of history, he gazes thoughtfully, for some moments, at a profusion of books and papers strewn on his desk. “I’ve learned that it’s better not to read history if you wish to preserve your optimism,” he says. “When you tell people that human nature hasn’t changed substantially in 10,000 years, they think you’re paying them a compliment.

‘“There’s a greater humanitarianism now than the Western world has ever seen. Yet when we act in organized groups, we’re as atavistic as we always have been. And we accept this cheerfully. As Einstein wrote in our own time: ‘It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.’”

‘Paradoxically, his stark worldview has increased his interest in issues and ideas. His belief that reason has usually played a subordinate role in the conduct of human affairs exists side-by-side with a passionate commitment to learning. . .’

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To examine the ‘conduct of human affairs’ in a shade more detail, here’s a paraphrase of the anthropologists S. L Washburn and V. Avis’s insights on hunting, written in 1958 (their work is still copyrighted):

‘Hunters delight in killing other animals. In the absence of training to mask the instinct, humans glory in stalking and killing. All throughout history, in nearly all cultures, the infliction of excruciating pain, the cries of torment and, in a grand climax, the death of the victim, were and still are offered up as public entertainment.’

Have you ever seen photos of Deep South lynchings? With their brood of kids and picnic baskets, the crowds are riotous with joy. Forget the name of the artist – it might have been ‘Phiz” who illustrated Dickens’s novels. Whoever it was, Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities (underlined) has a drawing of a woman seated near the guillotine, her teeth bared, beaming with excitement.

Although he’s been criticized for being somewhat out of date, Robert Ardrey, in my opinion, wrote with a philosophical depth unsurpassed even by Spengler. He rejected the post-Freudian notion that cruelty is usually caused by child abuse. In common with Freud and Melanie Klein (among other psychoanalysts), he believed it was innate, an evolutionary safeguard, and studied its positive aspects. Savagery toward the ‘out-group,’ he wrote, sustains peace and cohesion amongst members of the ‘in-group.’ The downside? Humanity lags behind the rest of the animal kingdom. Birds, beasts and our scaly kinfolk display enormous hostility toward rivals during the mating season, and any of their kind that dare trespass on the turf they’ve staked out for themselves. With this tragic difference: they bellow and rage, dart at the villain, leap heavenwards, shriek, bare their fangs, wave their arms and clash antlers. While bull elks can gore their competitors
to death, most every animal he and others studied stop short of killing each other. Except the killer-human.

Are some cultures peace-loving? The Cretans (Minoans) probably came as close to being so as any discovered. For one thing, they weren’t into matadors & picadors: they liked ‘bull-dancers.’ Moreover, their pantheon was matriarchal. Their deities were wasp-waisted babes with Dolly Parton bosoms. But even in this culture, excavations have uncovered traces of human sacrifice.
If statisticians could come up with any solid statistics, how many millions of people would they find who liked using a cat as a football? And how many men would they find who enjoyed getting down on the floor and luring a kitten out of its hidey-hole with prawns and baby-talk? Is the first closer to run-of-the-mill, and the second an anomaly? Hopefully not — for all that hope achieves. Yet Ruthie and Babz, who dote on their boyz, have neighbors with strangled cats hanging out of windows, dogs yapping from boredom and neglect, and still more dogs fed slimy kibbles crawling with slugs.

Whether a survey turned up more of the first than the second – or vice versa? – we readily label the first as ‘brainless, thoughtless sociopaths.’ As stated above, we also embrace the theory that battered children become cruel themselves (though child abuse helps), while flat-out rejecting tangible, scientific proof that it can also arise from structural variations in the brain – to name one example, a malformed conduit between the forebrain and the amygdala, or something – and biochemical variations. Why do we do this? Here’s one explanation: whether we’re people of faith or secular humanists, we’re offended by findings that jolt our morality like a mechanical bull: namely, our ingrained concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ ‘right,’ ‘wrong’ and ‘free will‘ – and the retribution wrongdoing deserves. Mechanistic explanations are repugnant to most people.
To further cloud the issue, it may have been Hitler’s henchman, Hermann Goering (though I could be wrong: I read this years ago), who felt guilt-ridden if he accidentally stepped on an earthworm. And as for sociopathic ‘brainlessness,’ some of Hitler’s highest ranking officials were PhDs. Like it or not, selective compassion is everywhere.

My mother, who spent thousands of dollars of my father’s earnings on veterinary fees, gleefully zapped spiders in the bathtub with gobs of foam from his spray-can of shaving cream. I cried for maybe half an hour when my mother died, and for more than a year – and still do – over my boy and little girl. My mother was nine years older than my father, old and frail and had lived a good, long life. Yet my boy was also old and frail, and his death broke my heart. Watching my boy sink away was a torment that equaled what I felt to watch my father die.

Be that as it may, there are different kinds of cruelty – some oblivious, some sadistic or insensitive. When I was five years old, my father caught a butterfly I admired, and skewered it to a board with a hatpin. All I remember was looking at the wretched creature and exclaiming out how pretty it was. I hadn’t an inkling how it was suffering.. Years ago, I had a friend who told me how much she enjoyed ‘popping with a scalpel’ a frog’s beating heart in her high school vivisection class. In like manner, my mother loved popping the purple seedpods of fuchsias and the bubbles of plastic ‘bubble wrap.’ It was nearly as much fun for her as spraying spiders with foam and watching them squirm in agony.

As for insensitive cruelty, people point out that livestock aren’t companion animals, and what we do to them isn’t what we should do to our fur-child. Yet livestock suffer no less than they.

I won’t suggest you plug into these websites and look at the pictures. But I’ll quote you one or two excerpts from the sites. (As if you weren’t bludgeoned enough to last you for a while!)

(1) Because they’re companion animals, horses are anesthetized before they are gelded.

(2) Because he’s usually not considered a companion, a pig – as intelligent, loving and lovable as any cat or dog – is denied anesthetic.

(3) NOTES ON CASTRATING A PIG: ‘If he is still with his mother, it is a good idea to take him where she cannot see him while you perform the procedure. . . .(Hold all four legs) then squeeze the testicle to push it through the cut. Grab it and pull it out completely. Cut the attached white cord. In a young pig, continue pulling on the testicle until the red cord (the blood vessel) snaps.’

(4) ‘HOW TO CAPONIZE YOUR BACKYARD CHICKEN: ‘Don’t feel bad if you loose [sic] a few chickens when you first start out. . . you will loose a few until you get the hang of it.’ After this lighthearted introduction, the blogger goes on to describe how you lay the rooster on a table, tie its wings to a cord tied to a brick hanging off one end of the table, then tie its legs to a cord tied to a brick hanging off the opposite end. Next, you cut into one side of the rooster and spread its ribs to reach the testicles, which you snip or pinch off.

(5) THREE WAYS TO CASTRATE BULLS AND BULL CALVES – WIKI/HOW: ‘Tail-jacking will not stop a calf from flinching and jerking when a scalpel cuts into its scrotum. . . so choose the best castrating method . . . according to what your stomach can handle and how sensitive you are to the animal’s well-being.. . .’ And then the site shows a wicked-looking metal contraption you clap around the calf’s head to restrain it.

In all the above, the instruments include scalpels and knives, pinchers, horror-film pliers and crushing devices. For the faint-hearted, there’s also a ring you can clamp on the gonads to cut off the circulation, causing them drop off from gangrene within a few days. A purportedly ‘painless’ method.

(6) Do you want to hear about branding and dehorning?

(7) Docking dogs’ tails, then slashing and splinting their ears?

(8) Hybridizing dogs and cats until their faces are so deformed they wheeze for air, their tear ducts leak, and their skin sags to such a degree they need eyelid surgery so they can see? And all for the amusement of humans?

(9) Do you already know what has been done since ancient times, not only to harem eunuchs but to were silver-bell soprano choir boys? Until the Vatican stopped the practice around 1904, these nightingale lads could die from an opium overdose or from having their carotid arteries flattened long enough to leave them brain-dead during the surgery. Did you ever hear a castrado sing? I did once. The recording was old and tinny, and the voice eerily sublime.

But at least the boys, when they weren’t killed, were more or less rendered unconscious during the cutting. ‘Circumcised’ girls get to tough it out. So does a shrieking Jewish male infant tottering on the brink of death & dissolution while his parents and the mohel celebrate the event by quaffing wine (Mogen David – whatever.).

Does PoC post too many ‘ain’t it awful’ essays? Events no one can prevent? Or, if they can, is the prevention a drop in the ocean?

It wasn’t that long ago that inmates in an asylum were whipped, starved and exposed to public ridicule. The 18th century aristocracy relished the fascination of touring asylums to see the pitiful inmates. Their mistreatment continued until the 19th century when reformers such as Dorothea Dix did everything in their limited powers to improve the quality of their lives.

African Americans were barred from voting, and humiliated in every other conceivable way.

Jews were butchered by the millions, ‘kept in their place,’ denied higher education. Only the Muslims in centuries past treated them with decency.

Homosexuals have been hounded to the ends of the earth.

Women couldn’t vote.

Marital abuse was rampant.

These crimes keep smoldering under the surface and, given an opening, could still explode in flames. But for the time being, most victims have a legal recourse. Even in China, animal rights activists are a growing presence.

The Internet disseminates at least some reliable INFORMATION. While the progress in animal rights moves ahead at a snail’s pace, it exists to some degree. In all likelihood, this Mr. Whatever his name is has besmirched himself for the remainder. Who in God’s name would want to hire him? Or has he retained his job? Say it isn’t so. If the answer is yes – and if he’s still single – who would want to marry him? Someone of his stripe? Well, yes. But thanks to the publicity, he’s messed himself up to some extent. Shocking as such coverage is, does it still serve no purpose?

Once again, Leah – if the question isn’t too intrusive – where can you go where you need never see or hear more of these horrors? If you know of such a place, I’ll pay you my last nickel and dime for a roadmap.