Apr 282009
I just found him in the road.
I goddamn hate digging graves.
I wish I could’ve found a shelter to take him in. He’d’ve made someone a good indoor pet. Now….
19 Responses to “R.I.P. Spot”
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I just found him in the road.
I goddamn hate digging graves.
I wish I could’ve found a shelter to take him in. He’d’ve made someone a good indoor pet. Now….
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He’s now in that place where there are plenty of sunbeams and the mice don’t run too fast. My pair are probably showing him around right now.
So very sorry, Scott. When one of those friends passes, the hole in our hearts is harder to fill. I’ve rescued my share of dogs and cats, and still keep finding them homes. The most rewarding sight is that of one needy pet embraced by a new home. And the faces of those who embrace them. Rest in peace, Spot.
Sorry to hear that Scott. I’m sure my Kzin is showing him how to be extra lazy, even for a cat!
I’m sure Spot couldn’t have met a better Human
Deepest condolences on the loss of a true friend.
> I’m sure Spot couldn’t have met a better Human
He could’ve met one whose house was further from the damned road.
> He’s now in that place where there are plenty of sunbeams…
> I’m sure my Kzin is showing him how to be extra lazy…
I sure as hell hope so. If humans have immortal souls – a proposition that I do not buy in to – then it’s insanity to think that cats don’t. And if they do, there damned sure better be a Cat Heaven, or I’m going to raise a stink with management when I get… wherever.
Sorry to hear that Scott. RIP Spot.
I am so sorry. I only recently recovered from the death of my (single) cat, taking in another (a “doorstep stray,” obviously lost from a good home, per her personality. As Arthur Clarke put it in one of his 2001 sequels, we humans court pain by loving creatures who (at best) live so much shorter lives than we…but damnit, it’s worth it, despite the pain.
Deepest condolences on the loss of a true friend.
Yeah, despite being allergic to cats due to hay fever, I really love the little critters and their surplus of personality.
When I was a young kid, we lost our wonderful cat, “Siam” due to getting hit by a car, and that was the only pet I had outside of a caimian crocodile during my whole life.
BTW, have you ever taken a vote among your cats regarding leaving Tak’s food bowl out on of the nearest road on a daily basis, as I’m pretty sure that would pass by a large majority.
Cruel, but I’m sure basically true.
Or, as Mark Twain said:
“It’s not that there are so many bad people in the world; it’s just that the lightning is so badly distributed”.
If Tak got run over, and the rest of the cats would be dancing on their hind hinds legs while drinking champagne.
To put this in a more serous aspect, one stray cat you adopted gets run over…and it’s a tragedy… but on the other hand, you would certainly seem to have no problem at all with starting a war against members of your own species over some philosophical and political disagreements in which tens of thousands would (and indeed have) died.
Don’t thousands of Homo Sapians get some small fraction and measure of the thought and emotional involvement from you in your world-view where a single cat does?
I mean, where the fuck are you coming from, anyway?
> you would certainly seem to have no problem at all with starting a war against members of your own species over some philosophical and political disagreements in which tens of thousands would (and indeed have) died.
I didn’t start the war. The war was brought to the Holy City of Manhattan (hey, if the savages can claim every patch of camelshit infested sand as a “holy city,” then I can do the same for whatever burg I choose). And if you want to carry it further back, the forces of Islamofascism have been at war with the United States ever since they decided to start hijacking American ships and enslaving American citizens, leading to the first Barbary War of 1801-1805.
>Don’t thousands of Homo Sapians get some small fraction and measure of the thought and emotional involvement from you in your world-view where a single cat does?
Indeed they do. Several thousand homo sapiens *deserve* to die, and it angers me that they have avoided this. Their deaths, done properly (loudly, publicly, horribly and dramatically) would serve a useful purpose. If we had a “Crossbow” laser-armed spaceplane in orbit that would cause random Islamofascists to simply turn into flaming pyres for no readily apparent reason, the usefulness of this should be apparent. The death of a cat, however, is meaningless cruelty at best.
Here’s the thing: humans have a capacity for evil that cats and dogs have to work *real* hard to begin to approach, and generally can’t. The meanest pit bull is as nothing compared to the asshole who specifically targets children with nail bombs. Consequently, the death of the worst dog in the world is a greater tragedy than the death of any thousand suicide bombers you’d care to name.
I cannot say as I’ve “seen the face of evil” face to face. I have, however, seen what evil is capable of doing to the innocent, up close and damned personal. There is a reason why there is not a “Mrs. Scott Lowther.” Consequently, my interest in playing along with the pretense that all human lives are sacred and special snowflakes has long since evaporated.
You are out of your ever-lovin’ little mind.
Cats have replaced the part in your emotions that should have been filled by your friends, family, and possibly even children.
Look, cats a great… but they are also going to be dead within around fifteen years tops after they were first born as kittens, and frankly if you died tomorrow and all of your cats were adopted two days later… they would forget any part you had in their lives inside of a year or two later provided their new owners gave them better food on a day-to-day basis than you did.
These aren’t some sort of Rousseauian primitive perfectly good and morally upright creatures in their innate and uncorrupted state, (as anyone who has seen one bat a mouse off of the wall for half an hour before killing and eating it, can assure you).
Sure, cats are fine…but I rather doubt one is going to whip up anything as beautiful as the Taj Mahal any day soon, and that wasn’t even done by a Christian, much less a cat.
“There is a reason why there is not a “Mrs. Scott Lowther.” ”
BTW, there was indeed a girl I loved- “Lil’ Kiki”… and if she could put up with me, I’m sure there’s a girl out there who put up with you; mind you she might need to to be rather unique: http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc148/pectiwita/Freya.jpg?t=1241001281
But look on the bright side… she comes with great lust, and all the free pork and beer you could ever dream of. 🙂
> These aren’t some sort of Rousseauian primitive perfectly good and morally upright creatures…
Nor did I say they were, or imply anything of the kind.
> Sure, cats are fine…but I rather doubt one is going to whip up anything as beautiful as the Taj Mahal
Nor are they going to whip up anything as horrid as the Holocaust or the New Deal.
The fact that they are in the middle somewhere means that there are humans at the far end of the spectrum who needs to be sent to meet their prefered god ASAP.
Damn. These little creatures take a part of our heart away.
RIP, Spot…you will be in cats’ paradise for sure
Sorry to hear that. We have been lucky, have a fairly busy road out front and only had one cat hit by a vehicle during 20 years, all the others are in our little cemetery.
As for the compassion debate, I have been up close and personal with the lowest forms of humans, and feel absolutely no guilt for sending them on to hell before me. I feel quite a lot of guilt for each animal I have had to put down during my life. And it is nothing like hunting, willfully taking the life of an animal so you can consume it and willfully taking the life of an animal to end its suffering are not even remotely the same, and killing a man is an entirely different situation from either of the others.
> and feel absolutely no guilt for sending them on to hell before me. I feel quite a lot of guilt for each animal I have had to put down during my life.
Understood. Anyone who cannot understand that the death of a pet can result in a whole different level of emotion than the death of, say, a rapist or a murder… well, that person is kind of a dumbass.
A pet, or an animal like a horse, is, like I said here http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=2437 a member of “our team.” But the Jihadis, the Nazis, Commies, VC, Klansmen, Inquisitors, rapists, child molesters, slavers… these are *not* on our team (if they are on *your* team, this might not be the right website for you). I care more about My Side than Their Side, and I don’t give a damn about any touchy-feely bullcrap about everybody being the same and deserving of the same respect.
“But the Jihadis, the Nazis, Commies, VC, Klansmen, Inquisitors, rapists, child molesters, slavers… these are *not* on our team (if they are on *your* team, this might not be the right website for you). I care more about My Side than Their Side, and I don’t give a damn about any touchy-feely bullcrap about everybody being the same and deserving of the same respect.”
All that aside, there is something to be said for co-opting and converting your enemies. In Northern Ireland that approach has lead to 10 years of peace and people who were inimical to the UK sitting down and working for the greater good in a UK local assembly.
Another fact is that sometimes the people who are on the ‘other side’ are only there because of the actions of our side, a point which David Kilcullen makes in his book “The Accidental Guerrilla”.
>All that aside, there is something to be said for co-opting and converting your enemies. In Northern Ireland that approach has lead to 10 years of peace…
Honestlyy, I couldn’t tell one side of that conflict from another. It kinda helps when the people fighting are the same ethnicity, same language, same freakin’ *accent,” and, for all intents and purposes, the same damned religion.
Winning hearts and minds wasn’t a winning strategy in Viet Nam for the US, nor was it a winning strategy for the Russians in Afghanistan. But it was, however, a winning strategy for the US in Germany and Japan… but *only* after the “kill them until they give up” strategy had paid off.
> Another fact is that sometimes the people who are on the ‘other side’ are only there because of the actions of our side
That is sometimes true. But in the case of the current war on the west by the forces of Islamofascism… it’s beyond stupid to blame the west, and especially the US:
“It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.”
Tripoli Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman to Thomas Jefferson, 1786.
We didn’t make people of that mindset. Their own culture did that. It’s an Us Vs. Them mentality that long predates even the *existence* of the United States. It’s not our fault… but sadly, we have to deal with it regardless.