Sunday night News Update: over $47,000.
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Saturday Night News Update: It’s up to $42,600.
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The news tonight announced that the reward for the arrest of the torturer/killer of Sage the cat is now up to $30,000. They gave no word on what the bounty is up to to provide the accused a therapeutic shanking.
Some may wonder why the story of a cat being brutalized is worth more time than any of a wide galaxy of news stories of *humans* being brutalized. There are probably a whole lot of reasons, but to me it kinda comes down to this: if you murder a human, unless you are particularly crazy or stupid, you probably know that the justice system may well drop a jail on you. But a whole lot of people think that if they do the same to an animal, nobody will give a damn. Consequently, there’s a whole lot of animal cruelty that could probably be avoided if those who might want to do it knew that if they get caught they could be defenestrated through a special window in the tail of a C-5 Galaxy orbiting over Syria at 40,000 feet.
Cruelty to animals is the same evil as cruelty to children. Sure, the victims may not be as important as a kid… but anyone who has ever actually known a cat or a dog knows that the *pain* these animals can feel is the same that a child can feel. I’ve said it before: cats and dogs are particularly special, because they’re on our team. When the aliens invade, it’ll be the cats and dogs fighting alongside us. OK, sure, the cats might not engage in quite the same combat… but if we need someone to shit in the aliens shoes, the cats will have our backs.
Now, I’m no whacko animal rights activist. Put a spider in front of me, I’m’a gonna smash it. If it’s a brown recluse, I’m’a gonna MacGuyver a flamethrower. And then I’ll eat some tasty, tasty cooked cow. And I will feel bad not at all if my own pack of furry murderers take down a mouse… given that mice are horrid little plague-bearing vermin, they’re low on my list of favorite things. But you know what I don’t do? Torture mice to death. Because inflicting unnecessary pain on something even as small and insignificant as a mouse serves no purpose except petty evil.