He is (or well, he was) just a cat! On legalized killing.....er.....Euthenasia for mere animals

 We just killed our cat today.  Well, I guess what happened was that we paid a vet to do it, or even more sanitized, to ‘euthanize’ Mew.  Mew might not have agreed, but to us humans at least, that term sounds better and exculpates us from having to feel like or be viewed as murderers, or failing to consider the victim to be a kind of person with a sense of self, and all that.  

No, and after all, while killing a human person is murder, euthanizing a mere cat is completely legal and, indeed, is considered a humanitarian or even kindly deed (a strange word, since the ‘human’ part of that word involves murder or slaughter, which is what our species mainly does far more than kindness).

But hold on just a moment!  Wasn’t there a good reason for this euthanizing?  After all, we are not just vicious beasts (I’m not sure sure about mere cats).  We love(d) our cats!  Mew, probably deserved to be ‘euthanized’.  In this case, his crime was that he didn’t pee only in the litter box, and to the contrary, threatened aspects of our house with Detrimental Urinary Damage (DUD), which sounds more technical, indeed, even legalistic, than just saying ‘staining some walls’! As an indoor cat, he is…er, was…a DUD.

Of course, in the case of humans, before one can invoke capital punishment, we have to hold what is called a ‘trial’, and there has to be a law knowingly broken in a major way as an objective, disinterested jury must unanimously judge.  In the case of mere cats, it is our own subjective judgment, say, how much we like our rugs and so on that were being peed on, that defines capital crimes.  After all, we are not just wanton killers!  

Oddly, it seems weird that if cats were awarded the same kinds of rights to fair trial, before being executed, they would have a jury of their ‘peers’ (no pun intended)!

To be fair, we put up with Mew’s peeing literally for years, cleaning up after him and tolerating the damage.  There was no way we were able to successfully train him, or even medicate him, to control it.  He also lived a non-trivial 11 years, and there was no way he could be adopted by someone else, or survive outdoors.  

And he did not suffer at his end, I’m told (I could not bear to be there and had to go take a walk).

Ah, well, it’s not so bad.  After all, we still have two other cats, and we give them the same cuddling and love as we give…..er, gave…to Mew.  Well, we give them that so far, at least–but they aren’t, not yet anyway, criminally neurotic.

I have to end this, as I’m getting too morose, and probably everyone actually reading this post has committed comparable biocide at some point in the past (and I’m not referring to meat-eating, which is an entirely additional version of biocide).

Nor does it serve to say, in private or in this public forum, “I’m sorry, Mew!”, because he can’t read or hear me and the deed is not reversible: it was done on purpose, for our convenience.  If we were truly sorry, we’d not have paid the vet to do it.

I must, in all honor, if there’s any to be found, add that we did try, at least a bit, to see if we could find a good home for such a person….er, cat…as Mew.  And after all, we did generously give him a large bowl of tuna as a last meal!

And I must also sorrowfully add that there is huge hypocrisy in this very lament for poor Mew.  I am not a vegetarian.  Indeed, it is relevant perhaps that, as evolutionary beasts, we essentially got here and must survive by consuming other living things.  Who says plants want to be boiled alive or even eaten raw, even by vegetarians?  My burger was once a cow, my bacon a pig, and a carrot or celery stick a ‘me’!  

In a way, this omnivory in itself is the brutal evolutionary ‘law’ that, thanks largely to Darwin, we know to account for the diversity of life itself, and our very existence here on the Earth.  And that is why we, like cats, are but temporary tenants….