It's Perfectly OK to Kill Cats
Written by Julian Modiano
Sunday, 15 January 2012 08:55
I believe it is perfectly OK to kill cats. I really do. I am convinced that anyone who sees a cat walking by and then kills is not doing anything even slightly immoral. If it’s done painlessly, better, but it doesn’t make someone any more immoral for doing it painfully. I myself have sometimes enjoyed throwing a cat strongly against a wall over and over until after thirty long minutes of agony, it draws its last breath. There is no particular reason for this belief of mine – I think they’re ugly and make a street look aesthetically less pleasing – but besides that I just tend to think that there is no problem killing them.
Appalled yet? Feeling a bit disgusted with what a horrible human being I am? Perhaps some of you have skipped a couple of lines of that first paragraph to see if this article would get any better (or worse). I find it interesting that whenever I discuss this moral belief of mine – that there is nothing wrong with killing cats – people tend to become heated and angry. I’ve been doing it my whole life, as has my father, and his father before him. It’s perfectly natural for me that killing cats is fine. I don’t understand what all these people want from me; why do they care so much that I like to tear a cat to pieces with my bare hands? Sometimes I find people extremely judgemental. To each his own, I say.
Now enough of this madness. I’m sure you didn’t actually believe any of what I just said, although perhaps the visual imagery of me breaking a cats bones one at a time until it was fully paralyzed and then leaving it in a garbage can, still conscious, to slowly suffocate will have disgusted you. I don’t believe that killing cats is OK, under any circumstance whatsoever, unless, of course, that cat is somehow endangering your life. And most of you reading this will think that I am perfectly normal for believing that killing cats is morally wrong, as you will agree with me that killing an innocent dog is morally wrong, and slaughtering a family of innocent hamsters is also morally wrong. But I’m sure that many of you will also find me completely insane, will find me a true radical, when I suggest that killing a cow, or a pig, is just as immoral.
Not at first of course. If I were to suggest that whenever I see a cow in a field I like to slit its throat and let it slowly bleed it to death over a long drawn out period of time, you would probably still call me immoral (although I’m sure that you’re becoming increasingly suspicious as to the direction I’m headed, and are starting to erect your moral defences). But if I were to take it a step further, and say that it is immoral for someone to slaughter a completely innocent cow in a slaughterhouse, there you will disagree with me completely. But your disagreeing with me is betraying a great hypocrisy in your moral beliefs. Because why is it always wrong for me to randomly kill a cat, but not wrong for an animal to be murdered and it’s corpse eaten for dinner?
The first thing people tend to reply to this accusation that they are being hypocritical is that cows are being slaughtered for a reason: so that we can eat them. The cat, on the other hand, is being killed completely gratuitously. But it is not so. Let’s examine the reasons for the two killings. The cow is being killed so that people may eat its carcass as a nice juicy steak. Do humans, at this point in the evolution of our species, need to consume meat in order to survive? The answer is no – we don’t. We can survive in perfect health without consuming any meat, and to those who argue otherwise, I urge you to take up the matter with all the thousands of vegetarians and vegans from birth who are somehow still alive and in perfect health. I will not go into the health benefits of no longer eating meat; I’ll leave some links at the bottom of the article for those of you who are interested.
Having established that we do not require meat in our diet, the reason for eating the cow becomes simply that it tastes good. We don’t need it to survive, so it really comes down to a question of taste. For most of us, it is perfectly fine to kill a cow if it tastes good. Of course, no one admits this to themselves, but that, in essence, is what’s happening. There are people that say we eat meat because it is natural. If you want to become a hunter-gatherer, in which case it is indeed natural to eat meat, be my guest. But in the societies in which we live in today, the way in which we eat meat is completely unnatural. Having someone else kill a poor animal that has lived in confinement its entire life, then transporting its dead body across vast distances until I it finally arrives to your home packaged in such a way as to look as little as possible as ever having once been alive is the furthest from natural you can possibly get. To quote one of my favourite Youtubers, if you want to do something natural, go shit in the woods.
So you see, me killing the cat and you ordering the killing of a cow (indeed, you buying meat is placing a direct order for the killing of another cow) is not so different after all. You had the cow killed because of taste, as did I. I though cats looked ugly, and thus they were not to my taste. I didn’t think they made for pleasant scenery.
Now I know a lot of you will probably admit to the moral inconsistency – and then just reshuffle your values to accommodate this new fact. Or you will say things like, “I completely agree, and I respect your decision, but there is no way that I could possibly ever stop eating meat”. Bullshit. Not three months ago, I would out-burger anyone who ever went to McDonalds with me. I once won two free Big Macs from one of my friends because I bet him that I could plough through those two more Big Macs after having just devoured four cheeseburgers and two large fries. I loved burgers. I loved meat. When I first moved to university, I went through twenty-one home-made hamburgers in less than two weeks. But, I realized that while I was calling it meat, the word meat is a direct synonym of dead, murdered cow. A synonym for an animal that was killed for no reason at all, other than my personal taste and comfort. After having recognized that simple fact, it became harder for me to continue eating meat than to stop.
You can laugh, you can call this a stretch, and you can call me a crazy radical. But I am sure that if you think about it long enough, you yourself will realize that there is absolutely no difference between the random killing of an innocent cat on the street and the random killing of a cow in a factory farm. In fact, what you’re doing is probably worse: because while the cat at least had the chance to live its life as it pleased, the cow you have killed has lived in confinement for the whole of its miserable existence. For all of you out there that say you love animals, especially for all of you who detest hunting, for all of you who raise indignant cries against animal abuse: think about the fact that the meat you eat was once an animal too.
-
Here are some useful links for more information on the food industry, and why it is no longer possible to morally justify the eating of animals.
-
Food, Inc. (http://www.foodincmovie.com)
Academy Award Nominee for the Best Documentary Feature, this documentary talks about the growing need for reform of the food industry.
From Farm to Fridge (
This powerful, 11 minute film takes viewers on an eye-opening exploration behind the closed doors of the nation's largest industrial farms, hatcheries, and slaughter plants -- revealing the often-unseen journey that animals make from Farm to Fridge.
Earthlings (http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/earthlings)
A glimpse into how animals are really treated behind the closed walls of factory farms, as well as other instances in which animals are treated abominably.
A Speech by Gary Yourofsky (
A long speech by Gary Yourofsky, animal activist, that completely destroys every possible excuse not only for not being vegetarian, but also for not being vegan.
-
And, as promised, some links for those of you who still believe that not eating meat is unhealthy and dangerous. Keep in mind that the average American man has a 50% chance of contracting some kind of heart disease, the average American vegetarian has a 16% chance, and the average American vegan has a 4% chance. Also keep in mind that the only sources of cholesterol are animal products.
I listed the sources in order of what seemed to me from most reliable to least reliable; starting from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to Weight Loss Resources. I recommend you go through all of them, and do as much of your own research as you like. I guarantee that you will find no qualified sources that argue that a properly planned vegetarian or vegan diet is unhealthy. And yes, babies have died at the hands of crazy vegan parents. This had nothing to do with the parents being vegan, just like when a baby dies at the hands of a meat-eating parent no one blames it on the fact that the parents were eating meat. Some people are insane and won’t feed their babies enough. Not that they don’t feed them enough meat – just not enough, period. If you don’t feed a baby a sufficient quantity of food it will die, whether the little you feed it is meat or carrots.
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)
(http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vegdiets/vegetarian-foods-powerful-for-health)
Mayo Clinic
(http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vegetarian-diet/HQ01596)
National Health Service (NHS)
(http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Vegetarianhealth/Pages/Vegetarianhealthqanda.aspx)
The Independent
(http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthy-living/how-our-vegan-diet-made-us-ill-848322.html)
Weight Loss Resources
(http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/diet/vegetarian.htm)
Appalled yet? Feeling a bit disgusted with what a horrible human being I am? Perhaps some of you have skipped a couple of lines of that first paragraph to see if this article would get any better (or worse). I find it interesting that whenever I discuss this moral belief of mine – that there is nothing wrong with killing cats – people tend to become heated and angry. I’ve been doing it my whole life, as has my father, and his father before him. It’s perfectly natural for me that killing cats is fine. I don’t understand what all these people want from me; why do they care so much that I like to tear a cat to pieces with my bare hands? Sometimes I find people extremely judgemental. To each his own, I say.
Now enough of this madness. I’m sure you didn’t actually believe any of what I just said, although perhaps the visual imagery of me breaking a cats bones one at a time until it was fully paralyzed and then leaving it in a garbage can, still conscious, to slowly suffocate will have disgusted you. I don’t believe that killing cats is OK, under any circumstance whatsoever, unless, of course, that cat is somehow endangering your life. And most of you reading this will think that I am perfectly normal for believing that killing cats is morally wrong, as you will agree with me that killing an innocent dog is morally wrong, and slaughtering a family of innocent hamsters is also morally wrong. But I’m sure that many of you will also find me completely insane, will find me a true radical, when I suggest that killing a cow, or a pig, is just as immoral.
Not at first of course. If I were to suggest that whenever I see a cow in a field I like to slit its throat and let it slowly bleed it to death over a long drawn out period of time, you would probably still call me immoral (although I’m sure that you’re becoming increasingly suspicious as to the direction I’m headed, and are starting to erect your moral defences). But if I were to take it a step further, and say that it is immoral for someone to slaughter a completely innocent cow in a slaughterhouse, there you will disagree with me completely. But your disagreeing with me is betraying a great hypocrisy in your moral beliefs. Because why is it always wrong for me to randomly kill a cat, but not wrong for an animal to be murdered and it’s corpse eaten for dinner?
The first thing people tend to reply to this accusation that they are being hypocritical is that cows are being slaughtered for a reason: so that we can eat them. The cat, on the other hand, is being killed completely gratuitously. But it is not so. Let’s examine the reasons for the two killings. The cow is being killed so that people may eat its carcass as a nice juicy steak. Do humans, at this point in the evolution of our species, need to consume meat in order to survive? The answer is no – we don’t. We can survive in perfect health without consuming any meat, and to those who argue otherwise, I urge you to take up the matter with all the thousands of vegetarians and vegans from birth who are somehow still alive and in perfect health. I will not go into the health benefits of no longer eating meat; I’ll leave some links at the bottom of the article for those of you who are interested.
Having established that we do not require meat in our diet, the reason for eating the cow becomes simply that it tastes good. We don’t need it to survive, so it really comes down to a question of taste. For most of us, it is perfectly fine to kill a cow if it tastes good. Of course, no one admits this to themselves, but that, in essence, is what’s happening. There are people that say we eat meat because it is natural. If you want to become a hunter-gatherer, in which case it is indeed natural to eat meat, be my guest. But in the societies in which we live in today, the way in which we eat meat is completely unnatural. Having someone else kill a poor animal that has lived in confinement its entire life, then transporting its dead body across vast distances until I it finally arrives to your home packaged in such a way as to look as little as possible as ever having once been alive is the furthest from natural you can possibly get. To quote one of my favourite Youtubers, if you want to do something natural, go shit in the woods.
So you see, me killing the cat and you ordering the killing of a cow (indeed, you buying meat is placing a direct order for the killing of another cow) is not so different after all. You had the cow killed because of taste, as did I. I though cats looked ugly, and thus they were not to my taste. I didn’t think they made for pleasant scenery.
Now I know a lot of you will probably admit to the moral inconsistency – and then just reshuffle your values to accommodate this new fact. Or you will say things like, “I completely agree, and I respect your decision, but there is no way that I could possibly ever stop eating meat”. Bullshit. Not three months ago, I would out-burger anyone who ever went to McDonalds with me. I once won two free Big Macs from one of my friends because I bet him that I could plough through those two more Big Macs after having just devoured four cheeseburgers and two large fries. I loved burgers. I loved meat. When I first moved to university, I went through twenty-one home-made hamburgers in less than two weeks. But, I realized that while I was calling it meat, the word meat is a direct synonym of dead, murdered cow. A synonym for an animal that was killed for no reason at all, other than my personal taste and comfort. After having recognized that simple fact, it became harder for me to continue eating meat than to stop.
You can laugh, you can call this a stretch, and you can call me a crazy radical. But I am sure that if you think about it long enough, you yourself will realize that there is absolutely no difference between the random killing of an innocent cat on the street and the random killing of a cow in a factory farm. In fact, what you’re doing is probably worse: because while the cat at least had the chance to live its life as it pleased, the cow you have killed has lived in confinement for the whole of its miserable existence. For all of you out there that say you love animals, especially for all of you who detest hunting, for all of you who raise indignant cries against animal abuse: think about the fact that the meat you eat was once an animal too.
-
Here are some useful links for more information on the food industry, and why it is no longer possible to morally justify the eating of animals.
-
Food, Inc. (http://www.foodincmovie.com)
Academy Award Nominee for the Best Documentary Feature, this documentary talks about the growing need for reform of the food industry.
From Farm to Fridge (
This powerful, 11 minute film takes viewers on an eye-opening exploration behind the closed doors of the nation's largest industrial farms, hatcheries, and slaughter plants -- revealing the often-unseen journey that animals make from Farm to Fridge.
Earthlings (http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/earthlings)
A glimpse into how animals are really treated behind the closed walls of factory farms, as well as other instances in which animals are treated abominably.
A Speech by Gary Yourofsky (
A long speech by Gary Yourofsky, animal activist, that completely destroys every possible excuse not only for not being vegetarian, but also for not being vegan.
-
And, as promised, some links for those of you who still believe that not eating meat is unhealthy and dangerous. Keep in mind that the average American man has a 50% chance of contracting some kind of heart disease, the average American vegetarian has a 16% chance, and the average American vegan has a 4% chance. Also keep in mind that the only sources of cholesterol are animal products.
I listed the sources in order of what seemed to me from most reliable to least reliable; starting from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to Weight Loss Resources. I recommend you go through all of them, and do as much of your own research as you like. I guarantee that you will find no qualified sources that argue that a properly planned vegetarian or vegan diet is unhealthy. And yes, babies have died at the hands of crazy vegan parents. This had nothing to do with the parents being vegan, just like when a baby dies at the hands of a meat-eating parent no one blames it on the fact that the parents were eating meat. Some people are insane and won’t feed their babies enough. Not that they don’t feed them enough meat – just not enough, period. If you don’t feed a baby a sufficient quantity of food it will die, whether the little you feed it is meat or carrots.
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)
(http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vegdiets/vegetarian-foods-powerful-for-health)
Mayo Clinic
(http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vegetarian-diet/HQ01596)
National Health Service (NHS)
(http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Vegetarianhealth/Pages/Vegetarianhealthqanda.aspx)
The Independent
(http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthy-living/how-our-vegan-diet-made-us-ill-848322.html)
Weight Loss Resources
(http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/diet/vegetarian.htm)
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Do you have "100,000,000 Guinea Pigs, 1933, by Arthur Kallet and F. J. Schlink??
meat makes the world go round, it's mm mm mmmm delicious and nutritious. why would i care how the animal is being treated? it's going to end up on my plate anyway. i'd be even happier if "they" would kill the animal by beating it with a large stick until it is nice and tender, that would save me having to wash some dishes.
let's say i plant the cow and it grows just like a vegetable, but it's a cow with roots, it can't even move. vegetables are alive too, they feel pain as well. just because they can't talk or communicate in any manner perceptible to us means they are ok to kill at will?
life is life period.
if you feel guilty for being alive just go on and kill yourself. that way you won't have to hurt some poor defenseless creature just so you can go on living another day. people these days have too much comfort for their own good. i don't think you would be having these concerns if the last time you ate was last week and you see no hope of eating soon.
i am human and grateful to be born as one. as the dominating and most highly evolved creature of this planet i take what i need and don't worry about what the poor thing at the receiving end feels. thank god my ancesters were not concerned about their "morals".
only purpose for morals is that we do not kill other humans. animals and other life forms don't get that same benefit.
"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
Pythagoras, mathematician
"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men."
Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist
"If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth -- beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals -- would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?"
George Bernard Shaw, playwright, Nobel Prize 1925
"Our task must be to free ourselves . . . by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921
"I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being."
Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President
"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist
excellent summing -some new to me - would appreciate contact with you - mhayden6@gmail.com
let's start with the pythagora's statement... we kill the animals because we need something from them and to think that just because we kill an animal to eat it we somehow feel entitled to kill other humans seems a bit foolish. we kill other humans for reasons that should not even exist in our present world.
da vinci was a very gifted individual, but seems to have fallen in love with his steak.
george bernard shaw. what makes a being superior to us? many aspects obviously, but let's assume they came to earth just to farm and consume humans. would they care what our diet is made up of? or maybe we could reason with them "look here you aliens, we do not kill animals so by universal moral law you have no right to kill us...". animals don't let us kill them because we feel superior, they have no choice, they cannot fight us.
einstein wants to embrace nature and all it's beauty. isn't hunting part of nature? whose to say that is not beauty?
honest abe. there is no such thing as "rights" when we are talking about nature. all the rights you think you have are given and protected by other humans in the interest of perpetuating a good functioning society. there is no such thing as natural rights, it's all made up by man.
continued down...
why do we worry ourselves with what might be going through an animals mind? do they have feelings like we do, or are they simply driven by a primitive brain that only wants to feed and reproduce? it seems that the smarter we perceive the animal to be the more we feel like it's meat should not be consumed. i'm thinking of a dolphin as an example. i've never had dolphin meat, but in my mind it would probably taste bitter and i would be as inclined to eat it as i would human meat, which is none at all!
but that is just because i feel dolphins are very smart creatures, it's all in my head. probably dolphin meat is very tasty.
now i'll leave you with my own set of quotes:
bill williams of the helvetica institute " plants not only seem to be aware and feel pain, they can even communicate" - hmm isn't that interesting...
the swiss government passed a PLANT BILL OF RIGHTS. it concludes that plants have moral and legal protections, and swiss citizens have to treat them appropriately.
vegetarians would do well to investigate this data before claiming to be superior to those of us who do not subscribe to the idea that eating meat is morally wrong.
stop fighting nature with silly compassion
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