Friday, July 28, 2006

Reflection

Sadly, another kitten had been badly abused and died a horrific death at the hands of some demented, unfeeling human killer. Several blogs had reported about it, and many have commented about it. Yes, I agree it's horrible, inhumane, beastly, a sad case of a human being, a sad day for society, and so on. The poor kitten must have suffered much pain, fear, and other unimaginable torturous feelings.

Reading the comments from afar, at the back of my mind, the thought arose: Aren't these the same feelings that must be felt by animals, as they are sent along the passageway towards the abbatoir? The sound and smell of the abbatoir that strike these animals, as they are forced to move toward the end of their lives, I'm sure are enough to create the same feelings of fear and suffering in them. Even before the animals are sent to be slaughtered as food, poor farming methods have resulted in them living in unsavoury and even cruel conditions in some cases.

At this point, my thoughts aren't quite clear yet, so I'm not sure why I'm writing this, and it's not even a subject that I would normally put on a catblog. However, it is something that I can't ignore or choose to forget.

For various reasons, practical or otherwise, I am not a vegetarian, at least not all the time, although I eat little meat. Still, I don't forget that every time I eat meat, some animal did suffer, and I am the indirect cause of that suffering. It's something that I've yet to reconcile fully with myself, so it sort of keeps me in an inequilibrium state whenever I'm in one of these reflective moods.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It's a nice blog.

Singapore Community Cat said...

Being vegetarian doesn't mean that no animals are killed for our food. Ploughing the land kills worms, kills small animals, pesticides kill insects, etc
Killing is inevitable but it is whether we kill with intent that is important.
I think it is also important to live simple...have what we need and eat what we need to live. It is our indulgence in our needs - our craving to have more than what we need and to eat far beyond what we need to be alive, that brings about so much suffering to mother-earth and to other sentient beings that we are supposed to co-exist with.
At the end of the day, what is important is what is in the heart. A vegetarian can be cruel in thoughts, cruel in the heart. A meat eater can be kind in thoughts, kind in the heart. Which would you want to be?