I was considering something about obnoxious, shaming environmentalists and vegans (ones that can pretty much get along with animals and nobody else and drive people away from even thinking about going vegan)...why do so many of you have, like, a gazillion cats in your home? Domesticated cats kill one billion birds a year in the United States alone. Just wondering. I had a friend who claimed his cat never killed birds, until I saw her dragging one along. Here is a good article on the subject:
http://www.tnrrealitycheck.com/barn_cats.asp
I just read an extremely unpleasant post on Facebook by a woman who was once my friend and who has become increasingly as crazy as the evangelists I used to see on late-night TV, with a campaign to convert, in the most unpleasant and bullying way imaginable, the entire world to her personal dietary choice. She literally says she loves animals but has no compassion for humanity, which seems bizarre to me. I blocked/unfriended her because her rants are creepy and disturbing and wonder how many people she has turned off from considering going vegan or vegetarianism. Honestly, she makes me want to go out and eat a hamburger. I wanted to explain why she is so disturbing now, to clarify my posts
My earlier post was spurred by her because of her extremely filthy language recently on Facebook about people who eat meat, along with a photo of brains spilling out of some unidentifiable animal's head (sorry to be blunt, but that's what she did). I felt shamed and disgusted, and I'm a vegan myself. Just a note, in case she comes here: people block you for such behavior, so your campaign obviously isn't working, and it's probably time for you to do something else. Most people know about the horrors of factory farming. How do you know that the people you slap metaphorically with your dirty mouth and sickening pictures aren't trying to do something about factory farming, too?
I'm sad because she was a great support to me in my MFA program, though she dropped out about midway (she was nice about being a vegan then and not insane and boorish). I also got a message from her the other day about Thistle and whether she drinks milk. That was the last straw. I don't want my kid around her anymore and I'm getting kind of scared, frankly, of her. I get other crazy ranters in my news feed because she's increasingly friends with, likes, and comments on pages of some sort of "vegan activists," some of whom are more creepy than her and whose cray-cray I do not want to see, either (remember, I'm vegan too).
How about set a good example for people who eat meat--like cook a vegan dish when you are at a potluck (it usually gets eaten rather quickly if it's cooked well) and people might ask you for the recipe, or take care of your health so you don't look like death warmed over and yet tout all the health benefits of your diet to your skeptical audience. If you are kind instead of pretending you are better than everyone, you might inspire a few people in your circle to try some vegan cooking. Most people I know actually like some types of vegan food.
A few weeks ago, I also had to block (I guess that unfriends) another person, one of my dance teachers I really loved, because she emailed me and asked whether I had Thistle vaccinated because that could be the source of "her health problems" (she is an anti-vaccine person). Thistle has no health problems and I frankly got sick of her endless statistics about vaccination showing up in my news feed. My great grandparents lost five children to diptheria and I was exposed to rubella from a non-vaccinated child when I was in my first trimester with my eldest daughter. If I had contracted rubella, which devastates a fetus in that stage, she could have been born with handicaps from mild to extremely severe.
Sorry to wonder about these things, and discuss them, but I do. By the way, when my own cat dies (unfortunately I do have one--she's nice, but has killed birds), I personally am not getting one again. I keep my house in Lompico free of rodents via a humane rat zapper which gives an instantaneous kill. If you've ever seen a cat kill a mouse, you know that the mouse does not exactly get an instantaneous kill. The zapper wasn't expensive and I can put it in a place where Thistle cannot get it. If you absolutely must have a cat, keep it indoors (which is sort of cruel because cats like to roam; they are a non-native species and have created a huge imbalance in our ecosystem).
Well, I'm done with my personal rants for now. Thank you for listening.
No comments:
Post a Comment