Recently, several people have offered to give me (unwanted) kittens. I don’t want one. 
I don’t have indoor pets. Come to think of it, I don’t have outdoor pets either, because I travel and don’t have the time to devote to them when I’m off-planet for a couple of weeks.
There are neighborhood cats that skulk around my back yard and I don’t shoot them with a wrist rocket or pellet gun because they are generally useful keeping unwanted rodent populations from multiplying. Given that tolerance for cats, why would I want “my own cat”? I could feed the feral cats that prowl, but why would I? Better that they are hungry and hunting mice and rats. There is usually a large aisle in each grocery store, and roughly half of it is dedicated to cat food. The other half is dog food. Feeding a cat makes no sense to me, since they are little predators by nature. Dogs are another matter. Who wouldn’t reward their love and loyalty with a steak or a big soup bone? Cats are disloyal, but as I pointed out, they are useful.
I realize that few of you who read this blog know me personally or have been to the mansion, but if you do swing by and see a cat in the yard, find comfort in the fact that it’s not mine. Also take note of my humanity in that it is alive.
I respect large cats (lions, tigers, jaguars, etc) but not the domestic variety that the local coyotes find so tasty. The local house cats encourage coyote predation in the developed suburbs because they are a favorite food. I neither condone coyotes hunting in my neighborhood nor do I oppose it. If coyotes get at all aggressive, I presume that they are rabid, dispatch them with an arrow/hunting head (It is illegal to discharge a firearm in my city’s limits. There is no prohibition about firing a lethal arrow with a razor head.) and call city animal control to remove the carcass. There is a healthy balance maintained by nature between coyote and cat populations.
You will never see a house cat roaming free in the Little Saigon District of Orange County California. They are trapped, eaten or sold for chicken in the local restaurants. There is an old joke floating around: (Q) What do you call a Vietnamese guy with two cats? (A) A rancher.

I’m not racist. Simply experienced in the Vietnamese culture. In China they sell both live and butchered cats in the markets. In Korea, they prefer dog and when you see a yellow labrador retriever with a red and blue bow around its neck in the markets from Soul to Pusan, they are not being sold as pets.

I’m not suggesting that if you were to give me a kitten that I’d release it in Little Saigon – to end up in a wok. I wouldn’t do it because I don’t encourage the practice of bait and switch in commercial kitchens. It’s like McDonalds using kangaroo to supplement the beef.
And that’s all I have to say on the subject.

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24 COMMENTS

  1. All cats are not disloyal, LL. Most, but not all.

    I have a cat who, when I am gone on a trip, sits at the back door waiting for me to come through the door. My wife tells me it is pathetic to watch that cat wait for days, not moving from that spot. It doesn't care much for either my wife or daughter, but loves me.

    When I am home, it follows me around like a puppy dog. This is one loyal cat.

    Just so you know.

  4. It sounds as though I'm slaying coyotes from my front door. I only have done that once, and the coyote turned out NOT to be rabid. However, I take no chances in these situations. And I had a handgun available had the arrow not done its job.

    Archery is fun, it's interesting and you never appreciate the lethality of arrows until you start hunting with them. I started bow hunting deer when I was about 15 or 16 with a 42 pound recurve that I still have. I moved up to an 85 pound Kodiac recurve that I could both string and shoot, but it was an exercise in strength, and not as fun as the 42. Now the world is compound bows and they are MUCH easier to shoot, have vast force and so forth.

    BUT – LSP, you need to start shooting black powder. Just trust me on that. I ought to blog on that. I enjoy that even more than archery. (though I do still love archery) Living where I do at the moment, it's not easy to find a place to shoot, but it's FUN.

  13. Yep, if you've eaten Chinese, you've eaten cat. If you've eaten Korean, you've eaten dog… I learned how to shoot rifles killing feral cats and dogs with .22s and then moving up to larger calibers. The @!%$# asshats that throw the cats and dogs out in the country SHOULD be shot themselves…

  15. You're far more tolerant of feral cats than I am.

    Frankly, I think it should be illegal (what? Jim saying there oughta be a law?) to feed the damn things. Let them earn their keep cleaning up the rodent population.

  16. There are packs of wild dogs that I've run into over the years, sometimes aggressive. Thinning the ranks is a necessary thing.

  17. There's not much you can do about the cat situation…unless you're Vietnamese or Cambodian (living in Long Beach). They have a solution that seems to work.

  19. They also attack people. When I was a kid, living in the country, I carried a .22 derringer to school with shot-shells in it to shoot loose dogs that often attacked or threatened. After a week or so of doing this, dogs no longer bothered me and my grandfather took the derringer back.

    I realize that a boy would be put in a dungeon today for having a .22 on campus, but it was a different age, a more sensible age, and I had passed my NRA Safety Course as had all the boys where I went to school.

    It's interesting that the school counselor was the one who advised me to carry a small handgun with shot shells/snake load to dissuade unleashed dogs. Today it would be a scandal. Then it was common sense – and we have very little of that today.

  20. The thought back then – and there – was that if you're old enough to hunt effectively, you're old enough to bare arms. EVERYONE hunted, and we ate what we killed (except for wild dogs and gophers).

  21. One more P. S. on the matter. The local police knew all the boys and knew that we carried firearms around, as did the Justice of the Peace. Nobody whined about it because we didn't do anything wrong with firearms… Wrist rockets/sling shots were another matter. They were for mischief. You can do a lot with a sling shot and a Silver Salute (firecracker).

  22. I think you should get a jaguar to match your bike. It's a nice piece to have roaming round a mansion. Big kittys are so much better.

  23. I thought about a tiger trained to kill (all but me and my friends). I thought that the famous gay duo of Sigfried and Roy, who entertain in Las Vegas could do the training — until the tiger ate Sigfried and ended the show.

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