We demandz zee equal rights of voting for teh catzorz.

Prepare to be boarded.

All your blogorz are belong to us.

A Berkeley woman died last weekend when she jumped into the surf to save her dog, who was in distress. Predictably, the comments on the SF Gate article about the tragedy were, as usual, completely charming, with commenters making lovely assumptions about the woman, her dog, and her reasons for saving her pet. I’m beginning to think that the Chronicle needs to rethink the open comments policy, because every single comment thread on every single article immediately devolves into a disgusting melting pot of bigoted prejudice. It’s really quite amazing. Write an article about flowers? There will be a derisive comment about yuppies, and then a counterattack, and then a comment about ovaries, and then a derisive comment about feminists, and one page later the conversation will have completely disintegrated.

Anyway, this is not a post about the comment threads on SF Gate, although you should check them out sometime if you ever feel like a laugh. Or an illustration of Godwin’s Law. Or you just haven’t been infuriated enough on any given day.

The article (and the comments) got me thinking about the things that people do to save their children and pets. I’m sure that the woman saw her dog in trouble and immediately went into action, not thinking about the surf, the potential for dangerous currents, or anything else, because someone that she loved needed help, and she had the power to offer it. I think there’s an instinctive and universal response to need among most humans.

And I think that’s pretty neat. It is very sad that both the woman and her dog died, but I think the case illustrates the deep connections which many people have with their animals. People make derisive comments about people who think of their pets as children, but I don’t necessarily see that as bad if people mean that people are willing to make sacrifices for their animals. Pets don’t need to be dressed up in suits and baby-talked, but I think that an owner who is willing to dive after a dog in trouble is a better dog owner, and the dog is better for it to.

Not only that, but I think if it had been her actual child, the comments in the post would have been very different. The first insulting comment might have been, say, five comments down, rather than the very first one. Or even if it had been someone else’s child, the response would have been “oh, what a hero,” instead of a string of rude assertions. There’s an assumption that we all have a moral obligation to help other people in trouble, so why not animals? What’s so bad, exactly, about recognizing need in another living being and taking action?

I don’t think that my cats are children. I am not living in some kind of fantasy world. But I do think that they deserve my care and love because I have chosen to take them into my life, and I have made (and probably will make) sacrifices for them to make them happier and healthier. And while I think that anthropomorphizing pets and using them as replacement children is unhealthy, I will defend to the death my right to take care of my animals, and to take action when I see an animal (or, yes, a child) in need. Because I see this as my duty as a living organism, to help others who need it and to speak out when I see something I don’t like.

I think that our decision to fundamentally distance ourselves from animals with disgusting comments like “another Berkeley Petophile meets her end” is a grave mistake. Comments like that are offensive on so many levels that I don’t think I need to fully explain why I was enraged when I read that, but they also explain why we tolerate animal abuse, as a society, because we don’t think of animals as worthy of the same respect that a snotty ill-behaved two year old deserves. By saying that animals aren’t worthy of respect, we can tolerate an abusive and horrific system of raising animals for meat and milk. By deriding someone who gives their life to save an animal, we cheapen our own lives. Personally, I think that reflects poorly on our society.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intersection of animal and human rights, and when I logged on yesterday morning, I noted that the folks at the Ethicurean had already beaten me to the punch about a series in the Charlotte Observer called The Cruelest Cuts, talking about the treatment of workers in the poultry industry. If you read (or watched) Fast Food Nation, you’ve probably thought about this issue at some point, especially if you followed up with a rollicking weekend reading Nobodies, a book about slave labour in the United States.

The Ethicurean is a natural site to draw attention to an article series like this, since the site is dedicated to talking about sustainable, organic, local, and ethical food, and the treatment of workers is very much bound up in the cost of our food, both literally and metaphorically speaking. I really recommend checking out The Cruelest Cuts, because it is very good, and very extensive. There’s a lot of information in there and it will be growing all week, and if you’re up for a laugh, you can read the response from a profiled manufacturer, which made me chuckle in that dark, sardonic way that I’ve been doing a lot lately.

I’ve been thinking a lot about meat consumption in general lately, because I don’t think that eating meat is ethical or environmentally sustainable, and yet I eat meat and animal products. It’s an awkward place for me, because I think it’s wrong and I do it anyway, and it makes me feel like a hypocrite when I try to think about environmental issues and ways in which I could play a role in making the world a better place to be, for both humans and animals. I at least try to source my meats locally, which is some compensation, but not compensation enough.

Reading this series reminded me that meat consumption isn’t just wrong from an environmental* and ethical** standpoint, it’s also questionable from the standpoint of human rights. Now, obviously, this isn’t the case with all meat, but meatpackers have been notoriously abused since the era of industrial meat began, as anyone who has read The Jungle knows.  Working in a meat processing plant is dirty, harsh, grinding work, and most processors are focused on the bottom line, not on the health of their workers.

The fact is that illegal labour keeps our food supply cheap. And that really, really sucks. As anyone who buys at a farmers’ market knows, the cost of real food raised by humanely treated workers is high, and some people find that cost unacceptable, because they aren’t thinking about the hidden cost of that $.99 avocado, or the $1.50 eggs at Safeway.

The article series talks about the issue of immigrant labor in a way which I think is extremely intelligent and well thought out. One of the things discussed is the simple fact that plants hire illegal workers because they are less likely to complain and to report violations. Even if you don’t give a fig for workers who are being exploited (and if you’re reading this site, I doubt that), you should care about what this means for your food. When workers cut themselves on the production line and the production line doesn’t stop, guess where the blood ends up? When workers are told to think about the bottom line and the bottom line only, how many downer cows enter the food supply? It’s not just illegal to slaughter downer cows because we feel bad for the cows, people, it’s because downer cows are a potential vector of a number of diseases, including Creutzfeld-Jakobs.

Exploiting workers isn’t just wrong from an ethical standpoint, it’s also wrong from a food safety standpoint. And expect to see a lot more exposes like this in the coming months; I think the American meat industry is cracking wide open, and we’re going to be seeing some ugly truths this year. Maybe enough ugly truths to encourage people to think about going vegan, or to lobby for serious changes in our food supply. I’m really glad to see the Ethicurean talking about this issue, because I think it’s a dirty little truth in this country. We all know our food comes from exploited workers, and we don’t do anything about it. Here’s hoping that’s about to change.

*Why is meat wrong from an environmental standpoint? Well, the generation of meat is extremely inefficient. If protein is your main concern, protein containing legumes, grains, and nuts could be grown in a fraction of the space used to raise animals. Meat production has led to mass deforestation in places like Brazil, and as the developing world is learning to seek out the Western lifestyle, the demand for meat is skyrocketing, leading to even more pressure on the world’s already limited wild space. Raising herd animals like cattle is also hard on the land, as cattle contribute to erosion and a host of other environmental problems. Not only that, but animal products need to be shipped somewhere for sale, thanks to our increasingly centralized methods of meat production, so meat comes with a pretty hefty carbon footprint. And that’s not counting the, ahem, greenhouse gases that are, er, emitted by meat as it is raised. There are lots more reasons, of course, this is just a brief overview.

**I understand that this is somewhat debatable, as not everyone thinks that eating animals is wrong. (I obviously don’t, because I do it and I’m not a total psychopath.) However, I think most people could agree that abusing animals is wrong, and if you buy commercial meat, there’s a good chance it was abused during its short and miserable life. Same goes for eggs and dairy. This is one reason I try to buy locally sourced meat from farms I know, to be assured that the animals I eat at least enjoyed their lives before my appetite truncated them.

But to explain why, you need to see the following chronicle of my workday yesterday.

I started out in The Chair with Mr. Bell. We have a good working relationship; he curls up in the front, I rest my keyboard on him, and we call it good. Then he got up, and Loki came over.

Loki is not so familiar with being a keyboard stand, but he started to get the hang of it. He actually makes a pretty good keyboard rest, because he’s so broad. And warm. It was cold, so it was nice to have a foot warmer.

This post gets pretty image heavy, so I am sticking it behind a jump so that it doesn’t totally clog your browser. I am also doing this because stories about cats are not fascinating to everyone, so I wanted to provide you with the option of not reading this one.

[...]

When I work in Mr. Bell’s chair, he likes to sit with me, typically between my knees with the keyboard on his back. I was amused today when Mr. Shadow tried to horn in, essentially making it impossible to work by packing the chair with cats:

I like having a job which allows me to sit around with a cat on my lap all day.

This is an incredibly boring post about feeding cats. I’m sorry. You probably expected something exciting with the title, but the truth is that I’m exhausted and my brain has melted into a worthless puddle, and all I really want is something deep fried.

I realized today that feeding time at my house has gotten extremely complicated, thanks to the bizarre dietary needs of the assorted cats. While not on the level of lion feeding or something, it does require serious concentration, thanks to determined efforts to meddle in what everyone else is eating. And don’t think my food is exempt; I roasted a chicken yesterday and had to fight off snoops from all corners.

First, Mr. Bell has to have his “urinary support” wet food, which I’m sure smells intoxicating to Shadow and Loki. So I stick his food on the table and then guard it while he eats, which involves dancing back and forth while the other two make determined lunges for it. Loki can’t eat it because it disturbs his delicate intestinal balance, which could have unfortunate results, and Mr. Shadow can’t eat it because wet food makes his poop smell truly atrocious. Every now and then one of them manages to make it up onto the table, and then a ferocious battle begins in which I try to contain him and he shoots out my hands like a hotdog out of a bun, and Mr Bell continues eating in an incredibly leisurely fashion, as though he is entirely unaware of the efforts I am making on his behalf.

Then I load a fresh plate up with pumpkin puree for Loki, and I encourage Mr Shadow to eat it too, since everybody likes firm stools. Usually Loki and Mr Shadow end up fighting over it, but when I split it up onto two plates, they fight over one plate while ignoring the other as though it is radioactive. Mr Bell expresses no real interest in the pumpkin, but he usually gets underfoot to complain about the size of his portion, thereby distracting Loki so that Loki jumps down to assault him like a jaguar from above.

By the end of feeding time, there are pieces of pumpkin everywhere and everyone is looking strangely dissatisfied, despite the fact their stomachs are engorged with treats. So they all go sit by the dry food bowl and look at it mournfully, even when it’s been freshly loaded with the obscenely expensive dry food which is safe for all of them to eat. I mean, I can see being a bit bored with their diet, and I do make efforts to jazz it up, but it’s hard when they all have unique dietary needs and Loki is theoretically on a diet in the hopes that he will lose weight instead of turning into a neutron star, or one of those cats you see on chat forums with a witty caption and lots of exclamation points.

There’s a deep irony about linking to a New York Times article about picky eaters and attributing the habits of said picky eaters to bad parenting, and then realizing that my cats are needier about their food than most humans I know.

Loki turns four this week, an event which he will probably not be celebrating, given that birthday cake would probably bring about a irritable bowel flareup. But he certainly has grown rather a lot since I first met him, and one frequently reflects on growth and relationships on birthdays.

My relationship with Loki began when I briefly worked in the isolation ward of the Humane Society. They were experiencing a ringworm epidemic, so they needed additional staffers, and I do have experience dealing with sick animals. I helped to establish a protocol for dealing with the problem, and I dealt with a lot of very small, very bald animals.

Loki was one of them. He was one of a feral litter, all of whom were marked with distinctive and colorful splotches of color, although their beautiful coats were hard to see because they were bald. Poor Loki. When I first met him, he was small enough to almost fit in my hand, and the rest of his litter was beating up on him. Despite the fact that every time I saw him I covered him in stinging lotion, Loki purred every time I picked him up, and when he was separated out from the rest of his litter because they got better and he didn’t, he would persistently try to play with everybody who passed through the bars of his cage.

Once Loki recovered enough to join the general population, I got into the habit of carrying him around with me. I knew that it would be hard to work at the Humane Society without wanting to take every animal home, but I steadfastly resisted until the shelter director pointed out that there was room for him in the public rooms.

“I’ll just, er, take him home and foster him for a few days,” I said. “Just to see how he interacts with other cats, you know.” She gave me a knowing smirk, and I took Loki home with me, where he developed into this:

As it turned out, Loki didn’t suffer any ill effects from his bout with ringworm infection, although he does have irritable bowel disease, which makes him a sort of special needs cat. I say sort of because Loki doesn’t require constant care for his condition, but he does need a special diet, and I have to keep an eye on what he eats and when. He has also become dangerous fat, despite my attempts at getting him to lose weight; while fat cats are often an object of joking, fat cats are prone to health risks, kids, so don’t let your cats get as overweight as Loki is!

It’s awesome having Loki in my life, although Mr. Bell and Mr. Shadow have their doubts about him sometimes. He has essentially boundless energy, and he’s very affectionate although he is shy with strangers. Which is a pity, since most people who see Loki want to pick him up, since he looks so soft. He’s one of the few cats I know who will purr if you look at him, and he has an unerring sense for knowing when you’re feeling sad, in which case he will distract you by doing something foolish. Although having three cats is awkward sometimes, I’m glad that Loki’s around, and I cannot imagine him living with anyone else.

Loki also helps with day to day website production; his favorite spot is wedged between my keyboard and my monitor, which is where he is right now.

Gentle readers, I am in sore need of your antspertise. My house has been invaded, inundated, deluged, even, in ants. They. Are. Everywhere. It’s really rather disgusting to see the seething masses, and I’ve tried literally everything I can think of to combat them.

I really loathe insects. Writing this entry actually makes my skin crawl, causing bursts of itching to break out on various body parts. You’d think that since I live next to a virtual superfund site, ants would not be present, but you’d be wrong. Rumor on the street also has it that other residents of the Bragg-town are being similarly attacked, so maybe we need to band together or something.

Before I appeal for help, it may be of some assistance to know a few facts:

1. I am extremely clean, so you don’t need to tell me to wash my dishes and wipe down my counter. My levels of cleanliness have caused people to accuse me of obsessive compulsive disorder.

2. Most of my food is tightly packaged in glass or tupperware, especially goodies like sugar and candy.

3. I have cats and plants, so poison is not an option. In addition, my neighbor has tarantulas, so I want to avoid targeted insectides, since I would feel awful if I hurt his tarantulas. Since he’s pretty close, I am concerned that the ants could carry something over there.

4. The hippies among you can rest assured that yes, I did try animal communication, and no, it was not successful. For those of you who don’t know what that means, I paid a hippie to come to my house and “talk” to the ants, in an attempt to negotiate a truce.

So…knowing what you know…any suggestions for getting the ants out of my life?

I hung out with Baxt and Petey today, and took advantage of Petey’s car to go to the nursery to pick up some plants. After dragging them to half the nurseries in town, shocked by the price of ground covers, we finally ended up at Fiddler’s Green Nursery, where I picked up a lemon verbena bush, because it smelled so good, along with a flat of Corsican mint and another of blue star creeper. The Corsican mint smells delicious, and it will grow into a big soft squishy mat which will be nice to walk and lie on. It will also exude its awesome odor in the summer, part of my goal to make the garden smell good.

The blue star creeper is another ground cover, with small blue flowers in a big dense mat of greenery, and I think that it will look really good once it spreads out. I also picked up some lantanas, which should spread out and get nice and shrubby. Behind the lantanas, I planted a lavender shrub, so my garden should smell really, really good in the summer. The peach tree pooped on me while I was working; I think the fruit needs a few more days to be perfect.

While I grubbed around in the garden some more, wincing at my sunburn, Baxt worked on a project and Petey and I chatted. It was a very mellow sort of day, and I actually rather enjoyed it, although I think I may have made my sunburn a bit worse. The garden looks really good now, and I can see my scheme taking shape. In a month or so, the ground covers should have spread out a bit, and the garden will look more green and lush, which will be excellent.

We also took Mr Bell to his ultrasound appointment; Dr. Jordan couldn’t find anything, which is a good thing. He strongly suspects that the problem was a sterile inflammation, although he wants to run a urine culture next week, just to be sure. Mr. Bell’s pee problem has been frustrating, but I’m glad that none of his tests so far have revealed a serious problem. I still maintain that he secretly has a crush on Dr. Jordan.

He and Loki have been keeping a close eye on the gardening and the work on the fence. They should count themselves fortunate that they are not being pressed into labor.