Neva Vegan

We Don’t Convert People: They Convert Themselves

2008-06-26T10:55:00.001-07:00

I was part of a number of on-line vegan or vegetarian forums and I think at this point I’ve pretty much left them all. There’s too much bickering, too many insults, and I feel like I just don’t have the energy to deal with it. But there were a number of themes that came up over and over, and so I’d like to address a typical dispute that came up in these areas.

A Made Up Example

Person A: (admits to doing something not vegan, but excuses it) I bought a pure bred puppy, but only because I couldn’t find an American Bulldog puppy at the shelter/ I ride horses, but if I didn’t they’d never get any exercise and I don’t use spurs/ I still eat cheese but only when my mother cooks for me, because I don’t want to hurt her feelings.

Person B: Why are you even here? Buying puppies/riding horses/eating cheese are clearly not vegan activities. Those things contribute to animal suffering for reasons x, y, and z. You’re not vegan, you’re a selfish fraud.

Person A: Well now that you’ve insulted me, I’ll never be vegan! You can’t convert people by yelling at them or telling them they’re doing something wrong.

Person B: How else am I supposed to convince anyone of anything except by telling them something is wrong and then explaining why?

And then we all sit and ponder and wonder what it is we’re supposed to do to convince anyone of anything. Then we all share what it was that changed our minds.

The proponent of yelling and insults says “I became vegan after I was eating a bacon cheeseburger and my girlfriend shouted that I was a stupid hypocrite for loving dogs and eating other animals. I was upset, but then I read more about veganism and realized I WAS a hypocrite.”

The person in favor of non-confrontation says “You can’t tell people what to do. I became vegan after being friends with a vegan for five years. I admired her and finally on my own I asked her some questions about veganism and decided to give it a try.”

The tireless pamphleteer counters “Giving people information is best. I got a pamphlet at school one day and that spurred me to research animal issues and then I went vegan.”

The rocker says “Conversion by music is best. In high school one of my favorite bands put out a song about animals suffering and I found out the whole band was vegan, so I decided to try veganism myself.”

So we debate: what is the magic formula, the precise order of words that inspires someone to change. What we find instead is that when our hearts are open to compassion, in some unguarded moment, the right words, the right brochure, the right song arrives. We had role models and inspirations and examples. We had heavy tomes of information and graphic videos, but nobody changed us. We changed ourselves. We didn’t wait around for someone else to come replace the contents of our refrigerators with vegan alternatives. We didn’t say “that’s awful, but it’s just too hard to change.” We didn’t delay, hoping against hope that somehow we’d see or read something to convince us we didn’t have to give up our coveted bacon sandwiches.

Instead we painstakingly put one foot in front of the other, and many of us stumbled doing so, but we kept trudging toward the goal of a cruelty free life. We made that change and then we found ourselves here asking “how can I convince my Mom?” and “what’s the best brochure to give my best friend?” Because our eyes are open now and we can’t shut them. From this standpoint it’s difficult to understand the passive ones, the change-resistant ones, the ones who see the graphic video footage and shrug it off.

We need to keep putting the information out there, giving out pamphlets, blogging, releasing under cover videos, showing off beautiful vegan food, giving samples, whatever it is we do. Because we want to give everyone the tools they need to understand these issues when they suddenly find themselves open to understanding. We want to keep putting the plight of animals in front of people, so one day they might really see it.

So the question really is, how can we help those around us reach a point of openness and caring so that they can let themselves feel for the animals, so that they can receive the information which is honestly all around them? And if I knew that answer I’d be sitting on a mountain top somewhere showering my words of wisdom on receptive pilgrims.

Since we’re all the hero of our own unwritten autobiography none of us want to let in that creeping doubt that we’re in fact the villain of someone else’s story.

For a long time there was a fad for inspirational posters in offices, you know beautiful scenes of nature with inspiring quotes like “be the change you want to see in the world.” And many of us as vegans take that quote to heart. We are being the change, after all.

Around that same time my brother developed a fondness for snarky posters mocking the inspirational posters. He had one that looked pretty enough, a purple sunset over a beautiful ocean and a large ship. Then you looked closer and realized the ship was sinking. The poster read “Perhaps your only purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.”

Who wants to be the warning? We have such a motivation to cast all our actions in a noble light, to tell our story so that everything we do is benign and all our actions are rooted in love, and bad outcomes are tragedies, but never our own fault. And that in turn is motivation to lie to ourselves about animals, put on blinders and believe that they don’t have it so bad, to block out the voices that tell us we can change our habits to help animals. It’s less painful to just believe we are incapable of doing wrong or making mistakes.

But in a very real sense I am the warning. I want you to try yummy vegan foods, but there’s no need for you to go through all the painful steps I went through to convince you to try them. I’ve made every single mistake there is along the way. Take the easy, high road of veganism—do it now out of nobleness and love. Don’t wait for the universe to punch you in the face to convince you you’re headed in the wrong direction. Although I guess anyone going vegan today in response to global warming and the environmental destruction caused by animal agriculture has every right to claim bragging rights to change via cosmic right hook.

I Ain’t Mad Wit’cha Morgan Spurlock

2008-06-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

So there’s all kinds of hoopla surrounding the recent 30 Days episode from Morgan Spurlock where a hunter George goes to live for 30 days with a PeTA staffer Melissa and her vegan family.

Many people loved the episode, some hated and more still felt ambiguous about it.

I thought I’d try to cover here what I liked about the episode, what I didn’t like, and why I still think it’s important.

But first I’d like to get a couple things out of the way. Morgan Spurlock isn’t vegan. He’s apparently married to a vegan chef. We might assume he has some familiarity with the issues, but he still isn’t vegan. I find myself at times perplexed by this, because if anyone knows the ins and outs of all the disgusting viciousness behind the average American dinner plate, it’s Spurlock.

So this wasn’t a tv show about vegans made by a vegan. Still of all reality tv shows I’ve seen, and for that matter fictional shows, that have depicted vegans, this was one of the kindest treatments of vegans themselves I’ve ever seen. There seems to be a lot of mocking of vegan ideals and lifestyle out there, and this seemed really fair. The point of 30 Days is to move past stereotypes of course, and that was accomplished nicely. So often we’re depicted as silly, deluded even, but in this show vegans came off as kind, sane, and really pretty normal. You know, how I like to consider myself on a good day.

Some people have been less than thrilled by Spurlock’s intro to the show where he grouped the right to vote and right to bear arms in with a basic right to not be killed for another’s taste buds. Eh, it’s silly, but I’ve been vegan long enough to see a lot of silliness, and this does seem to be a widespread stereotype, one the show refuted, that when we talk about animal rights we are somehow talking about trying to turn animals into human beings.

But people get confused about stuff like this. A good friend of mine said she thought the idea of getting therapy for traumatized companion animals was ridiculous. When I asked why, she said that animals wouldn’t be able to sit on a couch and discuss their feelings with psychotherapists. It seems many people are so trapped in human definitions of terms that they can’t wrap their minds around what those terms mean to non-human animals. So Spurlock reached out to an audience where they might actually be and then showed them the reality of what animal rights mean to the handful of people featured on the show.

Incidentally, since we’re all confused, voting and carrying arms are privileges, not rights, and we revoke this privileges from certain people, like felons and residents of Washington, DC. But I’m drifting off topic.

The show has George, the avid hunter, who claims to not be bothered at all by killing, eating and using animals, going to live with the enemy, Peta staffer Melissa and her vegan family and also volunteering at a sanctuary and a shelter. George transforms over the course o the show, growing to admire the people he’s been thrown in with and bonding with non-human animals, and being exposed for the first time to the incredible cruelty behind many of our accepted, taken for granted even uses of animals. George grows to love the veal calf he helped to rescue, he is shocked by the horror of shelter “euthanasia,” he is repulsed by the cruelty and neglect he witnesses.

Am I surprised? No, a hunter, and keep in mind I grew up around hunters, are sometimes different from other animal exploiters in that they create a myth of an idealized world. In this world, we are noble hunters who love and admire the animals we kill. We kill without pain or suffering and bring the kill home to sustain our tribe (now consisting of a couple of people in a vinyl house or trailer watching TV instead of gathering roots and herbs to cure our sick). I’m just sayin…

And because of this it’s fairly easy for a hunter to lament cruelty, claim to be for animal welfare, and keep right on hunting.

Melissa tried to address his hunting by trying to argue from cruelty. She asked if all kills were clean and immediate, without pain. George insisted they were. What about children, they might not be such good shots, Mellisa asked. George said the weapons themselves were so deadly that death was always immediate. In this George shuts the book on the cruelty of his favorite hobby.

So I quibble. No, no, and no. My father always said this too—no shot unless he was assured his victim would die instantly. Yet, he has also told me stories of his friends, out hunting with him, chasing animals for miles while they screamed in agony and slowly bled to death. And these aren’t children, these are Vietnam veterans with sharpshooter ratings. Killing is often messy, horrible, and more difficult in practice than in theory. And hunters are notorious for hunting drunk on top of it all.

But let’s say for a moment we take George at his word. He, himself is the perfect hunter and there’s no cruelty in what he does. And let’s then back up from hunting and look at it as a whole. Most Americans don’t hunt. Many burger-munching Americans are bothered by hunting on some level. Yet, truthfully there is probably more suffering in their burger, more concentrated agony, than in the flesh of a hunted animal, who at least saw daylight and got to run and socialize with others of her kind.

Is cruelty the argument against hunting? It’s part of it. And a basic rights argument is part of it too. Since I don’t live in a cave and I can cover my body with other materials instead of animal skins, and because I live in a world where human survival is more threatened by our over-population than a tenuous hold on survival, I don’t think caveman ethics apply to me. I think that I have no need to hunt and kill animals, and since I can easily forgo this infliction of death, it would be wrong for me to kill animals and eat them at all. Even if I did have a totally perfect clean shot.

Would George, our hunter be convinced by this? I doubt it. He’s so deep in the trenches of hunting that I’m not sure he can step back from it and question the practice as a whole.

So what’s another issue with hunting? For one thing, it simply isn’t sustainable. As we’ve developed more and more land to build McMansions and office buildings the habitat for wild animals has decreased exponentially. Our population has exploded. There would be no way for everyone in the US to eat animals at the current levels if the flesh were obtained only through hunting. Our current lifestyle requires factory farms, since intensive, crowded, mechanized animal agriculture is the only way we can answer our seemingly bottomless greed for animal flesh. George can idealize hunting all he likes, but if all his neighbors took it up he’d quickly find his forests empty of wildlife.

Are there other arguments against hunting? Yes, it decreases the health of the surviving hunted animals. Hunters argue the opposite that herd animals need to be thinned by hunting. But as humans we created a problem. Natural predators take weak animals. This is sad, but it’s a truth of the natural world. The sick, the old, the injured and the very young are killed by predatory animals. People however hunt with guns and have no need to run down their prey and kill them with their teeth. So they take the absolute healthiest and biggest animals, in fact we have an aversion to eating sick, weak, or injured animals. But human hunters leave those weak, sick animals, perhaps ones with dangerous genetic anomalies to breed, and take out the healthiest animals.

Hunting is no benign or noble pastime, and yet if we’re ranking cruelties it’s easier to argue against veal than hunting. Which is the moral quagmire that George finds himself in a the end, saying he’s a changed person, he’s been touched, affected more than he ever felt possible and yet he intends to keep hunting.

But this doesn’t ruin the value of the program for me, because I’m a lot less concerned with what George himself takes away from this than what the average viewer takes away, and I hope the normal, non-hunting viewer is horrified by the dairy industry, disgusted by the treatment of animals, and inspired by Melissa and her family. If nothing else, I hope viewers decide they want to learn more. I hope they want to do better, and ultimately reach their own conclusions about what actions from them will best help animals. I hope it pushes them to reconsider many of their decisions from an ethical standpoint.

This is getting long, I apologize. I’m still not done. Other quips and quibbles regarding the show. Lori of Animal Acres I think lost some really good opportunities to communicate effectively with George. I’m not sure exactly what the right place is to use a holocaust analogy would be. I’ll go out on a limb and say that it was astounding when I saw a speech from a survivor of Auschwitz who was now vegan and to hear him personally compare what he went through, as a twin at Auschwitz who was vivisected himself by Mengele, and apply that to the situation of animals in current times. Amazing. A bad place to use a holocaust analogy would be on my blog… A worse place to use a holocaust analogy is with someone who is pretty much getting their first ever exposure to animal rights concepts. And the points decrease even more in Lori’s situation because she used a holocaust analogy to shut George up and deter him from talking to her or asking questions. If there is a dialogue on these issues, it must be an intelligent conversation I think, questions are not answered in sound bites and slogans.

Swiping a Meme

2008-06-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

I'm stealing this one from the mighty Vegan Noodle.

The idea was to create a mosaic of other people's pictures from the first results page of flickr in response to certain questions.

This was actually hard for me since my actual user name produced zero results.

But here is my mosaic, more or less.

The questions were:

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What high school did you go to?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Favorite drink?

7. Dream vacation?

8. Favorite dessert?

9. What you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. One Word to describe you.

12. Your flickr name. I don't have a flickr name, so that one is something different.

The Psychology of Cats and Dogs

2008-06-16T06:57:00.000-07:00

So I haven’t been posting much lately and maybe you’ve been wondering where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. Or more likely you haven’t wondered, but oh well, I’ll tell you anyway.

First I lost my dog. I was helping my husband move furniture back into our house after a repair to the floor (you know it’s time to repair the floor when you pass notes back and forth to the basement). And long story short I rushed to steady a falling piece of furniture and failed to close the gate properly. Shortly thereafter our part hound dog, Kyra escaped and we looked and looked for her. People kept saying she was just ahead of us, rushing off to the park, and then she was spotted running across the soccer field. But after hours and hours of searching, mostly on foot, but some by car, we could not find her.

We went home and contacted a pet detective to help us look for her and then we made lost dog signs and went around at about midnight hanging the signs. Returning home after putting up the signs, after our dog had been missing for about seven hours, we miraculously found her, sitting on our front porch waiting for us to come home.

I felt so stupid and terrible, but I’m definitely not going to neglect the gate again. I check it several times a day now.

The Apollo, a cat, turned the knob on our stove top nearly killing us all by filling the house with gas. Yeah, we need a stove with safety knobs, but our house pretty much has the worst and cheapest of everything (installed by the previous residents). It was one of the scariest times of my whole life. We have now disabled the stove until we can get one with safety features.

So there you have it, my absent-mindedness combined with animals paired up to give me several heart attacks in a row and nearly kill all of us. The reason I’m giving for my absent-mindedness is that my one week and two weekends vacation, combined with house repair has exhausted me. It certainly hurt my feet and I still can’t shove the stupid swollen things back into regular shoes.

I had a birthday and we celebrated our eight year wedding anniversary. I made a cake. If you’re still reading this and you know of cakes, I have a question for you—how can you spread frosting thinly on a cake? I made a gorgeous vegan carrot cake and I made vegan cream tease frosting. Then I went to frost my cake—when I tried to spread a thin layer of frosting it just peeled back up taking some crumbs off the top of the cake with it. Then I started glopping on frosting and it looked beautiful. Unfortunately that was just too much frosting so while Sean and I ate our cake we had to scrape off bits of frosting and throw them out. I guess this is not a problem if you love frosting beyond reason, but I have only a medium love of frosting—I like it but enough is enough.

But anyway, I have cat and dog psychology to talk about.

Kyra, our hound mix dog is exceptionally gentle with smaller animals, which makes her an ideal canine resident of a rescuing home. Nikita is a little less sure and affectionate around smaller animals, and has been known to need to be told to play less rough with the cats (though no injuries have ever happened) but she’s also pretty good with rescuing.

The dogs and I on our walks have been trying to look after the feral cats we got sterilized at the clinic. The dogs seemed more successful at first with making friends with the cats than I was. Right now various neighbors feed the cats and the main ones I look after are Pookie and Omar who live at the school and Leelee and Deedee who live near our house. I’m having some difficulty with feral and stray cat psychology I think.

Now Omar was made famous when his picture was featured front and center on the Washington Humane blog and since that time he has grown to be a quite large, very striking cat. After caring for him for about a year I began to feel that Omar simply wasn’t feral. Every single day I walked the dogs out to the school where I fed Pookie and Omar together. One afternoon some children whizzed by on motorbikes and the noise frightened Omar so badly that he leapt into my lap, meanwhile Pookie ran away and hid under a shed. Not such feral behavior.

After this Sean and I started talking about the possibility of looking for a home for Omar, but we were concerned. Buddy who was completely tame and much more socialized than Omar bounced back to us and is now called Apollo (of the gas leak fame). The cats from this colony tend to have hard landings when going into adoptive homes. They are used to roaming at will, even if they like people they are poorly socialized, and they are used to scrapping for food in a colony setting and so have been known to get food or toy aggressive with other animals.

Then Omar got hurt. It was one of the deathly hot days last week and Omar didn’t come to dinner. Finally as I was picking up trash and on my way out Omar limped up, his mouth hung open, he was panting and heavily favoring one of his front legs. My dogs were about to fall over from the heat so I put down some food for Omar and rushed home. I got the dogs inside and then I got some ice water for Omar and set out to see how badly hurt he was. When I got to the school Omar took off. I called him in my normal voice but he was having none of it. It was like without the dogs with me Omar couldn’t recognize me. I searched and searched for him, but he’d hidden too well. Later Sean and I both went to look for him but couldn’t find him.

The next day the dogs and I arrived at the school to find both Pookie and Omar waiting for dinner. Omar rushed up and began rubbing against the dogs. I petted him and then gingerly checked his leg. He had two long cuts, one on the outside of the leg and one on the inside. Both were healing up, nicely scabbed with no sign of infection. So I gave him his dinner and went home to discuss the situation with Sean. Knowing that the only way to get Omar to the vet was to trap him we took a wait and see approach. So far so good, he has been healing very well and still shows no infection. This weekend he was walking without a limp.

I wonder what is in his brain that he can’t trust me unless the dogs are there. In fact as long as the dogs are with him, he’ll eat his food while people walk by. Children can get within 10 feet of him if the dogs are there. But everyone tells me that when the dogs aren’t there nobody can get close to Omar at all.

I’d still love to find a home for both him and Pookie, but that would be a hard landing indeed. Not many people have the patience to go through the fear and freaking out that would inevitably follow bringing cats like these inside.

Meanwhile our dogs have become very protective of Pookie and Omar and will nuzzle and lick them, but they chase away all other cats who try to come over for food. The dogs seem to be saying “Back off, this food is for our friends.” Kyra in particular seems to get mad when other cats want to eat the food, she has howled at them. I for one would be happy to have the other cats come over, so long as they aren’t mean to Pookie and Omar. I got them all fixed so it wouldn’t hurt them to eat a little food from me, even if they then go down to Alberta’s house and get another meal.

So then my next problems are Leelee and Deedee, the other, more feral cats. I cannot touch them, but Sean built a shelter for them and we slowly moved them into our yard. We did this because neighbors were complaining about them and if you remember a while back we had a spate of violence against the neighborhood cats. Someone poisoned a number of the cats and one young cat, now named Shorty, had her tail burned.

Anyway, we moved Leelee and Deedee to our yard, but this has not stopped them from doing the one thing the neighbors complain about most, tearing up the trash on trash days.

I might note that nobody ever tears up our trash as we went and purchased a trash can with a good lid. But many of our neighbors just put bags of trash on the curb. Leelee and Deedee then tear open the bags and eat the trash food contained within.

You would think that an easy solution to this would be for us just to feed Leelee and Deedee enough that they would no longer be hungry for trash, but this hasn’t worked out according to plan. They prefer trash to cat food and will leave the food we put out for them untouched to go forage trash. After a while I started to wonder if this was somehow related to the poisonings. Did they learn by watching the terrible deaths of their friends that nice bowls of cat food are deadly but trash never is? Or is trash just more appealing to them? Whatever the case, it has been frustrating for me since I would like to keep the cats safe and minimize conflicts with neighbors.

If this whole thing has any animal rights message attached it is only that all animals have their own personalities and quirks and that trauma affects them all. We should do better for them. I'm always amazed when people say that animals don't have personalities or souls. How could anyone spend time with animals and deny it?

I Went On Vacation

2008-05-30T10:18:00.001-07:00

Sean has been bugging to blog about our vacation, however I fear the inevitable slew of mean and accusatory comments, so I haven't really been blogging much.

We went on a week's vacation four years ago and then not again until just recently. We were pretty ready for a break after all this time.

I'll just give you a teaser.

Here I am hanging out with the nieces. I hadn't seen them in a really long time.

Here I am at a triple waterfall.

But it's always nice to come home to the ones that love you. Please ignore the unmade bed and just admire the kitties.

The Cat Update

2008-04-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

For the cats in our neighborhood we have gotten 31 cats vetted and returned to the colony and have removed 9 tame cats/kittens for adoption. Out of the cats removed for adoption, one was extremely pregnant and gave birth to five orange kittens once in the rescue. So that’s five additional cats that were never added to the colony. Though we originally estimated 60 cats in the colony, that number has been lowered, unfortunately since some cats were killed during the poisonings, some died in other ways, and one we had to have euthanized for advanced feline leukemia. Further a neighbor took in an injured kitten and had her spayed, thus fixing her and removing her from the colony, and another sympathetic person trapped and neutered 2 other cats from the colony. At this point we believe that we have spayed all the females in the main part of the colony. There are a couple males left to get, and then however many cat have gone off in ones and twos to other parts of the neighborhood.

We are now trying to continue care for the cats who are still outside. I still visit and feed Pookie and Omar every single day. Sometimes Lilly or Terry show up, but mostly it’s just Pookie and Omar. Sean built a gorgeous shelter for Leilei and Deedee and they sleep there every night and we feed them too.

Sometimes I’m still heartbroken over the situation. Omar is more or less tame with me now, and after all this time Pookie is pretty trusting of me too. I think they could be placed in a home, but then again our efforts to re-home cats from this colony have not always been successful. These cats often have issues. Pookie and Omar are both ear-tipped as well. But I worry about them out there. Moe, a young male, has been missing for some time now and we have to assume that something bad has happened to him. There are so many dangers in a setting like this. Still I’d rather give them a chance at life than not. And had we never undertaken to neuter this colony, we’d be dealing with a far greater disaster by now.

One thing I found after embarking on this effort, for the first time just as a couple, Sean and I, on our own, was that there’s a whole strange and confusing web of feral cat help out there. Some of this help has been so generous and so crucial, and at other times we were a little stumped by what we encountered.

The story starts off with us moving to a neighborhood where we discovered an enormous sprawling colony of feral cats were in constant conflict with neighbors. Were we to have taken these cats to a regular vet the project would have been impossible. Let’s say that we were to take 40 cats to our regular vet for sterilization and vaccination. So $100 per neuter and $150 per spay, plus $25 for the rabies vaccination. That’s scary enough. But during our efforts with this colony we also incurred a great many emergency vet bills, for a cat who pulled her stitches out, for sick and injured cats. So you can imagine our vet bill would be daunting. Not to mention that we’re living in a low-income neighborhood primarily because we are actually, drum roll please, low income. Then you add the costs of feeding and caring for the cats, and building the cat shelter. Ouch. So we figured out pretty early that we couldn’t do this on our own.

We started going to the low-cost Washington Humane Clinic, but even doing that on our own got a little rough. So we found a group that generously offered to cover the surgeries for 20 ferals. We would still pay the costs for any tame cats we tried to find homes for, any emergency vet bills, and so on, but the surgeries for the ferals would be covered. That got us a really good start on the colony. But starting to manage the colony without finishing would have been a disaster, so we started trying to find some additional help.

We found that there is an intricate web of cat groups in the area. Many of these groups cooperate with each other on crisis situations, but remain apart due to differing philosophies and policies. Some groups strongly oppose killing any cats in a colony, others fear disease and so test and euthanize at times entire colonies of cats for FIV or FeLV. Some groups promote high standards of care for feral cats, something I can’t argue with. Others have elaborate systems of tracking, wanting every cat documented and monitored.

There’s not much I can say about these different policies beyond the idea that we were thrust, alone, into an intolerable situation with very limited resources to address it. Had we not started sterilizing cats, even before we’d documented all the cats in the colony, prior to getting cooperation from all the feeders, we would have shortly had double the original number of cats. In the end we never got the cooperation of all the feeders, but at least we stopped the essentially constant breeding (we had litters of kittens born early March through Christmas). Had we tested all the cats, our costs would have sky-rocketed, since we would have had to pay for the testing out of pocket. We try to feed the ferals decent food, but it appears to me that other feeders put out table scraps and in one case, giant bowls of steamed white rice. I can’t disagree with a group that wants to see feral cats fed an organic and holistic diet, but I’d be happy to see the people in my neighborhood putting out the absolute cheapest food available, so long as it’s actually cat food.

I want to care for these cats and safeguard them. I’ve advocated to neighbors and children for tolerance and kindness to the cats. We’ve taken cats to the vet when they were sick or injured. I worry about them. I’ve spent evenings in the rain looking for cats who didn’t show up at meal time.

But if I waited to get the entire neighborhood on board with caring for the cats (which still hasn’t happened) that would have been additional months, maybe years of kittens, kittens, kittens. If I’d spent the money on holistic organic food for the ferals, that would have meant that many fewer sterilizations.

It breaks my heart in how imperfect it all is, how precarious their survival is, and yet I’m not sorry we just dove in and started sterilizing because the problem would have grown exponentially with each delay. The whole experience just convinces me all the more that when it comes to companion animal issues we need free and easily accessible spays and neuters. I have traps, I’m here, I could catch a lot of cats, but what I can’t do is pay for it all.

I'm ending with a picture of Ladybug. She is a tame cat that came into my care, through my work on the colony, as a starvation victim with the upper respiratory virus. She has now gone into foster care with someone who has a little more time and a little more space to take care of Ladybug. This was a situation that really upset me. She gained a lot of weight, just during the few weeks she was with me, but recovery from that kind of starvation takes a lot of time.

Should Fundraising Have a Vegan Message?

2008-04-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

I get a lot of mail and email asking me for money. While I sometimes find the amount of paper mail I toss into the recycling to be on the wasteful side, all this fundraising is nothing new. In fact, in my younger days it had quite an impact on me.

When I was in teens and bundled up some cash from my babysitting and mailed it to PeTA to stop animal cruelty I was only beginning to consider vegetarianism (something I viewed as a temporary boycott of cruel practices) and had not even heard of veganism. PeTA then bombarded me with mailing after mailing, always asking for more donations, but always insisting that the primary way I could help animals was to become vegan. In fact the message was more or less: if you aren't vegan, you aren't helping animals. And finally that sunk in for me.

Now I get emails from PeTA all the time. I got on this email list by signing online petitions via the PeTA website. I think most of the petitions I signed were on fairly non-controversial issues, like urging prosecutors to hold the abusers of companion animals accountable. So I figure that many of the email addresses trapped through these petitions belong to people who care about animals, especially companion animals, but might not necessarily be vegetarian or vegan.

However the fundraising materials from PeTA no longer mention that we can help animals by not eating them and not eating the eggs and milk that they are forced to produce. I’ve read a lot of them and not one mentions veganism or even vegetarianism.

I recently got this email about pigs, as an example.

From: "Ingrid Newkirk"
To: "Neva"
Subject: Is there something you don't know about pigs?
Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:31:26 GMT

Dear Neva,

You can help end the abuse of pigs on factory farms today with your gift to PETA.
[http://getactive.peta.org/ct/613Nb2S1dEcc/]

Do you know how pigs in the U.S. live their lives?

Fact #1: In the U.S., more than 97 percent of pigs-smart, social, interesting animals-are raised on factory farms. They spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy warehouses, where they never see the sun or breathe fresh air. Because of their hideous living conditions, more than 70 percent of the pigs have pneumonia by the time they are kicked and prodded onto trucks bound for slaughterhouses. As piglets, they are ripped away from their mothers when they are less than 1 month old and dosed with antibiotics, and they have their tails, teeth, and testicles cut off-all without any pain relief. But even that's not all that they go through.

Breeding sows are imprisoned (there's really no other word for it) in metal gestation crates so small that they can't even turn around or take a single step-many develop painful sores and bruises from being immobilized on a hard surface. Shortly after giving birth, they are forcibly impregnated again. This cycle continues for years until their bodies finally give out and the animals are sent to slaughter. After enduring these hellish conditions for years, squealing pigs are poked, kicked, and dragged onto trucks so that they can be sent to slaughter.

Fact #2: It doesn't have to be this way. PETA is taking on the world's biggest pork producers and reducing the abuse of these poor animals. Your urgent support will help PETA make major changes in this cruel industry and reduce the suffering of millions of farmed pigs.
[http://getactive.peta.org/ct/613Nb2S1dEcc/]

Your generosity today will be used to help PETA reduce the pain and suffering of myriad pigs, cows, fish, chickens, and other animals on massive factory farms-each one an individual who needs help.

Please know this: PETA's work gets results! We've already successfully pressured giants in the industry to make important changes with regard to how they breed, confine, and kill animals:

Following more than 100 PETA demonstrations across North America and negotiations with PETA, Safeway became the first Fortune 500 company to make dramatic improvements in the living and dying conditions of farmed animals, including making unannounced audits of its suppliers, establishing a purchasing preference for suppliers that don't use gestation crates, and immediately purchasing a significant portion of its pig flesh from existing farms that do not confine animals to tiny cages. Safeway credited PETA with "turn[ing] on the light of an issue we need to address."

PETA's influence over its customers, including fast-food chains like McDonald's and Burger King, convinced Smithfield Foods-the largest pig-flesh supplier in the world-to agree to phase out all gestation crates on its company-owned factory farms within a decade. Currently, at any given minute, more than 1 million mother pigs are confined by Smithfield to these hideous crates.

Just a few days later, Maple Leaf Foods, the largest pig flesh-producer in Canada, announced that it would follow suit. Then, almost immediately afterward, another massive pig-flesh supplier-Cargill Foods-agreed to stop using gestation crates on
half its farms immediately.

These decisions significantly reduce the suffering of pigs and have sent shockwaves through the entire meat industry. But we have much more to do, which is why we very much need your help.

PETA's high-profile protests and media outreach, consumer boycotts, and undercover investigations are doing what no one thought was possible: getting the world's worst abusers of animals to clean up their acts. And none of this would be possible without your caring support.

Please make a generous donation to PETA online right now. [http://getactive.peta.org/ct/613Nb2S1dEcc/] Your gift will help sustain our relentless defense of pigs and other animals who are, even as I write this, being abused, exploited, and killed.

Thank you for showing, once again, that all animals deserve our compassion.

Kind regards,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

P.S. Pigs are exceptionally intelligent, sensitive animals and are often compared to dogs for being smart, friendly, loyal, and playful. They're also naturally very clean and go out of their way to avoid soiling their living areas, which is impossible in factory-farm conditions. Pigs love to spend hours socializing and exploring their surroundings. Few will ever get the chance to do so. With your support, [http://getactive.peta.org/ct/613Nb2S1dEcc/] we can help stop the very worst abuses of these animals. Thank you for all you do.

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This e-mail was sent by:

PETA
501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510
United States

I’m including the entire email here because I think that many of you, on reading this whole long message, will be as perplexed as I am, as to why PeTA could not manage even one sentence in there urging the reader to stop eating pigs, or to go vegetarian, or even a link to vegan information. But when I clicked on the links that used to be here (copying and pasting seems to have messed them up) they only took me to an on-line donation form urging me support their efforts to fight the worst abuses of factory farming. Further on the donation page I saw no further links that might take me to specifically vegan information. There was a link that took me to the main PeTA webpage and from there I could presumably seek out vegan information. But there wasn’t even a tricky little “click here to learn more about how to help pigs” that linked to vegan BBQ recipes.

I understand the need to raise money, I’m not taking issue with that. However, I think that we always need to keep as on message as possible. A lot of people get these messages, hopefully at least some of those people read them. Since the emails will go out asking for money anyway, shouldn’t there also be a vegan message put in there, somewhere?

Feeling Unheard

2008-04-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

After the trial last December I ended up becoming really depressed. The trial felt like an example in miniature of the issues that ran through the rest of my life. I felt like I had been punished for trying to protect myself. I felt like I’d been accused of horrible things and never given a chance to tell my side of the story. I felt like I’d tried to do the right thing and ended up being dismissed, not listened to, not believed. And if the trial were my only concern I guess I could have gotten past that more quickly, but I felt these same themes kept cropping up elsewhere.

Around this same time I’d been engaged in the seemingly endless and largely pointless debate over the viewpoint dubbed “animal welfare” and the one we call “abolition.” If you read this blog, then you kind of know how I am. I make mistakes, I sometimes say stuff that I realize later was stupid, but most of the time I just bleed emotions all over the page and I’m more or less the same way when I say something to someone face to face. I strive toward honesty, both in terms of factual honesty and honesty about how I’m feeling and why.

And just to note: while some find the overly emotional approach a little self-indulgent, it’s not something I do without thought. I feel like I’d rather say to someone “I’m upset and this, this and this are why I’m upset” instead of pretending that I’m totally emotionless and impartial, all the while still having those same emotions color my understanding of events and arguments. A lot of the time I’m admitting to myself how I feel so I can do that little sanity check “Am I angry over the situation itself or how it’s being handled?” “Am I over-reacting because this reminds me of past situations where I was angry?” “Am I letting other stuff in my life come too much into this situation?” Because I don’t think pretending to be impartial works, but I do sometimes think that those who believe themselves impartial can cut themselves off from understanding their own viewpoint, and so are also cut off from understanding the viewpoint of others.

So, to sum up, I bleed emotions all over the page…

When someone accuses me of something I have to take a step back and consider: 1) what is the other person really saying? And 2) is this possibly true? So it messed with me a tad to be accused at various times during this debate of being “anti-animal,” of being a “dogmatic extremist” and so on. Emotions are high and I know to take these comments with a grain of salt. But still, it all felt a little unfair for me to be accused of such terrible motives or such defects of character, when from my viewpoint I was pouring my heart out trying to explain why I find myself taking this stance. And I do—I’ve poured my heart out on this blog, on message boards, in private email exchanges, and on list serves. I try very hard not to ever say “you’re wrong….” Or “you’re not thinking…” or “you’re being dogmatic….” Or whatever. I try to say “when I was up to my elbows in blood and pus, trying to save these animals, it struck me that I’d be doing triage like this the rest of my life, and others will do it after I’m gone, unless we could start trying to change the basic relationship we have with animals, and the more I read about this, the more convinced I became that concentrating on teaching veganism, as a philosophy, as a way of life, should be our primary focus.”

I’m over simplifying, but that’s more or less it. I’ve tried a lot of different types of activism, and I’m totally willing to admit that a lot of those efforts were dismal failures on my part. I don’t want to insult anyone else or take away from the very good work they put in for animals, but I also think that I’m saying what I’m saying out of some hard-fought experience and lessons learned from mistakes. But I found that most of the responses I got accused me of being some animal-industry plant, of secretly hating animals and wanting them to suffer, of not being intelligent enough to form my own thoughts, of not having even one valid point.

I think this is when I started not wanting to blog anymore. When I saw so plainly how other people might twist my words around, when I saw that for many it didn’t matter what I said because they were already determined not to read or listen, from their foregone conclusion I could have nothing worth saying… Well, then why bother?

So I trapped and rescued cats. The winter was spent on sick family members, various emergencies, and cats. And that has some good news. Sean and I managed to trap most of the cats in our neighborhood and rescue some more of the tame ones, and we’re starting to feel, for the first time in years, like there is actually some hope for this really terrible cat situation. But I didn’t blog and I didn’t talk to other activists, because I felt on some level that if nobody was going to even listen, then why I should put the effort in?

Listening, by the way, doesn’t automatically mean agreeing. And agreeing doesn’t automatically mean agreeing on all points. But as general rule, if I can’t paraphrase what the other person said, and have the speaker more or less agree “yeah, that’s what I said,” if I can’t do that, I haven’t really listened. The email and online debates convinced me that most people weren’t listening, maybe didn’t even want to listen. When it kept deteriorating to me saying “that’s not at all what I said” and the other person more or less repeating “did too” then there’s no communication of any kind going on there.

That, on top of living day in and out with the real possibility of the death of someone close hanging over us. Thinking about death while needing to give a peaceful death to a sick animal. Thinking about death while force-feeding an animal so starved that she wouldn’t eat on her own. That was the kind of winter I had. I know these are common experiences. I know we all confront death and living in our own lives in our own ways. I know everyone eventually faces those questions of when is it time to give up and welcome death and when is it right to fight with all we have toward life. I know we all fall down and then get back up and lick our wounds and move on. But even knowing the universal nature of these issues, I still felt powerless to speak of them.

I skipped the United Poultry Concerns Conference that was supposed to help us sort out once and for all the Welfare Vs. Abolition debate. I kind of figured that I had heard most of the same arguments before, and I was still haunted by that idea that nobody was listening. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe some people do listen. But I just had this feeling that no matter what people were saying, in private they said and thought that the other side had nothing valid to say at all. I know that’s unfair, each person speaking there is an individual and I am not a mind reader so I have no idea what they thought privately. It’s just that discouragement in me speaking up, urging me to assume that nobody is willing to consider any point of view but their own.

Anyway, I’m trying to stay a little more positive than I’ve been lately. I’ve had a number of activists tell me that my actual problem isn’t that nobody listens, but that DC is a mean town. They’ll tell me how much better they feel not living in city that encourages lies, interpersonal politics, and character assassination as a way of life. Well, I’m not moving any time soon. I’m still looking for my own ways to feel effective. A few people had asked why I haven’t been posting, so this is sort of where I’ve been for some time now.

Thank you Washington Humane Spay Neuter Clinic

2008-03-13T18:02:00.001-07:00

These past few months have been really hard, but I have to write this down today.

Last night we set out to trap a few more of the feral cats in our neighborhood. We've been slow getting ourselves in gear this Spring, but we're trying to stay ahead of a kitten boom.

We ended up trapping one of the older males in our neighborhood who we had not been able to trap before. The neighbors called him "Pimp Daddy." He was considered the father of many kittens and had a reputation for being aggressive and fighting with other males. Had he been neutered younger that probably would not have been the case, but that's not what happened here.

When we trapped "Pimp Daddy" last night he was not in good shape at all. He was clearly very sick.

I called the emergency vet but they refused to see him. I had to tell them he was feral, I could not handle him, he was in a trap, and he was very sick. Citing fear of rabies I couldn't find a vet willing to see him. It had become obvious to me that we were looking for euthanasia options at this point, but nobody would even help me with that. Later I gave up and went to bed, as "Pimp Daddy" was quiet in the trap and I hoped he was sleeping.

This morning my husband took "Pimp Daddy" in with the other cats to the spay/neuter clinic at Washington Humane. Even though they only really do spay and neuter, they took "Pimp Daddy" into the back to assess him and try to figure out if there was some way to treat him. They determined that he had advanced Feline Leukemia and that giving him a peaceful death was the kindest thing to do. I appreciate their caring support of a cat whom nobody else even wanted to see, much less touch.

They do so much good work, and they really helped us out today.

I also want to say that situations like this show the importance of spay/neuter programs. "Pimp Daddy" probably became infected through fighting and had he been neutered at a young age he would have had much better health.

I'm sad to see him go though. He was legendary in this neighborhood. I'm so sad for his suffering.

So, so quiet

2008-03-10T07:34:00.000-07:00

I wish I could blog, you guys.

A convergence of a few months has been kicking my butt. It’s not all bad or anything, I’ve just lost my voice in many ways.

Each time there’s an animal related topic I want to blog I just file my thoughts away and decide it’s better not to share, because my thoughts lately have a sharp edge on them. An edge that can cut either way, and so might not be very productive.

Life and death have been on my mind very much recently, so you can imagine what a downer it would be to read a raw dump of my thoughts at the moment.

So instead of blogging I’ll just show you some pictures instead.

This picture only makes sense to those living with dogs. Kyra chewed a hole in the blanket on our bed and we keep using it anyway. Here Liam decided to hide under the blanket and then ferociously pop out of the hole.

Here, Liam thinks he's hiding, even though clearly he forgot to hide a good portion of himself.

Here he's getting fur all over our bathmat while having a nice roll-around.

Here's Apollo (formerly Buddy) getting annoyed while I engage in a late night typing session. He'd prefer less typing and more rubbing.

In this one Apollo asks "What do you mean hay bowl? I thought it was a chair."

Here are the bunnies, featuring a fully recovered Jasmine, enjoying a good meal of greens.

Finally a deer we got a good shot of in the park--who could want to hurt anyone that beautiful?

The latest!

2008-02-21T09:19:00.001-08:00

Click for a bigger version

Helping People and Feeling Paralyzed

2008-02-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

Someone left a tired old comment over on Pattrice Jones’ blog today asking when she’s going to start helping people instead of animals.

To start out Pattrice does help people: she listens and provides support, she teaches young people, she educates the people who come to her sanctuary so both people and rescued animals can find healing. But since this old gem gets thrown at us over and over, I thought I’d examine it a little more deeply.

I do feel like I do a lot of little things here and there to help human beings. A donation here and there, volunteering, just stopping and helping, a blog entry relating to human issues, and so on. At the same time, I definitely do sometimes walk right past humans in need. It’s not that I don’t care, there are actually reasons why this happens.

Right now I’m knee deep (ok, more like neck deep) in an effort to help the feral and stray cats in my neighborhood. This means that I interact with homeless cats on a regular basis.

There is also a homeless man in my neighborhood. He begs down at the highway on-ramp and then comes into my neighborhood afterward. I don’t really interact with him. If he speaks to me, I’m polite, but that’s it.

When I walk with my dogs as much as a block behind this man I can still smell the intense odor of liquor—he really does drink that much, I’m not exaggerating. He had been sleeping in one of the sheds in the neighborhood, but the people living in that house asked him to leave. I have overheard him asking other neighbors if he can stay in their sheds now that his former hosts no longer want him there. I feel terrible for him, that’s no way to live, begging at the on-ramp and sleeping in cold, possibly wet sheds. But I won’t be inviting him into my house, and it’s not because I don’t care.

Here’s the reason: I’m not afraid of cats, but I am at times afraid of humans. I’m no more afraid of homeless humans than I am in general of other people. However, I wouldn’t feel safe giving this person a place to stay. I can see he has addiction issues and I’m in no way qualified to deal with that. In fact there are shelters, such as they are, in the area, but it’s likely he doesn’t want to go into a shelter, either from fear or because they would not let him drink in the shelter.

It breaks my heart, but this is something I cannot fix. Cats don’t need addiction counseling. Their needs for food and shelter are fairly modest, and should a cat decide to try to steal something from you, they’re just going to attempt to rip open a bag of food. A cat will not build delusions about you, or believe some relationship exists which in fact does not (yes, I’ve had that problem with people before). A cat is unlikely to try to physically hurt you, and if they do, well, it’s usually not that bad. Another human being could kill me, and I am always aware of that for obvious reasons.

The services out there to help people are inadequate, I know that, yet there are still people who turn down what services do exist. Some people fear government conspiracies and so won’t ask for help or give their names to anyone they associate with the government. Many people with addictions don’t want to seek official help because one requirement for some programs is that they stop drinking or taking drugs. And of course untreated mental illness is a huge problem in the homeless community.

If I call the authorities on him, I’m not sure what they’d do except lock him up for public drunkenness overnight. So I’m not making any phone calls right now.

One thing about having been where I’ve been is realizing my own physical vulnerability. Not in an “oh, poor me” kind of way, but in the sense that I know enough to avoid situations that could put me in danger. For me, interacting too closely with this man could be dangerous.

I can donate to various programs, but I also understand that those donations won’t help the people who won’t go inside. So I feel paralyzed. I don’t know how to help without putting myself at risk, so I do nothing.

I still believe that helping animals can also help people of course. I guess it’s some kind of defensiveness people have, where they demand to know what people who help animals are doing for the homeless and hungry. I’ve never heard that kind of hostility toward a person whose favorite cause is preserving historical documents or propagating rare types of orchids. But animal issues do seem to spark that kind of hostility in some people. I’m often annoyed because I feel like I do a lot and generally when someone demands to know what I’m doing to help people, then rejects my answer as not enough, they typically won’t answer the question themselves, or if they do they answer it with an excuse. I actually had one angry woman say that she doesn’t volunteer or donate because she’s a busy mom and her kids take up all of her time and money, but at least she doesn’t waste any of her time or money on cats. I mean, I get it, kids are expensive and time-consuming, it just strikes me as odd that someone who does no volunteering or donating would feel so entitled to get so hostile with me. But, oh well, such is life I suppose. People struggle with their own lives, but always know exactly what I should be doing.

Incidentally, most of the people in my neighborhood who I’ve interacted with about the cat situation have thanked me for my efforts. And they’re the ones living there and seeing the homeless man try to live in sheds. None of them have accused me of not doing enough. I always seem to get this kind of reaction from people who have more, live in better areas, and spend less time in places like this. Perhaps if they never have to ask themselves if it’s better to let the homeless man sleep uncovered in the winter on the elementary school playground or allow him to sleep in their own shed, then the question seems much simpler at a distance.

Ok, sometimes I'm even surprised at myself

2008-01-30T09:19:00.000-08:00

There's cute, then there's so cute that you feel a little ill. I like to push the envelope whenever possible. Click for bigger image. However, photobucket is compressing this huge picture, so it's even bigger IRL.

Then there's this little doube entendre. I dunno, does this translate as pasta with red sauce or is cartoon food a difficult concept? Again, click for the bigger image. Anyone want to tell me what an iconic vegan cartoon meal would be?

Vegans Love Life

2008-01-23T13:12:00.001-08:00

As always click for the bigger version

Thoughts about Recovery, Trauma, and Comparing Ourselves to Others

2008-01-23T12:45:00.001-08:00

A little off topic but this has been on my mind lately.

When I really talk and listen with my friends it’s amazing to me how many of us have been raped or assaulted during our lives. So many of us are carrying around unresolved trauma.

What trauma can do to us when we keep putting off dealing with it is to start to invade our every day lives. Standing at the fax machine the old wound suddenly shouts “pay attention to me now!” At times the intrusions of the past into the present become too persistent and too painful to ignore any longer.

Often in speaking with my friends, someone will say that she doesn’t feel she deserves therapy because her experience was “not that bad.” She thinks that she should be able to “just get over it already.” People who express this view generally compare their trauma to what others have been through. They might concentrate on the worst stories on the news or the harrowing experience of a friend. They judge themselves adversely for being so troubled by something they keep referring to as minor.

On a small scale this might be helpful--realizing the world is bigger than us is a good thing, counting the ways in which we are fortunate is a good thing. But if this self-destructive game causes us to ignore our own hurts, then the result can be bad. Just as accidentally cutting a finger while cooking is nothing compared to someone who loses a limb in a car accident, the assault we lived through may have been less violent, less traumatic, less painful, etc than what others have been through. But like the cut on the finger if we ignore it, then it might get worse. It might become infected, it might fester, it might spread poison to other parts of our bodies or our minds.In a competitive and not always caring culture it's important to remind ourselves that we aren't in a competition with anyone else. We don’t have to live through the worst thing imaginable. We don’t have to prove we’re the strongest, toughest, or most resilient. Our experiences take us where we are, as we are, and we move on from there. To use the accident metaphor again, two people might be in identical accidents, but one might be more seriously hurt. Pre-existing conditions factor in. The help, support, and response immediately following a traumatic factor in. Some people get up and walk away from harrowing falls, another person might trip on the sidewalk and break a bone. Sometimes we won’t ever know why one person might suffer more long term trauma than another.

We are not required to be the best at anything in the world, much less to be the best at recovering from terrible things we never thought could happen. What we should require of ourselves though is to keep working at feeling better. And at some point if ignoring the issue isn’t helping us to feel better, we need to reassess our approach and get the right kind of help and support.

Further, the idea of “not as bad as” has some inherent flaws. While we can say the less the violence the better, usually, each situation brings unique problems. While someone raped by an acquaintance might not struggle with the same level of trauma that someone violently raped by a stranger might face, there could be other fears and other types of psychic injuries involved. One particularly difficult thing about being hurt by someone we know and trust, in some cases by someone we love, is that it can undermine many types of relationships afterward. The lesson contained in it is that we can't trust our own feelings. This means that we are able to love and believe in someone who is capable of purposefully hurting us beyond all imagination. We start to love and trust again, but a nagging voice inside asks if we aren’t being foolish, surely it's safer to not love again.That’s just one example of course, there’s all kinds of fallout from any type of trauma and we should not ignore our own pain. Ignoring the pain can limit our joy in life, it can limit our productivity, it can hold us hostage.

When the motivation is there, the obstacles seem less

2008-01-20T17:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't been blogging, but I have been writing. The truth is that I started feeling a little raw and over-exposed. Hopefully I'll boil down what I've been writing, mainly about violence and assault, to something suitable for this forum soon.

But right now I'm going to return to vegan blogging.

Over the holidays I heard that phrase that vegans hear over and over and over and over "I could never give up cheese." I'm amazed that people always feel compelled to tell me this, especially in situations, such as sitting around a table where I'm the only vegan, where I can't really properly respond.

Generally this kind of statement makes me ponder extreme and unlikely situations where the person in question would give up cheese, like needing to climb a mountain every day for a single bite of cheese, or the only available supplier of cheese being a known pedophile who finances his child pornography ring though the cheese business. Yes, given the right reasons or motivations, anyone can give up cheese. Which is not to say that addiction isn't serious or that heroin addicts aren't motivated to quit, I'm just saying this is not as impossible as it seems.

The truth is that I loved cheese too. Honestly probably to the point of an unhealthy addiction. See, I'm allergic to milk, but my allergy is mild. I'd still eat cheese. I'd eat cheese knowing that I'd get an itchy rash later and an upset stomach. I tried to figure out how much cheese I could eat before I'd really regret it. I loved it, I craved it. I knew I shouldn't eat it, but I still did. So I know what cheese tastes like and how difficult it is to give it up.

I went vegan when vegan wasn't cool. Just kidding. When I went vegan there weren't many vegan cheese substitutes and the ones that did exist were expensive enough that I didn't even try them because I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't go out and find something else that satisfied my cheese cravings. I didn't develop a sudden aversion to the taste of cheese.

I just gave it up and after a while I stopped missing it and then a little while longer and I didn't really think about it. Years later cheese smelled strange to me if I happened to encounter it. But none of that happened immediately. I stopped eating cheese but still wanted it.

I gave up cheese very simply because I figured out that the dairy industry is crueler and more harmful than even the beef industry. I figured out that supporting an industry that enslaves female cows in unimaginable conditions until their milk production declines and turns calves into veal was something I couldn't live with.

When I reflect on this, I feel torn. I do think it's helpful to improve vegan foods and get new people to try them. I do feel it's helpful to ask people to cut back on animal products and try new vegan options. On the other hand I wonder if any of that makes a difference without sufficient motivation. Motivation seems to be about making those things we know on a "I've heard it before" level seem real and immediate. Graphic videos do that for some people, they find images harder to dismiss than words. Much in the way that someone will persist in over-eating, even after hearing about high blood pressure and heart attacks, but might suddenly change after a health scare, maybe there is something that can motivate people to finally quit cheese. Only don't count on health to do it--I've seen people sucking down cheese right after heart attacks. It really is a strangely addictive thing.

Sorry for the silence and good news

2008-01-19T09:08:00.000-08:00

I've been really, really busy lately but I have some good news. Our smaller white rabbit Jasmine has been sick for several weeks. She had kidney stones. We just got the news that finally the stones have passed and so she doesn't need surgery. She is eating on her own again and feels much, much better. Stones in rabbits are life-threatening since rabbits as herbivores need to eat pretty much continuously to prevent blockages and also because rabbits tend to not do well with surgery. We are very relieved.

Balancing the Feelings of Entitlement

2008-01-04T08:04:00.000-08:00

So often when I discuss my veganism with a non-vegan it’s usually because the non-vegan brings it up. Invariably the discussion boils down to “but ____ tastes so good.” Sometimes it gets nasty and people accuse me of trying to force my veganism on others.

For the record: I’m telling you plainly what I believe. That’s called ‘sharing my opinion’ or maybe even advocating. If I were forcing anything there would probably be a gun or a knife involved here.

Ok, that little peeve aside, I have some musings. I’m going to write out my musings without really going toward a point or anything, but instead I’m going to try to figure this out as I go along.

I’ve written here before about some of the unhappy aspects of my childhood, so perhaps I need to state right off that despite everything I enjoyed an incredibly privileged childhood in many respects. I was never homeless for example. I didn’t grow up during a civil war. We always had food, even if it was sometimes less than appetizing. I had that privilege as well to find some foods less than appetizing. Both of my parents are educated. I grew up around books and ideas. I went to school. These are things that many children don’t have obviously.

In that childhood I grew up with certain things I felt entitled to, and at the same time, due to the dysfunctional dynamics of my home life, I also grew up without feeling entitled to other things. So entitlement is a huge issue for me.

I grew up feeling entitled to eat animals. Unlike many vegans I knew I did not spend much of my childhood under the misconception that meat was made in bakeries or somehow magically appeared on grocery shelves. I knew that meat was dead animals, and I felt terrible and even mourned for the animals I loved that were killed and then cooked and put on our table. Yet I felt entitled to eat the bodies of animals. I didn’t think that the animals would have liked to continue living or give consideration to the terrible manner in which they died. So when my friends cling to their current eating habits I recognize something that I used to feel. They feel entitled to eat animals, and they feel like I’m trying to take away something that is rightfully theirs if I bring up the animals themselves.

It’s a strange thing when you consider the things we’re told we aren’t entitled to. I was raised to feel inferior, and as such, made to think I wasn’t entitled to respectful treatment. I was taught that I was not entitled to state my opinions or feelings, even when they were stated in a respectful way.

In college I had a roommate who called herself “a carnivore.” By this she meant that she really only ate meat, and almost no vegetables. She was also Catholic and made a big deal of the idea that during Lent she should not eat meat on Fridays, but she considered this a huge sacrifice. Of course it was alright to eat fish. Anyway, she defended her entitlement to eat animals fiercely. However she dated a guy who spoke to her very disrespectfully and cheated on her. She cried over this relationship, begged him to change, asked what she could do differently. So, on some level she did not feel entitled to a nurturing and respectful relationship. Meat eating she defended fiercely, being treated well just sort of slipped away.

While of course many women do care very much about animals, I sometimes find this odd thing happens when I talk to other women about veganism. Some women imply that veganism is a patriarchal effort to control them. “We’re sick of being told what we can and can’t eat,” they’ll say, “We can eat anything that men eat.” Well, I for one think men should be vegan too, of course. But it’s also interesting that in a climate of demanding or defending the things we should be entitled to, like equal pay, equal access to jobs, protection from violence, equal rights under the law, safe workplaces, etc, that somehow we get stuck in defending this perceived entitlement to exploit others.

Is it because we’re comforting ourselves with some kind of consolation prize to distract ourselves from the heartbreak that it’s been a century and a half since slavery was abolished and yet women and children are still being trapped and sold as slaves here in our midst? Do we feel helpless to combat the terrible things that surround us, powerless even to ask for what we really need and so we cling to the idea that at least we can get a $0.99 burger any time we like? Or is it that when we talk about what we need, what we deserve, what we’re entitled to, we find it hard to shift the topic back to what we owe others, what we ought to do, what others are entitled to?

And then it all comes down to perspective, I guess. I remember reading in feminist magazines or discussing in women’s groups the troublesome role anger played in our lives, and how gender discrimination affected anger. This is one where I have a good deal of personal experience too. I was raised, as many females in our culture are, to believe that it was simply wrong to get angry. Men were allowed to get angry, to express anger, but it was forbidden to women. The fact that I did get angry at times when I was younger was used as evidence that I was simply a bad person, defective on some basic level. And time and time again other women have told me they had the same experience. So collectively we would say “I was denied the basic right to feel my own emotions, I AM angry, I have a right to be angry, and it’s not wrong.”

But the difficulty with anger is contained in how we process it and how we express it. Thus anger is self destructive if we turn it inward, it festers when we try to suppress it, it stagnates if we ruminate on it, and so on. We should be allowed to express anger, but how we express it always matters. So it’s fine to say “I’m really angry because I found out a male co-worker with less experience and less education than I have, in the same exact job I have, is making more than I do.” It’s not ok to go and break that male co-worker’s car windows out because we’re angry.

Aside: It’s also important to think about what we’re entitled to in this scenario. It’s not so much that we’re entitled to the same money (though that’s of course what we tend to focus on) because if the money were always distributed fairly and evenly we might find the resulting increase to be on the low side. However, we are entitled to equal recognition for our accomplishments, we’re entitled to fair treatment, we’re entitled to honesty from our employers.

Back to speaking about anger: Another very difficult thing to accept is that historically while women were denied the right to be angry, this never eliminated their anger, and they found outlets for that anger, often inappropriate ones. So in learning to own our anger it’s not enough to say “Whew, I can finally say how I really feel.” We also need to take care that we don’t hurt others and we need to be aware that for centuries and even today all that suppressed anger is being used to hurt others. It’s ugly to say it, but it’s often true. White women denied the right to express anger at their husbands, their parents, their limited access to education, and their limited employment opportunities sometimes took out all that anger on targets who were unable to fight back, which included racial and religious minorities. Women of any color, any faith, any ethnic background could and did take out their anger on children and non-human animals, and even the elderly, the disabled, and the mentally ill. And of course some women found positive ways to work through their anger as well, in writing, in art, in tireless activism for change, or by throwing themselves into their work.

And I bring all this up because I think that if we consider all the ways in which we’ve been treated unfairly, even violently, we need to keep in our minds that it’s never ok to take those things out on others. We can understand and sympathize with people who’ve been pushed over the edge for whatever reason, but we need to try to hold ourselves back from that edge. If it's wrong for others to treat us this way, it's wrong for us to treat anyone else, including animals, as things, as a means to an end.

All the “shoulds” thrown at us are unfair, like that we should be extremely thin, we should always dress perfectly, and so on. But asking us to not harm animals isn’t another unfair “should” coming from someone who wishes to oppress us. It’s a plea to consider others, to allow compassion into our hearts. It’s asking us that as we rise out of discrimination, we try not to visit violence and death on those still stuck in the realm of “other” and “less than.”

Well, I think I’ll stop now. There’s more I could say on the topic, but this is a start

Happy New Year !

2008-01-01T12:53:00.000-08:00

Remember that when we want peace, when we want a non-violent world, that the first step is always with ourselves. We must act with peace and non-violence toward others, including other species, and we must act with non-violence toward the earth as well.

Feral Cat Stories

2007-12-31T08:50:00.000-08:00

It's really incredible to observe the bonds that the feral cats form with each other.

For some time now I've been feeding two ferals that live about a block away from the main colony. I call these two females (who both got spayed at the WHS clinic, thank you very much) Leilei and Deedee. Leilei is grey and white and Deedee is a grey, white, and brown tabby. Leilei seems to be older than Deedee and we suspect they are mother and daughter.

Leilei loves to eat. Deedee is more timid and hangs back. They live under a porch that some neighbors have in their back yard. After I was confronted over the feeding by a neighbor who lives near the porch and doesn't like cats, I've tried to move the area where I feed them closer and closer to my own house. However this means that Leilei and Deedee need to cross the street for their food.

Leilei always crosses first. She looks both ways for cars and then dashes across. Deedee makes many false starts before coming over. This means that Leilei sits by the food dish for some time before Deedee joins her. But amazingly Leilei won't start eating, but just looks back at Deedee until she sees that Deedee is safely across the street. So long as Deedee has gotten across Leilei will start eating, even if Deedee hides under a bush and waits for two minutes before venturing to the food bowl. But Leilei won't take a bit until Deedee is safely across the street.

Clearly making them cross the street is not ideal. I'd like to set up some kind of shelter for them on my side of the street, but we do live in the type of neighborhood where a cat shelter would likely get stolen. So Sean and I have been discussing ideas and design and how to tempt Leilei and Deedee to move, since they seem pretty attached to their porch.

But here is my cartoon portrait of them for new year's eve.

Walking Through Walls in the Heart of December

2007-12-26T09:34:00.001-08:00

After all this time the thing that still amazes me the most is the power of the body, the flesh closing up on itself until all that’s left is a scar. The almost supernatural strength there that means the scar on my back is something like five times thicker than the rest of my skin. So thick it aches in really cold weather, and I can feel it, like a tight cord when I bend. Because when my body closed up that wound it said: this time it’s for good, nothing is going to cut this open again. It annoys me, but it’s kind of marvelous.

Likewise the scar on my hand and wrist are quiet and flat and tough and betray no sign of what made them. Blood pumps through my body, my lungs fill with air, and everything works more or less as it should, except of course those things that don’t. But there it is, the stories behind the scars sound ridiculous, because I’m here after all and I’m fine.

I hope this same insane healing power will show up in our bunny Jasmine. She is still sick. Sometimes her appetite returns and we feel hopeful and then the next meal she won’t eat, so we have to give her more of her “critical care” (liquid food for bunnies).

While feeding feral cats I noticed recently that Leilei, a grey and white feral, had caught the upper respiratory virus that is rampant in this colony. I tried putting some lysine in her food, but that didn’t seem to make much difference. There really isn’t much treatment available for a virus like this, but I started getting really worried. Leilei’s eyes were running a lot and she looked so sad. Then suddenly it went away. She ate last night with perfectly clear eyes and no sneezing or wheezing at all. She seemed so happy, practically bouncing across the street as soon as I stepped back from the food. Her body managed to fight off the virus. If her eye infection had gotten really bad I would have had to have trapped her and taken her to the vet, but as I said there isn’t much medication that helps and ferals can be made sicker from the stress of the trap and the vet.

I’m glad Leilei is better and seems to have no lasting ill effects from her illness.

The thing with scars is that they take root in our minds as well, not just on our skin.