[Leica] Slides the cat has gone to kitty heaven

[abridge at mac.com (Adam Bridge)]

On 4/15/04 <sam@osheaven.net (Sam)> thoughtfully wrote: 

>To some, the death of a pet is akin to the death of a child, and to 
>others the emotional resources and money spent on animals is a  scandal. 
>If the time and energy spent taking care of pets was expended on 
>visiting the abandoned sick and aged, or the money spent on having a pet 
>operated on was paid into the medical account of an uninsured sick and 
>needy human being, so much suffering could be alleviated. It baffles me 
>when someone fains concern (many times via documentary photography) for, 
>example, a bloated, fly covered, starving African child, and then rushes 
>in the Volvo to the Vets to have the dog operated on for cancer at a 
>cost of $5,000. Vanity pets have no place in a world of suffering human 
>beings.

I understand what you're driving at Sam, but I think the equation is quite
different because for many of us our pets are family members. We know them, we
love them, they fill a part of our lives that is clearly built into our species.
I see that what appears to be a pet was buried with a human being as early as
5000 B.C.

It's LOGICAL to say "yes, the right decision is to not spend this money." But
the emotional equation is quite different.

When our dog Wags was so ill we made the choice to keep her comfortable rather
than expend a vast quantity of money for a short life extension and perhaps a
life filled with an unknowable amount of pain.

This decision was just as hard for me as the one I made a few months ago for the
treatment of my severely retarded sister who at age 60, with no communication
ability, no real ability to express pain, was discovered to have an operable but
difficult condition. I elected to treat that condition with surgery even though
the physicians who were treating her gave such different points of view that I
couldn't believe they were talking about the same patient. AND, after the fact,
they were unwilling to aggressively treat her for pain, which I found
intolerable and almost neglectful.

And it was similiar to the decision my wife and I made for our first child after
she "survived" a drowning in a fish pond but who was so severely brain-damaged
that she was unable even to recognize the existance of an outside world.

These were hard choices. They SHOULD be hard choices. But they are HUMAN
choices. Some of us have the where-with-all to treat our pets, our non-human
family members, with compassion and caring and money. We would no more neglect
the care of our family, in favor for a stranger far away, than we would shoot
them.

Now that's me. That's me defending my family, pets and children and spouse and
the more extended members as well. But I submit it's human and has every bit as
much rightness to its decision as that of the person who puts down his dog and
writes the check to save an unknown person.

It's not about vanity. It's about family and compasion. Vanity isn't a part of
it.

Adam Bridge