7/31/2007

Website update, and Pet Responsibility

Cross-posted from Crimespace--

Got to playing with the website builder and revamped my site. In doing so, I got to wondering, who sort of information do readers want to find on an author's website? Feel free to check it out, and let me know what else you might have wanted to see. The link's on the right. Updating again is no biggie.

On the other matter, we've just adopted a new cat, our third, and our second stray. The first one we adopted a year ago. She'd been hanging out in our yard for a while, and I figured she was a neighbor's cat taking advantage of the fact that our first cat was a house pet and hadn't staked a claim to the yard. She was skittish and would run before we could get close enough to check her out, so I didn't start worrying about her until she got real skinny and got bold enough to come right up onto the front porch and meow at me through the kitchen window, looking for food.

The new cat, which we adopted about a week ago, wasn't originally a stray. In fact, I know exactly where her family was. They lived in the house next door, and moved out maybe half a year ago, I'm assuming due to the breakup of the family, leaving their critters behind for a local family member to care for while they tried to sell their house. The two dogs gradually disappeared--one was an escape artist, and got the gate open, which allowed the other to get out on the road and get hit. The family member was aware of this, but it was the city that came by to dispose of the body. The escape artist eventually disappeared, though I don't know exactly what happened to it.

They also had the cat, which the family member faithfully came by and fed every day until the day the house sold. The cat hung around the house, and the new neighbors never seemed bothered that it was there, so I'd assumed they'd agreed to take the cat along with the house. The cat had always been skittish and wouldn't let me get close, so it wasn't until about a week ago, when I noticed she was terribly skinny and that her black fur was turning brown in patches, that I realized she had been abandoned and was staying alive by eating whatever she could scavenge. Once I started offering her food, she let me get close enough to pet her. She was almost literally skin and bones. I'm not sure how much longer she would have lasted if things had gone on as they were.

Which brings me to my point--when one adopts an animal, one accepts responsibility for its care. This is something at a lot of people don't really seem to understand. They'll get a puppy or a kitten, raise and care for it until it becomes inconvenient, and then dump it somewhere on the assumption that either someone will take it in, or it will hunt and feed itself. They ignore the fact that an animal raised in the wild by its mother knows how to hunt, but an animal raised by humans often will starve to death because it doesn't know how or where to find food. The casual cruelty in the act of abandoning an animal because it's become 'inconvenient' to continue owning it is appalling. I don't understand how people can leave something they once loved to die such a horrible death.

Enough for now~~