Cats & Moral Relativity

[mallorys_camera]

I called about the cats. (Of course, I did.)

Listing had been placed by the Brooklyn-based daughter of the couple who owns them. They live in Claverack.

He is rapidly descending into dementia. She has had multiple cancer diagnoses, and though she’s all clear at the moment, her mobility has been affected.

I’m driving up to Claverack this afternoon. If all goes well, the cats will come back with me. Kitties have been with the couple since earliest kitska-hood, so I imagine they will be very scared. (I well remember how frightened Rutger was when he first came to live with me under similar circumstances: He’d belonged to Dave, the Cinemapolis projectionist, but Dave developed a brain tumor and was dying. Rutger didn’t leave my bathroom for two weeks.)

Their names at present are “Mabel” and “Molly,” which I don’t like.

Are you gonna rename them? RTT asked. I don’t think they’d really mind too much.

I’m toying with “Petrova” and “Posy” after the two youngest Fossil sisters in Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes.



As soon as I made the phone call, my mood became merry & bright, and I spent the rest of the day happily & productively rewatching The Go-Between and cooking in between marathon stints of Remuneration.

###

Recent news reports coming out of Israel are so horrendous, my mind can barely wrap itself around them.

If you believe the Israelis, the October 7 Hamas raids were accompanied by rape, torture, degradation, and other acts of violence so barbaric that one instantly comprehends the Israeli compulsion to wipe out Gaza.

Key phrase there being “if you believe the Israelis.”

I neither do nor don’t.

I don’t know.

But if the reports are true, it’s hard to give much consideration for the rights of members of a culture that would do things like that.

Although consideration for rights always says more about the humanity of the culture considering those rights than it does about the culture whose rights are being considered, I suppose.

Suppose cancer cells turned out to be… intelligent.

You’d blitz them anyway, right?

Obliterate every last one. Ignore their frantic supersonic signalings: But wait! That cytosolic DNA-sensing pathway is the equivalent of a sonata!

It’s a ridiculous metaphor, I know, I know.

But one that my ridiculous mind keeps returning to.

And maybe Gaia looks on humans as a cancer. Isn’t the primate territorial instinct, mutated and distorted by the evolution of a frontal cortex, the source of everything destructive on this planet?

Or is “destructive” just another example of moral relativity?

Comments

[bleodswean]

I do. Believe them.

Animals are good for the soul, P. You know this, though. Good luck!

[mallorys_camera]

I'm recalling Brit World War I propaganda in which Huns raped and decapitated nuns, crucified kittens, and used infants as footballs.

So, honestly, I don't know and can neither believe nor disbelieve.

And photographic and video evidence would not convince me because we live in the Era of the Deep Fake.

[bleodswean]

Fair enough. But I don't have to think back far to recall Holocaust Deniers. I don't feel that I am looking to be convinced. The history in the area is enough for me. The human animal...

[mallorys_camera]

It's a hard one. "Convinced" is actually my default. But I have such contempt for Netanyahu, and I don't think he's above horrific lies to defend his actions.

[halfmoon_mollie1]

It took a great deal of self control for me not to say "I think you should at least CALL about those cats." I understood the reason you had talked yourself out of it, and I am oh so glad you didn't. I think you will be good for each other. As for the rest? Well, I'm Scarlett O'Hara. Lah-de- dah, I can't do anything about it so I'll think about it tomorrow.

[mallorys_camera]

I think I'm a much happpier person when I have animal friends in my life. So, yeah, I'm glad, too, that I called. 😀

[wayfaringwordhack]

I hope the kittens bring the much-needed companionship and sweetness into your life.

Re Israel: I never watch the news. This is starting to feel a little problematic as the kids and I plan to head back to Lebanon after Christmas, but all our friends are back and say things are "life as usual." I pray N's madness will not spread and that the situation will indeed quickly come to a peaceful end. But as BLEODSWEAN said, "The history in the area is enough for me...."

[mallorys_camera]

"The history in the area is enough for me...."

Honestly, I just do not know. And horrific stranger violence is becoming commoner & commoner in other parts of the world as well, so distance isn't an absolute form of protection (although, of course, it lowers the statistical probability of worst case scenarios occuring.)

I do know that accusing one's enemy of unspeakable acts is a time-tested way of whipping up the fervor. (See the propaganda accompanying practically every past war.) And that Netanyahu is pond scum. So there is that.

But I'm Jewish. So, there's also that.

[asakiyume]

My thought when hearing that news story was, This is sickening... and still doesn't justify what's happening now. It makes it UNDERSTANDABLE, sure. But not right.

Any people are capable of atrocities. The Japanese in China, the Americans in My Lai, the Cambodians, the Argentinians, the South Africans. H. sapiens are savage and awful. Sometimes. And some people do respond thinking: we must destroy every last one of the people who did that terrible thing; let no child survive who could grow up to create and raise more of the people who did that thing. But mainly, around the world, we condemn that approach.

On a positive note, glad to be working my way back through the entries and to read about your finding the kitties.

[mallorys_camera]

let no child survive who could grow up to create and raise more of the people who did that thing.

The whole thing is just an awful conundrum in my mind.

Word on the street is that Hamas struck when it did because Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of striking a Let's Be Pals treaty.

Of course, atrocities are most often committed by people who are desperately poor and completely hopeless. So, you'd think that someone would realize, The way to solve all this is to improve these people's living conditions and give them hope!

But that never seems to occur to anyone.

Plus, Hamas is power-mad.