Dear TVeblen

The BBQ Pit
41

This is what I’m talking about TVeblen. This confident assertion by you that I’m pushing the limits of forum rules by being “provocative” with my OPs. I’ve made the occasional clunker post from time to time, and I’ll readly take my beatdown for the indoor cat post, in retrospect it was a badly constructed OP, but in reviewing my last 500 posts, and sans the indoor cat post, in terms of posts addressing serious issues that are being argued about in GD or IMHO, I’m having a hard time finding posts that stray well outside the envelope of forum guidelines, unless I inadventently posted to the wrong forum.

Some of my OPs are provocative in the questions being asked, because the issues being addressed are provocative in their nature, or occasionally asking people to look at things from a different angle (which can seriously upset people). The GD and IMHO forums are by their design where many provocative issues are addressed and expounded on for both lightweight and heavyweight topics. Some of my questions are framed to engage debate or discussion, and IMO I generally give a fairly clear outline of what my perspective is if there is a serious issue on the table. Not all my OP threads are winners, and some lead balloon it fairly rapidly, others flower beautifully into engaging and expansive discussions. Stylistically I may not be your cup of tea, but your assertion I’m consistently violating the spirit of lively discussion and debate by addressing provocative topics, even if in a provocative fashion, is disappointing.

Your notion that inherently provocative OP = bad faith post is one that I really have a hard time accepting. If this is what you consider to be “shit stirring” and nascent trollery then I guess I’m guilty as charged.

42

FYI: In the Blue Bar at the top of the link. Across from View Single Post you’ll see Thread: title of thread. The title is a clickable link to the thread.

43

It’s not the size that matters, it’s what you can do with it, and mine is much faster than yours.
*waitaminute-that did NOT come out right.

44

You didn’t see an explanation? How’s this:

I DO NOT WANT MY CATS TO BE

[A] EATEN BY A COYOTE;

** RUN OVER BY A CAR;

[C] SET ON FIRE BY SOME SICKO;

[D] GETTING LOST AND NEVER RETURNING HOME;

[E] KILLING BIRDS.

Therefore, I keep them inside. Please note: This is MY rationale for why MY cats don’t go out, arrived at with due consideration for MY particular circumstances. Others’ circumstances can and do lead others to choose indoor/outdoor, with equal validity. If you still can’t see “why a cat can’t go outside” then you are [a] reading-comprehension-impaired; ** willfully blind; or [c] deliberately being provocative.

45

He says that to All the ladies…

46

Great Whore Jezebel doesn’t go outside because she doesn’t want to. When you open the front door, her eyes bulge, she stands on her hind legs, takes a sniff or two, and disappears in a grey blur toward the bedroom.

47

Abortion? Provocative. Bush v. Michael Moore? Provocative. But keeping your cats indoors? Nah. On the provokometer, that rates about a -1 in my book, which is slighly lower than the “Is it ethical to milk cows?” debate that some people try to stir up from time to time. When I run into one of these PETA nuts, if I’m in an indulgent mood I might offer them the courtesy of a meaningful nod before I order my ribeye, medium rare. But will they coax me into an argument on the matter? Nope. Will I get my feelings hurt because they think I am a barbarian for using animals as food? Nope. IMO it’s a non-issue.

48

Do us a favor, and hoist that cross up a little higher. :rolleyes:

Listen, I’m going to try to say this as civilly as I know how – you didn’t write that post to spark intelligent debate, and we all know it. Your tone was accusatory and your position was “cat owners are really slave-owners.” I find that accusation to be terribly offensive, but you weren’t about to back off your original position by one centimeter.

When several people (myself included) listed reasons why we don’t let our cats outside, instead of refuting our points, answering our own questions to you, or admitting we had valid points of view, you simply reworded your OP and clicked Submit. This is lazy troll-ery. You weren’t interested in debating to topic. You were simply trying to see how upset you could make people for no reason.

I call you a troll, because that’s how you’ve been acting. I don’t have any idea if this is a trend in a series, because I spend entire stretches of time (years, in fact) not wondering what you’re writing at any given moment. I do, however, recognize when people are behaving badly, and in this instance you were.

Deal with it. Lord knows I’ve made my share of inflammatory remarks, and I’ve taken my moderator asskicking like a man. I haven’t started a Pit thread to call anyone on the carpet, for Chrissakes, or refused to see how my comments might have been inappropriate.

49

I removed tags from the bottom as it was bolding the last section.

This is one of the reasons I enjoy cat threads. Treatment of animals in captivity is an interesting thing because of the way people view different animals. Interesting to me anyways.

For example, if you owned a horse, all of those reasons for not letting it go outside would be perfectly valid, but if you told someone you kept the horse in the stable for those reasons, they’d call you an idiot.

If you owned a dog, all those reasons would be valid, but if you told someone that you kept your dog inside all day for those reasons, they’d call you an idiot.

But if you own a cat, you can say after a great deal of thinking that those are the reasons your cat cannot go outside, and people will call you sensible.

So, the answer is, D) I’ve walked a cat before.

They make those retractable leashes with about 25 feet of line for cats as well, and my cats used to love to go out on them, because they could play and run in the bushes and see all manner of interesting things.

And PunditLisa and Chastain86, he’s already said the cat OP was screwed, and he’s talking about repeat behavior. Does anybody have a good example, TVeblen for instance? Something that pushes him outside the realms of the average doper?

Also, Liberal, good name for the cat :smiley:

50

Thanks. :slight_smile: We wanted a Biblical name. :smiley:

51

Fair enough. If I missed the part where he said that, that’s fine.

astro, my advice and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee, but perhaps you’d do better in future to:

  1. Take the time to explain your stances on topics you know will be controversial.
  2. Take part in the debate you begin.
  3. Take mod punishment for what it is – a gentle reminder of bad form.
52

Not ALL cats adapt well to leashes.

And I don’t think he meant taking the cat out on a leash. As for dogs, I don’t my dog outside, either, without a leash. (Our old dog could be trusted, she wouldn’t leave the porch, or the yard if we told her she could come off the porch. Not this dog.)

53

I’m not trying to chatise you guys, I’m genuinely curious at this point as to whether anyone has good examples of threads where astro crossed the line of decorum more often than any other Dopers might on occasion.

I’ve always found his posts to be pretty even handed.

54

I know, and I know. Not all dogs do either, it just takes more time sometimes. Also, if a cat doesn’t want to go outside at all, fine. My point of contention was with teh concept that the only way a cat can go outside is to open the door and let it wander the world on it’s own.

55

A cat dosen’t have the option of a fenced in yard. I don’t walk my dog all the time; I let him out in the yard, which is fenced so he can run around as much as he likes but not be picked up by dog theives or evil teenagers, hit by cars, or run away. A cat would climb my fence. My dog can’t. (He digs sometimes, you just gotta watch him and apply chickenwire and bricks as needed.) It isn’t the same thing. A horse will similarly stay in most fences. Only cats, of the major indoor/outdoor pet animals I can think of, can’t be kept in a fenced area. If you can’t keep them in, you shouldn’t let them out - I can’t bear to see roadkill with a collar.

56

I understand that some dog owners have yards their dogs can play in and run around in, and don’t have to walk them, but if you didn’t have a yard, as I don’t, you’d have to walk your dogs regularly.

Also, you forgot birds. :smiley:

57

Well, I guess you could construct some kind of elaborate outdoor caged in yard-with a chain link fence, and chain link roof-kind of like a batting cage…but all that just for a cat?

58

I think I have catagorized the indoor cat post as one that was poorly constructed, and badly implemented, and I’m ready and eager to take my mod caning for it. It generated a lot more heat than light and it deserved to be killed.

Once again the indoor cat post is not at all what my note to TVeblen is about in this thread. I’ve been mod thrashed before on relatively few occasions, and usually took the lessons to heart without a mutter. What my note to TVelblen is about is the angry assertion she leveled in the lockdown, that this is part of a some consistent pattern of near trollery in my OPs. When I questioned that assertion she indicated some of my posts are structured in a deliberately provocative way. My answer to her is an affirmative “Yes, some questions are specifically framed to be provocative”.

The cat post aside, I looked at half a thousand of my recent OPs and found a handful that might be considered seriously provocative, and indeed some were structured to be provocative in terms of encouraging argument and discussion. I then looked at the provocative questions. In critical retrospect there were some posts with inadequate buttressing and awkwardly rhetorical structure, and some were just a bit too much in silly fluff, better left on the cutting room floor category, but even if lightweight, ugly duckings rhetorically the OPs had (IMO) a valid core question or assertion, and did not delve (IMO) into a “chronic pattern of shit stirring” category.

That assertion by her is the only point I am arguing in this thread. Having said that, I’m much clearer now on what constitutes a “chronic pattern of shit stirring” in TVeblen’s opinion.

59

Shaolin, the big difference between keeping a cat strictly indoors and keeping a horse stabled all the time is that the average home is plenty big enough for a cat to get enough exercise to keep it healthy. The average barn, or more accurately, the average stall, is decidedly not big enough to give a horse adequate exercise for good health. Our house (just the finished part, not counting the basement) is roughly equivalent to a five-acre pasture for the cat. If you had a 5-acre barn where your horse had free roam and plenty of sunlight, and wanted to keep it stabled all the time for safety reasons, I’d say go for it.

Guin, I’ve seriously considered building an outdoor run for the bully cat when we buy our next house. (The weenie cat flatly refuses to have anything to do with being outdoors, so it would be an utter waste for her.) Ideally, I’d like to have it attached to the house, with a little cat door, so she could come in and out as she pleased. Hey, if Dr.J can build his Monster Kitchen, I think he can budget in a little extra for my cat run and waist-high dog tub.

60

It’s certainly not the first time. This one’s about banning pit bulls.