For cruelty to gramps and cat, I sentence you to hell!

The BBQ Pit
81

OK, let’s think about this for a second. Can I actually sentence people to hell? Is that in my power? If it were, I wouldn’t be starting Pit threads to express my anger. Therefore, what else could it be? Especially when I don’t actually even believe in a literal hell. Hell is what we make of our lives.

I know how the old man felt b/c the person who dealt with him told me. That is why I am attached to the idea that he got screwed over in at least this one respect by his kids. I also know that I would NEVER do that to my dad and that combined is what tears it for me. You see it different, but you are equally entrenched in your ideas about me and my views.

Well, isn’t that convenient for you. You don’t have to explain yourself because I won’t listen. Wow, rhetoric like that is dazzling. Right up there with “So’s your mother…”

Which, by the way, was said out of sheer frustration at “Ruby, you’re full of shit!” OK, I’m full of shit. Thanks for raising my awareness about that topic. Your eloquence is matched only by your insight into cat care. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

82

So I’m stupid because I disagree with you. Must be nice to live in your world, where you are right and therefore brilliant.

83

The hell?

No, you are stupid because you are judging a group of people you’ve never met for doing something you refuse to understand. You are stupid for wallowing in willful ignorance and narrowmindedness.

84

Shit, I don’t know how to cut the quotes as I reply to them.

re: Ruby’s apparent assertion that she never advocated pets’ welfare over humans’, all I can say is read the thread. I concede that my statement was based on opinion.

As to the statement about cats not eating in a new environment, yes, I, as a cat lover, understand this, but who in the public sphere should be held to this? I see no assertion that the personas involved had any idea of feline psychology. And, again, if a cat is pining for its human, is it better off alone or in a shelter with others to share its grief.

Ruby, you wouldn’t be, um, impugning my credentials sight unseen, would you?

85

And yet you still miss the point. The point is that if you glom on to one interpretation of a perceived event then you may vastly misinterpret it. If you willfully refuse to entertain other interpretations then you willfully engage in a sort of bigotry.

Had I only told you that my GF and her sister thrown away/took their mother’s posessions, you would think of them as thieves. Had you bothered to find out that they expected their mother would never return home, and that could no longer afford to pay for both the nursing home and the apartment, then you might have a little sympathy. If you knew just how much their hearts broke in doing this, you might not even condemn them to hell.

86

The hell of it is, I think I do understand. I have tried to put myself in their place and I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. There is no way. Perhaps the is a reason behind it, but I’m telling you, the shelter director didn’t think there was and she was PISSED. She went so far as to say that if she were the old man, she’d leave her money to the SPCA and write the ungrateful children out of the will. She wasn’t being hyperbolic either. She actually dealt with them AND the old man. I’m going to say that I trust her opinion and my own inclinations on this score.

You have decided that I am stupid and have refused to shed the beams of your brilliance on the woeful darkness of my ignorance. That doesn’t necessarily make it fuckin’ so, though, you know. I disagree with you and I won’t see it your way. In your mind, that makes me stupid. So who’s narrow-minded and judgemental here? Eh, genius? I guess it’s all in your POV, and yours still isn’t the only one to have.

87

I have reasons for thinking so. They’re just not good enough for you.

Taking her stuff to hold onto it is not stealing, esp. if they gave it back when/if she got well again. Throwing stuff out? That’s a different matter, I guess. It took years before we got rid of any of my mother’s stuff and she was DEAD and certainly not coming back for it.

I wouldn’t dispose of my dad’s property unless I was sure he wasn’t going to use it ever again, though. I just wouldn’t. I wouldn’t sell his house out from under him either, no matter how annoying it was to deal with. I would feel wrong about it just as I would feel wrong about getting rid of his cat before he came back from the hospital. At the very most positive, they are kind of assuming the worst and acting on it, which if I were the old man, I might feel was a bit precipitous at best. I’m sure the old man felt like they were tossing dirt on his coffin before he was even cold. The way it went down certainly made it seem that way to the peoeple involved. I can’t condone that or feel good about it.

88

I have shown utmost sympathy to the old man. It’s the kids I’m dubious about.

Do you imagine cats in the shelter, sharing grief? What they share is a vast discomfort at being in rooms with strange cats, being territorial animals and all. It’s usually a difficult adjustment for even the best-tempered cat. I think all of this is common enough knowledge to a layperson. You don’t need to be the Cat Whisperer to know this.

First of all, it’s Rubystreak. Ruby is another poster, OK, 'Cuda? Second, you have displayed your ignorance a couple of times, so I’m impugning your credentials based on what you’ve said so far in this thread. A cat who isn’t eating at home isn’t going to eat in the shelter. That’s elementary. If the cat was not eating, then basically you’re foisting off a sick cat on the SPCA. Very nice.

89

I can understand this to a point, that when you are choosing what beings to be around, you would choose ones that don’t act like what a human considers an asshole. BUT, when the extension is made to judging the innocence or guilt of an animal, or judging its “character”, we’d have to part ways. A being can’t be innocent or guilty or even have character if it has no sense of morals or the morality of different choices. So you can’t laud something for not being an asshole if there was no possibility of it being an asshole to begin with.

90

Strong emotions are not evidence. And just because she interpreted it one way doesn’t mean she got it right. You may trust her. I don’t.

Let’s step back a moment. I never meant to call you stupid, nor myself a genius. But I think you’re acting ignorantly in this situation. I think you’re intelligent enough to see different interpretations, but you refuse to. For some reason you took the director’s POV to heart and you refuse let go of it. My guess would be that you’ve made a stand on this board and you’re too emotionally invested in it to give it up. And that’s OK, it happens to all of us. But I think you’d be wise to at least consider that you don’t know the full story.

91

I’ve already explained why they had little choice and that it was extremely unpleasant for them. But what you seem to not be getting is that unless you knew the particulars of the situation, the appearance of it might lead you to a very wrong conclusion. And that might very well be what you are doing here.

And you may well be dead-on right about this. But at least consider that you might not be, even if you can’t imagine why.

92

So don’t. I know her and I guess I share her bias because she seemed pretty convinced they were jerks. She was there, you and I weren’t. You seem quite invested in your side of this argument too, man, if you’re insisting you have the correct perspective here and the 1st person witness is wrong.

How am I acting ignorant? I posted something on a message board. I didn’t firebomb anyone’s house or make prank phone calls to them. I’m just venting here. If that makes me ignorant to you, then fuck you. This is the Pit. I’m expressing outrage about something that strikes a chord for me. It strikes a different one for you, but that doesn’t make me stupid or ignorant or you righteous or correct. It’s a matter of opinion, really, and since the only actions I plan to take are on behalf of the cat at this point, it’s really an academic discussion. The only ignorant thing that I can see that I’ve done here is disagree with you and not see it your way.

This is the way I am about animals. Other people can judge me for that or say I’m deluded or whatever. My pets are my family. Due to this whole Moses thing, I have decided to leave my house and all my insurance and retirement money to the friend I have who has agreed to live in the house and use the insurance money to pay off the mortgage, who will live there until all my pets die. Am I crazy? I don’t give a fuck. These are my priorities. My cats are with me every day, through thick and thin, and I made a lifetime commitment to them, which I will honor regardless of whose life ends first. I’m sure the old man felt the same way and I’m sure he feels horrible about where Moses is right now. I’m sure the kids don’t or they would have found a way to handle it differently.

I know my father is very concerned about the fate of his cat, who is his sole companion in his home during these later years of his life. If this old man is anything like my dad, what his kids did to him was shitty. Sure, there could be scenarios where they’re not, but from what I heard from the shelter director, it was a clearcut case of them not giving a fuck. That’s not OK.

And the best way for you to fight my alleged ignorance was to call me stupid and ignorant. Fabulous rhetorical strategy there and one that’s sure to dig me out of my entrenched and narrow way of thinking. I like it here in my trench with my cats. You can have your wisdom if it means sympathizing with people who don’t give a fuck about an old man and his cat.

93

Rubystreak, a couple of things. You are a lot closer to and more emotionally vested in this situation than the rest of us. This makes your emotional reaction to this situation understandable. However it does not make it valid in the sense of looking at the situation logically. It can be difficult to put aside a reaction like this to try and see other viewpoints. If this had turned more into a Pit about people viewing pets as disposable property in a more general sense, I don’t think you’d be catching as much flak.The criticism is hinging on the possible misrepresentation of the children in the story.

As an ‘in thread’ example of what you are being criticized for, I believe you simplified and mischaracterized my posts when replying to one of tdn’s posts.

Now if we pretend that people couldn’t scroll up to see the original posts and could only base their opinion on what you’ve presented, they could come away thinking ‘Jeez, what an ass that VegemiteMoose is for giving her shit for something like that’. That you took it as me giving you shit does not make it objectively so.

The reason I wrote that ‘children=/=demon NOR father =/=saint’ idea was twofold. The one reason was to say: Look, here is alternative explanation which makes the children’s actions (as presented) much more understandable and sympathetic. Maybe their dad was a dick and they’re doing this grudgingly for someone they dislike. If, however, I used this possibility to argue the truth of the matter, you would be right in telling me that I couldn’t possibly make that call on the evidence presented.

The other reason was, as you said in reply:

You didn’t say or imply that he was a saint. Just as you didn’t do that, neither should you demonize the children. Because we just don’t know enough about the situation to judge one way OR the other. That was the other point.

Now even if, actually especially if what you have suspected is true and the children behaved poorly in this situation, please do not take that as refutation of the points made in this thread about trying to look at situations logically and from as many sides as you can. Because without knowing why they acted in this manner, we still wouldn’t know enough about the situation to warrant judging them or their father. Families and their interactions are weird at the best of times, throw in a hugely stressful situation like a father’s stroke and they can get even weirder. Tiredness and grief can make people seem emotionless to others for instance. This could then be misconstrued for callousness. Or the father and children could be estranged for any number of reasons we know nothing about.

I know I said I’d leave to let you fling poo unimpeded, but you flung a little bit on me.:wink: I would also like to say thank you for being a volunteer at the shelter. Volunteering is very cool.

94

Look, I never really meant to call you stupid, and if I did, I apologize. But I am trying to point out what I see as irrational thinking on your part.

It’s not that I sympathiize, it’s just that I want more information before I condemn them. What’s wrong with that?

Ah, OK. You left this part out. What did they say or do that led the director to that conclusion?

95

Geez, I don’t comprehend the overreactions going on toward Rubystreak. As I read the OP, I didn’t draw any conclusion that she cares more about animals than people. As I’ve read her other posts, she doesn’t seem stupid in the least to me (in fact, some of her references point to a good deal of intelligence and education).

On the other hand, she did tend to look at the scenario primarily from one side (the side with which she was more familiar, as most of us tend to do). So she may have assumed some negative characteristics about the man’s children that may not be true of them. Or that may not usually be true of them, but perhaps could have been brought out or exacerbated by the circumstances of their father’s health scare, and maybe by having to deal with one another and arrive at compromise solutions rather than ideal ones. We’ve been through a bit of that in my family in the last year or so.

What appear to me to be “givens” in the situation:

The cat was taken to a no-kill shelter. There are a lot of people who wouldn’t do as much. A point in the “kids’” favor.

Their father was taken to a nursing home that had caring-enough staff that someone took time out of their day to transport him to the shelter to say goodbye to his cat. Given the kind of horror stories I’ve read & heard about some nursing homes, this one doesn’t sound like the “kids” made a completely inconsiderate choice there, either. I’ll call that a push, at worst.

Now, the “kids” weren’t the ones to take him to the shelter themselves, or pay the adoption fee themselves. A point against them. Again, none of us knows how much else they have to deal with, where they live, etc. Maybe they’re doing the best they can. Given “Gramps’” age, they can’t be spring chickens themselves - the worst I would imagine for them (without the influence of the woman who dealt with them directly, who may have reasons of her own for conveying the situation so negatively) was that they made a poor decision. Not horrible, just poor. People under stress, hell, people in general, even nice ones, do that occasionally.

Still, I feel sorry for “Gramps” and Moses, too. I understand the need to vent some on Rubystreak’s part, especially if she works around this stuff all the time. It can’t be easy.

So - why all the hate for Rubystreak? And why all the hate for “Gramps’” kids? (Won’t someone think of the children?! :stuck_out_tongue: )

96

It’s an emotional issue for me. I keep picturing my dad, or my cats, in this situation. I can’t picture how it could be justified. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough, but I really don’t want to. I’m also not going to DO anything based on these irrational feelings except hug that cat and try to get him adopted.

Nothing. I feel like I have enough information, and my condemnation is confined to this board, so no harm, no foul.

I think it was the not consulting the old man. I guess the guy was upset.

My dad is a senior citizen and he has friends who seem to be nice enough people but whose kids just do not seem too interested in keeping in touch with them. There’s a lady across the street whose son has visited her a total of 3 times in the last 20 years. I doubt she was a horrible mother or a bad person, but I don’t think her cats would wind up anywhere but the shelter, if she had any. It’s not malice, it’s just a lack of concern.

The SPCA here is the county shelter and is the only one for miles around. The kids don’t get big bonus points from me for taking the cat here, because there isn’t another convenient place locally.

97

Certainly he was, I would be too.

Did your director have anything to say about the kids? Were they total assholes, or were they pretty nice, or what? Did they say “We don’t give a fuck”? (Which I doubt, but you never know.) Did they mention that it was their dad’s cat? In fact, the whole story about how gramps had a stroke, went to the hospital, was going into a home, etc. – how much of that came from gramps and how much came from the family? For that matter, what was the director’s general impression of the family? Were they well dressed? Did they seem happy? For that matter, how many of them were there, and what were their ages and genders?

98

No, I’m not assuming anything. You are! That is my whole point. You don’t have enough facts to have worked yourself up into a two page Pit thread. You can disagree with me about it and that’s fine. I’m of the opinion that you need to gain some perspective here. I know that some people consider their animals to be a part of the family and that this man may have felt that way. But you have to realize that there were most likely extenuating circumstances that made it necessary for the kids to “do this” to their father. All of these other options that people are throwing around - staying at the father’s home until he was released so the cat wouldn’t be upset, hiring a pet sitter, putting the cat in a shelter temporarily (by the way, you didn’t say anything about that one - is that even allowed?), or putting the animal in a kennel - cost money. What if the kids simply couldn’t afford to do any of these things?

Don’t call me an asshole, bitch, because you cannot think of an actual way to support your argument in a way that doesn’t involve you shoving your head in the sand and screaming “I can’t hear you! My way is the only right way!!” This statement doesn’t even have a thing to do with what you quoted from my post.

For, hopefully, the final time, I’m not saying that I think the cat should be just taken out back and shot if his or her owner dies but for fuck’s sake, to minimize the feelings of the children based on 2nd hand information is bullshit and that’s all anyone has tried to tell you.

Listen, honestly, fucking listen for a goddamned minute. People handle tragedies in different ways. You don’t know what you would do if your father was in that situation, because it hasn’t happened to you. You don’t know the state of mind of the children when they dropped off the cat, you don’t know the state of mind of the father or what his doctors were telling the kids about his chances of recovery. You also don’t know how the kids acted while they were there, just that they didn’t impress your shelter’s director. Let me ask you a question: How many of the people who drop off pets at those shelters do you guys honestly like or withhold judgement of? Because you’re providing a service for people who cannot care for pets, and if this is the way you think of everyone who drops off their pet then you are likely decreasing the number of people willing to use the shelter a second time.

Two more things you likely haven’t considered: Maybe the kids were assholes at the shelter, does that mean they are just assholes or that they were worried sick about their father and that’s just the way they were dealing with it? Have you heard of head injuries or traumas changing the way a person behaves? What if Dad was a lot more emotional than he normally would have been, because of what he went through? My great-grandfather had 3 heart attacks in a single day. He was never as strong emotionally afterwards as he was before. Have you even taken into consideration any scenario that doesn’t fit your preconcieved notions?
Honestly, take a step back and try to gain some perspective. All anyone is trying to say here is that you are overreacting and that you are painting a picture of these people that is, at best, 90% speculation and hearsay and 10% fact.

99

She said they were jerks and the old man should disinherit them. She seemed to think they were assholes.

You have a lot of questions that I don’t have answers to b/c I didn’t interrogate the director about this. I will ask for more info tomorrow when I go in for my shift, assuming I even see her. I will be seeking her out b/c people have been asking about adopting Moses based on this thread, so I have a reason to ask so many questions.

100

The Pit thread is two pages because I’m getting piled on by people like you.

I can’t think of what those would be, nor can I agree that they were likely.

No.

I know plenty of people who would have helped out with it for free.

Yeah, I thought you were saying that all I was doing was posting to the SDMB, when I was actually doing more than that. I misinterpreted what you were saying. Sorry for calling you an asshole.

See, now I will call you an asshole, because I do know what I would do if my father was in that situation. There is no way the cat would wind up in a shelter. I would take her or my brother would. He actually has dibs on her, but if for any reason he backed out, I’d have her. Period. Got it?

Volunteers don’t do intakes. We socialize the cats and try to help people pick out a cat for themselves. I don’t know how many people are liked by the intake staff. Probably people who bring in strays, injured cats, and unneutered barn cats, they like, because those people are doing the right thing. People who drop off a 20 pound cat they had since a kitten because she takes up too much room in their apartment? Those people probably don’t get big kisses and hugs. Would they use the shelter a second time? We’re the only gig in town, really. Also, I doubt your draconian representation of our shelter is accurate, but hey, I’m the one making all the assumptions here, not you. You’re entirely innocent of that. :rolleyes: You’re going to smear people who take care of unwanted pets for a living, but give the children of this old man the benefit of the doubt, but you’re not grinding your own rhetorical axe here…

Dealing with his cat this way is a shitty way of dealing with it. JMO, YMMV.

I’m overreacting by having a Pit thread about it? What if I really lost it, what would happen? I might slam a door or two. Whatever.