Oatmeal or Gemini?

When it comes to choosing between your morning delight of oatmeal or your elderly mother's cancer-ridden dog, some people would choose the oatmeal. That's what a troubled bike messenger did when he claims his mother was trying to feed her dog, Gemini, his oatmeal. Enraged, he slapped him mom around with a vacuum cleaner and proceeded to grab the sleeping dog (how she could feed a sleeping dog, beats me, but maybe the bike messenger knows something I don't) and toss the ill pooch out a fifth floor window to his death. He's being held on assault and animal cruelty charges.

It's amazing what people will do for their pets; a mother will send her son to prison for the death of her dog. If her son had ever hit her, she probably would not have said a thing about it, but her dog is another story. Once on Animal Cops on Animal Planet, the ASPCA cops were called by a Queens veterinarian when a woman brought her cat in after finding the animal dead in her apartment with her fiancé. Apparently, while said boyfriend was playing with the cat, the cat scratched him and he went berserk and punched the cat several times. The cat suffered severe brain contusions and bleeding. It died. The cops questioned the owner who was not at home when it happened but said her fiancé admitted to hitting the cat. The cops said they'd have to arrest him and she told them to go ahead and broke off her engagement. Yes, all for her cat. Granted his actions were a window into his soul: how you treat the innocent and weaker is a testament to your quality as a human being.

It is fascinating to me what we as individuals will allow ourselves to suffer (physical harm, humiliation), but wouldn't stand for an animal. I wonder if there are psychologists out there studying what chemicals are released in the brain that we associate with the "tipping point" at which we stop putting up with an undesirable situation or enter into one. For example, a woman came into KittyKind asking if she could surrender her 4 year old American Short Hair to us because she could not find a home for her and was moving to Colorado within 2 weeks. I asked her why and she said it was because her fiancé was deathly allergic to her cat and she got her mom to take her other cat, but not this one. It was a very sad, though not uncommon story. Unfortunately, we have a list of cats in foster homes waiting to be adopted out so she'd have to find a foster home for the cat first. She looked annoyed that she had to wait for a foster person to get back to her, so I directed her to other no-kill shelters/adoption centers she might be able to take her cat to. It was a decision she made when she first met her now fiancé--if it works out with the bloke, what will become of my cat? And now, she's got to face the consequences of that decision. I feel worse for her cat than I do for her. It's like that Farrah Fawcett movie "Small Sacrifices" where she kills her kids because the man she's dating doesn't want to children--not as horribly drastic, but an immoral choice.

Lucky for Aurora, a line of people are awaiting my departure from this Earth (or country) so they can lay claim to her. We Capricorn babies are just that lucky that everyone loves to be around us.