Warning: If you have or love pooties, keep the tissue (and the outrage) handy. I saw this story when I woke up at 3:something a.m. to get something to drink and check my email. (Yes, I'm weird like that). A link to this story was on my home-page. I read it and wanted to vomit. Warning #2: profanity ahead. You might want to make sure the little ones aren't around before reading this.
Holy mother of everything holy, I thought. WHAT, exactly, THE HELL has this country come to, where a man who's trying to put his life back together, and his innocent kitten, can't be shown even a modicum of compassion? I then muttered quite a few profanities, not wanting to wake up my husband. I also threw a few things, and shed a few tears for poor little Scruffy, an unwitting victim in someone else's GREED.
Think about it. $400 could have saved that kitten's life, and that kitten was truly a little angel with paws in that man's life. And now, he has to find a way to live without him, thanks to some human who truly isn't worthy of the title.
Yet more decisive proof, I realize, that our country has indeed gone to Hell in a handbasket. I've been in denial of that fact, but now that I've read that story, I'm forced to conclude that it has. I tried to rationalize it by thinking, "This is the state that's given us the wonderful (read: sorry sack of shit) human being known as Joe Arpaio, so why the hell should I be surprised?
But then again, I reasoned, this could happen in any other state: A "humane society" could decide that an animal could be euthanized because of a person's inability to pay for its care, and the outcry would be the same. Then the agency would have to explain why it wouldn't spend the money necessary for the animal's treatment without sounding like greedy, inhumane assholes, not to mention dumb fucks for all the double-talk they're going to have to engage in in the name of "damage control".
Holy fucking shit, that's tens of thousands of dollars compared to $400 that could have prevented all this from happening, and prevented the Arizona Humane Society from looking like complete shits (which, in this case, they ARE).
So, I have decided that I don't want this kind of thing happening in my town, so I sent a donation to one of my favorite pet rescues, and asked that it be allocated toward funds that are set aside to help care for animals whose owners can't afford their care for whatever reason. Money should not be the reason why a pet owner has to go through the suffering of having their pet be euthanized, I thought.
This is yet more proof that our country has gone you know where in a you know what, but it's also an opportunity for us to step back and think, How can we rescue it? We're not so far gone that rescue is impossible, I think. Maybe my waning optimism has a place, that maybe, just maybe, beyond all the rhetoric and crap that happens day in and day out, there's a lot of fundamentally decent people out there who give a damn and want to make a difference. And maybe, just maybe, I'm crazy enough to be one of them. Take that, Arizona (IN)Humane Society.