Adopt a Pet
Today in the Oregonian there is a story about a 200 pound cat who ended up stuck in a woman’s dog door. Yesterday we had a story about a newborn baby abondoned at a nursing home. And before these we still have the story about the dog jumping on the bus.
What the three have in common is that they are all going to receive a huge amount of would-be suitors due to their publicity, more than the anonymous orphaned cat, dog, or baby who lacks the back-story. (Well, I believe babies are pretty easily adopted commiserated with the age — ie: teenagers aren’t; babies are.) No amount of Patrick McDonnel annual message weeks about adopting pets is going to stop the fact that the majority will be put to death. I am reminded of the story of the four-ear cat, (I think I’ll name it “Four – Eyes”) and the curious statement that they’re “looking for somebody to adopt it who will not make a special deal of the cat’s extra ears.” I found that bemusing, because the very reason the cat was absolutely certain to be adopted was it received news coverage due to its extra ears. Do the cat’s owners scratch behind the extra two ears, I wonder, or does that violate that there “No Freak Show” rule?
Namewise, the temporary caretakers are failing us. The cat is named “Goliath” — because it’s fat, you see. I once named my mother’s first grade classroom’s pet goldfish “Fluffy” — named when the class latched onto the name. I don’t know what I would name the cat. I do know that the baby is better named “Kathleen” or something innocuous — one would hope that her abondonment at birth would not be the defining trait of her life, hence “Hope” is a stupid name. (You can more easily get away with such for dogs and cats. Hence, I believe the dog should be named “Hitch”.)