Who Speaks For Wolf

The Passing of Mister Whiskers

W hat I remember most about Mister Whiskers is the way he would sit in the kitchen staring up at me with his wide saucer eyes, leaning forward, half lifting his haunches off the floor in anticipation of the meal he was about to receive. His attention never wavered, eyes following each movement of my hands as they doled out the rations.  It is a memory which always makes me smile.

Mister Whiskers, named for his prominent white whiskers which must have been glorious in his youth, was a gaunt, spectral being when I met him. He was getting the best possible care at the sanctuary but the ravages of abandonment and kidney disease had taken their toll. He was another victim of human indifference - a waif denied love or compassion—until the shelter took him in.

This gentle, fragile cat made a deep impression on all who knew him. He would lift his bony frame from where he sat at the back of his cage and come to greet you, hoping for a pat or a chin rub. And everyone obliged.

He came to live with me and my roommates because it was clear that he needed hospice care. According to the vet, he was dying and we thought we could offer him a real home for his waning days, the home that the sanctuary had tried to find for him without success. We thought we would give him so much he had missed...what we didn't realize is how much we would get in return.

From the first night, Mister Whiskers took over my bedroom which had been prepared for his arrival. Food, litter...even homemade steps up to my bed when we realized just how brittle he was. And oh how he took to the bed...it was commandeered from the first. We may as well have erected a mast and called him Cap'n Whiskers for mutiny was immediately put down as this cat was not abandoning his ship for anything.

In the beginning, Whiskers laid waste to his dire prognosis.  His eyes sparkled, he ate like a horse and he eventually wandered up and down the stairs to mingle with the other felines.  He was deaf on top of all his other problems so he couldn't hear warning growls from our other cats.  They were completely spooked because he didn't respond to their feline cues with appropriate humility.  So, he wandered through the house in a world of his own, parting the sea of cats before him.

It seemed that he would live forever. We would joke about how he would surpass us all, creaking far into the future.

But the inevitable happened about two months after we had grown accustomed to his ghostly presence. One day he was eating 6 meals and the next nothing. He barely moved from his chosen place under the window and the sparkle started to fade from those glowing eyes of his. This was what we had planned for...why we had taken him in the first place. But, now with the moment fast approaching we were not sure we were ready. And, this is when Whiskers worked his magic.

It dawned on us that he didn't share our fears or inhibitions about death.  We needed to look beyond ourselves, to truly focus on another's needs.  This was about allowing another soul to pass with dignity and compassion, about accepting the dying process and not interfering with it.  Above all, we asked, "What does Mister Whiskers want?"  It was clear to us that he didn't want a last-ditch run to an emergency vet, needles and pills forced upon him in a vain attempt to gain a few more hours.  It seemed to us that he wanted a quiet place, an old cushion and a tender caress.  He would do the rest, even to the point of giving us all a chance to lay on the floor with him  and say our personal goodbyes.  He gave right to the end.

Mister Whiskers passed from us in the best way I think anyone can pass. Not in defeat...as we so often think of death. But, in his own time. In his own way. The hardest lesson to learn is when to let go - it took a skinny, black cat to teach me this.

But though we let go in the flesh, we hang on in our hearts and there will always be a tiny corner for the cat who tottered out of a Tim Burton film and lit up my kitchen with his shining eyes, splendid whiskers and wide open heart.

Saints Animal Rescue

I have discovered another animal rescue in British Columbia which greatly impresses me.  Saints Rescue provides sanctuary for elderly and special needs animals...a cause which holds a very special place in my heart.  Their blog is particularly fascinating as, rather than simply describing the animals or sharing adoption stories, the founder and her volunteers discuss philosophical questions about what it means to give of oneself to others, our relationship to non-human animals and other soul-searching issues which many of us ponder but rarely address in a public forum.

This is my favourite post so far and possibly my favourite blog post of all time: http://www.saintsrescue.ca/wordpress/?m=200701

A Moment

Another post I wrote before starting "Comondi".  I think it may have been this moment that finally catapulted me towards work I believe in.

I'm having a moment. It must be similar to the moment in "The Matrix" when Neo finally discerns the patterns of numbers which keep him imprisoned in a world not of his choosing. Except along with this realization, he also taps into unimaginable powers which enable him to shatter the illusion and take back his life. I wonder where my powers are.

I walked in a haze today, blurry shapes passing me by, grey rectangles looming above me, grey ribbon beneath me. And I couldn't touch anything, I couldn't feel anything because it was as if there was nothing to sense...it was all dead. A replica of life that can't actually BE life. Where are these shapes going? What are these rectangles for? It's like my whole view of the world has been catapulted into METALOOK. What do all these elements mean? And it seems to me they mean nothing, nothing of any importance. Why am I returning to this hollowed out echo of brick and mortar? Why am I willing to sit and stare at a cube for hours on end without even a shred of discomfort? The rain of numbers holds me fast.

"Who would I be and how would I live if I were not part of this system?"

This is the question we all need to answer. This system based on hatred and coercion, competition and corruption wavers a little bit more each time I look directly into its heart, black as it is. Everything looks like a TV screen when the lines run across it and the images start to jitter. My job begins to jitter, those ladies in their perfectly tailored dress suits with their perfectly shaped lips begin to jitter, the streetcar hauling its numbed cargo begins to jitter...and I begin to jitter. Because for so long I have relied on the numbers to tell me who I am, where I'm going, why I'm here. Perhaps by this time, there is only a tiny part of me, a mere flicker which doesn't cascade along with the 1s and 0s. It is this part of me that tries to alert me to the absurdity of a world which has twisted the idea of "human" and "humane" so much that we are more machine than natural. At the same time I try to fan this flicker into something more, I'm terrified that I won't know how to control it once it burns a hole through the fabric of my incarceration. What will I do with all those frayed and blackened edges?

What I would like to do is stop trading hours, MY hours, for a green-backed deity which I've never believed in and which is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated in human history. Only more numbers, always numbers, like bars on a cage. Numbers pitting us against each other, against the earth, against those remnants that are still human, that still hold fast to earth and water and sweat and mud and all that is TRULY sensory. There is no earth in my cubicle, water contained only in a glass, mud never and sweat only when the recycled air begins to induce sickness and fatigue.

There must be a chink through which I can crawl, a hole that hasn't been plastered up yet.

Perhaps Thoreau knew how to draw back the curtain,

"We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life."

I'm having a moment...but I'm already starting to lose it again. I'm feeling my feet under me again and I know this isn't a good thing.

Kindness

This was what I wrote a month after my "Impotence" post.  It was how I started to emerge from the fog I was in.

"Be Kind". A friend of mine said this during one of our long discussions regarding morals and ethics and how to "be" in the world. He had said very little throughout but these were the two words that escaped. And, at first, it seemed too simplistic, leaving itself open for minute dissection. But, at second, it seemed simply perfect. "Be kind". What better way is there to live? If those two words resounded in the back of everyone's head when they contemplated their actions in the world, I think great change and shifts of perception would occur. Because if you genuinely filter this ethic through your heart, there is little chance of steering wrong. Being kind would leave the rainforests standing, the foxes in the forests, the hungry of the world with food, the despairing with hope and humanity would regain the heart that it lost somewhere along the way...or is it possible we are still looking for it?

I think reopening wounds, remembering, honouring, crying is not unhealthy. I think suffering should not be ignored or passed over for our own comfort. But, I am also returning to myself, to the energies that flow through my veins and recognizing my own power. There need not be impotence because with every small deed I perform or every shallow breath I put out into the world, I have the opportunity to nourish and to be kind.

I rewatched "The Witness" over the holidays. Each time I view it, something different resonates with me and this time it was Eddie Lamas' words about the suffering of farm animals. He spoke about the lack of space, the fetid air, the torture, the suffering but after all this he said, "but not because of me...you see, and that's the difference, it will not be because of me..." And as I sat at my desk thinking about this I grabbed a scrap piece of paper and scrawled NOT BECAUSE OF ME on it and tacked it above my computer so that when I feel overwhelmed, when I feel hopeless I can look up and be reminded that I have tried to make kind choices.  And that IS the difference...when each of us chooses to withdraw our support from that which tortures us as surely as it tortures the intended victims. It may seem trite, it may seem "hippie", it may seem simplistic but...I choose kindness. And within that word lies the power to move mountains or (and here is where the greater potency lies)...the courage to leave them right where they are.

Making our "dinners" Transparent

This is a wonderful post over at Animal Writings.  It brings people face to face with their "dinners".  Please pass it on to everyone who eats!!!!  :-)

Impotence

I actually wrote this post 3 years ago but I thought I'd share it here since not many people ever read it and since the feeling resurfaces from time to time. 

I'm starting to feel like a person who's been wandering through blinding snow for hours and it's getting cold and I just want to lie down and give in to that tingly, comforting, easy feeling that's sliding up through my legs and into my chest and radiating out through my arms and my fingertips and finally creeping up to my brain, sweet, calming numbness where the wandering can end and everything just becomes EAASSYYY.

Derrick Jensen writes:

"In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must at all costs be avoided. When we do allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defenses and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre party. We try to stay out of harm's way, afraid they will go off, shatter our delusions, and leave us exposed to what we have done to the world and to ourselves, exposed as the hollow people we have become. And so we avoid these truths, these self-evident truths, and continue the dance of world destruction."

I know it sounds depressing and heavy and not something anyone wants to hear but...that leads us so quickly to denial, doesn't it? I don't wanna hear any of this so I'll just tune it out because if I actually took it in right down through my very depths, seeping into the places where I am most vulnerable, I might actually have to DO something; I might actually have to contemplate that grenade going off.

And I so desperately want to DO something. I feel that blanket of indifference, fleecy and cozy and oh so inviting, starting to wrap itself around my senses, starting to buffer me from my rage and my unease and my self-evident truth which tells me, this isn't the world I want to inhabit. But I could so easily blend in, work at my perfectly pleasant job, socialize with my perfectly pleasant friends, perform in perfectly pleasant plays and occasionally raise my voice in protest when my soul suddenly remembers something that just as quickly recedes into nothingness once again. It's just like having hundreds of needles jabbed into your flesh and then twisted over and over again. If you agree to adapt to the violence, to the destruction, to the suffering, if you agree to this numbing deal, then the wounds will heal and the needles will be withdrawn. You can just be grateful things aren't worse, that you, at least, are not being electrocuted or isolated or forced into the slaughtering chute. You can just be grateful. You can just be silent. You can just join the easy, meandering flow. You can just be perfectly pleasant.

And this frightens me so much that I have to jab the needles again and again, reopening sores and feeling my heart break all over again. Jab. Scientists attach electrodes to seven-day-old kittens, then shock them up to 700 times per day for the next 35 days, always during the nursing period. When the mother cat actually discovers that the kittens are being shocked during the feeding process, she does everything possible to thwart the experimenter with her claws, then tries to bite the electric wire and then finally runs as far away as possible from the kittens when electrodes are around their legs. When the electrodes are removed, she caresses and licks the kittens with fierce intensity.

Jab. Dogs given electric shocks while their heads are immobilized in stocks. One of the dogs surviving the shocks for 77 weeks which encourages the scientists to begin shocking him 90 times per minute. The dog dies one hour and fifteen minutes later.

Jab. A steer has a retractable bolt shot into his brain. He falls, sometimes stunned, sometimes dead, sometimes screaming. A worker attaches a chain to his hind leg, he is hoisted to dangle from a suspended rail, blood dripping on the way to another worker who slits his throat. It happens again and again, like clockwork, every half-minute. Tick. Jab. Tick. Jab. Tick. Jab. Tick. Jab. Tick.

Jab. Salmon battering themselves against dams to return home. Jab. Seventy Yanomame Indians shot down in Venezuela for opposing the theft of their land. Jab. Ducks force-fed to engorge their livers to diseased and grotesque proportions. Jab. Polar bears dying. Jab. Chimpanzees slaughtered. Jab. Jab. Jab.

And I know that sitting around, prying open sores does no good for anybody. I know that jabbing other people with needles just makes them resentful and angry. I know that we must be open, inclusive, understanding, patient. How do I explain that to the veal calves confined to crates without one caress, one taste of their mother's milk? How do I explain that to the dog at the end of his chain, circling endlessly for 10 years because "the kids like having him around", the chimpanzees gnawing at their own arms because they've never seen beyond the bars of their laboratory cage or embraced another of their own kind? It is easy to be patient when you are well-fed, warm and loved. It is easy to be patient when the stunner is not aimed at your head. If I was receiving electric shocks 90 times a minute, my whole being would be bent on relief, deliverance, respite and I don't know how well I'd take it if someone whispered to me, "It will stop...in twenty years."

Am I too soft? Am I too weak? Do I FEEL things too much? Yes. All these things. And I don't understand how everyone's heart isn't breaking every moment of the day. If everyone FELT more, would this all continue? Would cows end their days shrink-wrapped, their bodies strewn in bright display, morsels of misery for those picking their way through the minefield. Do not stray from the course because it might be unpleasant in that direction. Would trees be ripped from the ground, pressed into pulp, inked and discarded all within the blink of an eye? Would women be raped, children beaten, dogs drowned, seals bludgeoned, tigers skinned alive?

How do we all live with ourselves? How do I continue to enter words into spreadsheets and turn hundreds of trees into detritus with the tap of a finger? How do I sit here when the 1100th shock has just been administered? We ARE in The Matrix, all these institutions and norms and cultural blinders carefully constructed so that we will not see what lies beneath, so we will not see at what price our indifference.  Again, Derrick Jensen:

"What do you do, how tired do you get, when each day you struggle against an entire culture based on the normalization of trauma-inducing behavior? There is no sanctuary."

B.C. Sextuplets

Hmmmm...I couldn't help thinking how well this article dovetails with my recent post on Tammy Grimes.  So, the government seized these children from their parents because they believed they should have life-saving medical treatment which the parents would not provide.  So, they ignored the parents' religious beliefs and parental wishes, went into their HOME and took their children away from them.  And nobody arrested the government.  In fact, many people probably strongly support the government's attempt to provide blood transfusions to the sickly children though it does not fit with the religious beliefs of the parents.

How is it different when somebody sees an animal in distress and wants to provide the same life-saving care?  How are they criminals whereas the government was acting in good faith?  Does not compute.

Ready To Fall

Check out this music video at An Animal Friendly Life.  It's a great song and an amazing video which raises awareness about the oppression of animals.  It is graphic in places but well worth watching.  Sure, they keep THIS off MTV but have no problems showing insipid videos from Paris Hilton.

Tammy Grimes and the Laws That Shouldn't Be

Admittedly, I am very late on posting on this story and it has been in the U.S. news for some time now.  But, I just stumbled across it this morning.  Please visit the link above, read from the bottom and view the video.  

What is wrong with this world?  How can a woman be arrested for doing what is so obviously RIGHT?  WHY are animal rescuers constantly punished for standing up for compassion, integrity and everything that we supposedly teach our children?  People who rescue animals from the cruelest circumstances are ALWAYS having to watch their backs because in Canada and the U.S. (and I believe world-wide) animals (living, breathing organisms the same as us) are treated as PROPERTY. 

Therefore, if I want to save a dog from a chain that is cutting off their oxygen or rescue an animal who is starving or dehydrated I'm a TERRIBLE, AMORAL person because the law says I don't have a right to touch someone else's PROPERTY.  How completely insane!  The people who mistreated, abused and/or neglected said animal will be treated as law-abidin', respectable citizens whereas I will be shunned as a pariah because I deigned to think that this animal has a right to assistance and medical attention INDEPENDENT of whether their "owners" wish it or not.  Their "owners" should not have a say.  Just as I have intrinsic worth because my life is important to me so does EVERY other animal on this planet.  Property is a paperclip.

So Tammy Grimes stood up for what is right.  She saw a fellow animal suffering and she did something about it.  Would she have been arrested had she helped a child chained in a backyard writhing on the ground?  I think not.  Both the child and the dog feel pain, fear and do not want to die shivering and lonely in the mud.

We use law as a shield.  Law is just a made-up concept.  It's a set of rules decided upon mainly by those already in power.  Law is intended to maintain the status quo.  It's dangerous when people forget this...when they see law as natural or preordained.  It ain't.  It's a human invention which has many, many flaws.

This isn't to say law doesn't have a place in human society.  It has also served to help the marginalized and oppressed.  But law should be a tool.  And when it doesn't work, when it's become blunt and ineffectual it should be traded in.  The laws which keep animals confined in virtual property boxes are so archaic they should be relegated to a museum.  The Museum of Ignorant Laws.

And I also hope people remember there are human beings behind law-making, law-giving, law-enforcing.  It is HUMAN BEINGS who make the decision every single day to uphold certain laws.  It was human beings who decided that Tammy Grimes was culpable under the law for helping a dying dog to his feet.  It was human beings who insulted her and demanded she appear in court.  How do these human beings go home at night and face their kids?  Do the conversations go something like, "Hey Billy, wanna toss the ball around?  Oh, and by the way remember that nice lady who helped your teacher find a home for that poor lost dog?  Yeah, I arrested her today.  Why?  Well, because she wanted to help someone get better, Billy.  Like when Dr. Taylor gave you that medicine for your fever?  And you felt a lot better afterwards?  Well, this lady is like Dr. Taylor.  She's a bad person, Billy, and must be punished."

What happened to Tammy Grimes is a travesty.  And it happens everyday, all the time.  Rescuing and defending animals is, to quote Jerry Maguire, an "up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege" that takes more courage, energy and guts than most people will ever possess.  It is a heart-breaking, soul-crushing, uphill struggle at the best of times.  And then on top of that, we still face the prospect of being arrested and treated as criminals for doing what is only ethical and right.  It happened to someone I knew who climbed over a wall to tend to a dying dog on the other side, it's happened to people who try to show what actually goes on in laboratories and slaughterhouses and now it's happened to Tammy.

Tammy helps dogs like these.  She stops when everybody else keeps walking.  Don't you sleep better at night knowing our laws are keeping us safe from people like her?

http://www.dogsdeservebetter.com/home.html

Rottie Needs Surgery

Came across this today while looking through Petfinder.  It struck a chord with  me because one of my cat companions is neurologically impaired.  It's wonderful that there's a surgery that could correct this.  So, if you have a few dollars to spare why not help Bronson get a new lease on life?!!!