This is just disgusting.

From the outside, Ruth Knueven's Mount Vernon home has real charm: a verdant lawn, manicured hedges, flowers blossoming from fresh mulch beds and, near the front door, a garden ornament depicting two playful cats.

But police said that what lurked inside Knueven's two-story home was hardly so delightful. Hidden behind that garden ornament was a house bursting with real cats.

Animal control officers removed 273 creatures -- 86 of them dead -- after neighbors complained vehemently of odors Friday. Cats were still being plucked from the house yesterday, extracted from the walls and from deep within the brick chimney. Traps were set.

"I don't know how they got in there," Fairfax County police officer Richard Henry said of the hidden cats.

Before leaving, officials slapped a bright-orange sticker on the front door, condemning the dwelling on Ludgate Drive that they said was overflowing with feline feces and urine. Knueven, 82, and her husband and daughter were ordered to leave.

Last night, police said, Knueven returned to the house and ripped down the condemnation order. Animal-control officers found her inside trying to smuggle an additional 30 cats out of the home, bringing the total last night to 303. The animals were confiscated, and more traps were set.{...}

Why on Earth would anyone think this is the kind thing to do?

Disclaimer: I've never had pets. The Cake Eater Parents just didn't go for them. Rumor has it we had two cats before I was born, but they didn't make it past day two. (The cats, reportedly, had a love of cars and traffic.) And forget about owning dogs: my ex-farmboy father thinks it's cruel to keep dogs anywhere other than a place with a field attached.

So, while I will admit I have very little experience with pets, I nonetheless have a REALLY hard time understanding why anyone would be so incredibly freakin' selfish as to keep THREE HUNDRED AND THREE cats in their house. And let's face it: this comes right down to human selfishness. This woman, obviously, wasn't worried about the cats as over eighty of them were found dead. She was thinking about herself as some noble rescuer of unwanted beasts even though she did not have the capacity to take care of them properly. I think it should be a big freakin' clue that when you can't keep up with the kitty litter---and the neighbors are complaining about the smell---you probably have too many cats.

I am very tired of people treating animals like they were human beings. Yes, love your dog or your housecat, or your gerbil or whatever sort of pet you have. These are not the animals/people I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who claim to be serious animal lovers, who will do anything necessary to ensure their survival, yet get in over their heads and don't realize it because they're too busy being righteous about their love of animals. A online community I used to frequent had a sort of virtual church attached to the community: people would go there and post about their problems. It was a wonderful place where they could find support because we were an exceedingly friendly bunch of people. (We had no trolls. It was wonderful.) One time one woman posted about how she'd moved cross country to be with this man, who, as it turned out, was abusing her. She would not remove herself from this dangerous situation---even after the bastard put her in the hospital a few times---because she couldn't afford to cart her horse or her five dogs, three cats and god only knows how many small rodents back from whence she came. She was afraid of what her abuser might do to them if she left. So she stayed until she could afford to move all of them, and, of course, she wound up in the hospital one more time because of her refusal to abandon them. She had plenty of friends who wanted her to leave the guy and who offered to shelter these animals, but she refused them: she didn't want to leave without her pets because "her life wouldn't be complete without them." Ooooookay. They're animals not human beings. You are a human being who's having the crap beaten out of her on a regular basis by another human being. Your best option is to leave. You have to leave or YOU MIGHT DIE and you put the animals first? WTF? It made no sense to me then, and it still doesn't make any sense to me now. It was selfish. And what made it even more selfish on her part is that she refused to invoke her right to self-preservation because, apparently, she was willing to martyr herself for her pets.

Now, that's selfish, my friends. And what was worse about the whole situation was that she kept posting about all of this and people agreed with her. They offered her "support to get matters taken care of so she could leave." One other woman and I were absolutely flabbergasted at how her supporters had absolutely no common sense where this woman was concerned. Furthermore, we were verbally slapped at when we told her to just pack up and leave, the animals be damned. Her life was the one that counted. Animals were animals; a human being was entirely something else. But she didn't get it and neither did her supporters. Fortunately, she got away from her abuser, but what would have happened if she hadn't? Would the local media have told her story as one of a devoted animal lover who wouldn't leave without her horse, implying that she'd made the correct, albeit deadly, decision?

It's just wrong to think that because you love your pets their lives have the same meaning as yours---a living, breathing, human being---does. Animals can be wonderful, I will admit, but when you're willling to give your life for theirs, when you're willing to adjust your life around theirs, something is seriously wrong with the way you think. You may claim to be a lover of nature and animals and all that jazz, but you have forgotten about Nature---with a capital "N"---and how Nature doesn't really make allowances for your sort of love.

{Hat tip: Victorino at the Galley Slaves, who has some fun with puns.}

*the husband is deathly allergic to cats and hates them accordingly. To his way of thinking, they hated him first by making it impossible to breathe when they're around so fair's fair.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:48 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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