Posted on 07/16/2002 3:21:27 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Man arrested for burning kitten on grill July 16, 2002 Posted: 4:03 PM EDT (2003 GMT)
A neighborhood friend of Sherry Scott holds the kitten they named 'Lucky,' in a recent handout photo.
LIBERTY, Missouri (AP) -- A man was arrested Tuesday for allegedly burning a kitten on a barbecue grill as several other people stood around and watched in amusement.
A witness pulled the scorched, 7-week-old tabby from the hot coals, but it was severely injured and had to be put to death, police said.
"They kept saying, `Meow, meow,' and they were poking at it with a stick," said Sherry Scott, who burned her hand grabbing the kitten.
Charles C. Benoit, 24, was charged with animal abuse, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. He was jailed on $10,000 bail.
Jim Roberts, spokesman for the Clay County prosecutor's office, said he does not expect anyone else to be charged, because no witnesses could identify the others.
Scott said that on Friday night, she saw 10 or 12 people at the barbecue grill in the courtyard of the apartment complex where she lives. Scott said she asked what they were cooking, and they said it was a cat. She said the group taunted her, daring her to rescue the cat.
She said the group scattered when she threatened to call police. She said she pulled the kitten from where it had been shoved into the coals at the back of the grill. Its tail, whiskers, fur, eyes and throat were scorched.
"I called him Lucky because I thought I got him out of there just in time," she said.
Scott said she and other residents stayed up Friday night trying to nurse the kitten with an eye dropper of milk. But animal control officers decided that because of its respiratory injuries and inability to swallow food, it had to be destroyed.
"If you would have seen him, you would have cried," said Sheri Simpson, one of the residents who helped care for the kitten.
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
You haven't tasted my wife's cooking, bless her heart.
Cordially,
Read my post carefully. My point is that our 19th-20th century laws reflected earlier societal censure against purposeless cruelty and vandalism.
Us and the cats, eh?
This is precisely what offends me most.
I have had more than one person tell me that some human being who -- through no fault of their own and even due to some violence inflicted or accident chanced upon them -- ends up in a coma or hurt so badly that they cannot help but be a burden and likely are suffering should be put to death.
If cats are "just like us" .. the most helpless of lives "among us" ... how come we can't be so cool and rational where they're concerned?
How come I'm getting guff for suggesting the moral thing to do would have been to snap the cat's neck or brain it to put it out of its misery? We "mercy-kill" our own by starving them to death or removing their beating hearts.
Look, I undertand perfectly how the story pulls at one's heartstrings and all. I'm just not going to stand here while -- in the background, if you read the entire story -- there's a PETA agit-prop message being sent that folks are swallowing while they're wallowing in all the angst over the poor unfortunate kitten who was force-fed until the State stepped in to do the right thing and kill it.
Frankly, I think their is a solid connection between identitarian sympathies of human beings with animals and even Pet Rocks facilitates, which human beings will turn around and treat certain human beings with all due cruelty as "sub-humans" ... subbing out the poor labrats with humans who'll provide a "more human" response, for example. (PETA Seeks Grants for use of Human Embryos, Not Rats, for Scientific Research)
That's my beef. Particularly when such a thread appears on a forum such as this where abortion's to be "reduced" at best and our own President, even, is the One Man responsible for actually legitimizing the NIH's use of certain excess manufacture human embryos for destructive research.
If anyone's curious as to how it is we manage to keep losing and keep losing and keep losing all but the Potemkin bits of "pro-life" legislation or court rulings, it's like because we're too soft ... too busy shedding crocodile tears over kittens while the agit-prop within the story eats away at our sensibilities like acid and destroys our ability to recognize, much less defend, objective truth.
Judging from the posts in this thread, almost all of us in this place are both sane and sensitive to the plight of a tortured animal.
Be that as it may, it doesn't give us a blank check to destroy other animals without good, and moral, cause.
Furthermore, 'by their fruits ye shall know them'. What condition of the eternal spirit does killing cute little kittens indicate?
Cordially,
Here is where you are wrong again. I guess maybe all of those massive volumes of tax laws that dictate how much of our pay we have to fork over are for "our protection"?
Having laws that prevent cruelty towards animals may hinder one person from "having a fun time" by torturing a defenseless creature, but it helps prevent the rest of the populace from becoming the next "defensless creature" to become his target by punishing that behavior.
Go back in time a couple of hundred years ago, and you will find a time when slaves were not considered to have the same rights of safety as other people. They were property. By your reasoning, it was ok for them to be tortured and killed for the amusement of their owners. That is completely flawed logic.
Owning a non living, non sentient object gives you certain rights towards it. You can certainly take a hammer to your television if you so choose. When the object is a sentient species, however, those rights do not completely carry over.
And if you want to argue that humans are the only sentient species on the planet, then you are so far out in left field that it becomes pointless to even attempt to discuss this with you.
Yeah, so don't kill kittens for fun.
Even in the good ol' days, blood sports existed for the sake of sport and profit. Cats were tortured and killed as witches, wrong, but at least there was a purpose.Cats as witches? I relate. Had a friend tell me once (I was waxing on how I should have been born at least two centuries ago), that it's a good thing I wasn't or I'd have been burnt at the stake. =)
Mindless violence toward animal, human or property has never been tolerated in the general culture that America rose from. Our laws reflect that heritage (still).
I've been holding this excerpt on making sense of suffering I wanted to post for you. I think I'll just take this somewhat obliquely related snip as sign I should go ahead and do it.
(And perhaps a little something on the New Left's chaotic and mindless destruction which cannot always be controlled by the left, gives them the willies as it reminds them of the early anarchists like Bakhunin and will be -- as Keuhnnelt-Leddihn says -- the "Leftism to end all leftism" ... possibly ushering in as a result a far worse reactionary correction. I really am interested in getting to the bottom of this "anarcho-capitalist" thing ... still missing the sense even if the dollars do add up. =)
Best regards, Chookter.
I do understand your point, really. I think societal censure is the only way to stop this kind of sick activity, that's all. The kitten is not a human and our laws were never designed to protect anything but humans and their property from the harm of others. That is the only reason government exists - for humans.
In my book, it does. Let me make it clear that that doesn't make it right. An animal is your posesion and you may do what you may with it. You will also suffer consequenses if you make the wrong choices, like if you never bother to change the oil in your car or drive it over curbs.
Furthermore, 'by their fruits ye shall know them'. What condition of the eternal spirit does killing cute little kittens indicate?
That this guy is sick. I don't know about you, but I don't even need to repress an urge to do what this guy did.
Regarding your post:
#1 If you care so little about the kitten (as you say) then why read the post to begin with? It was “just a kitten”, after all.
Because to me the real story here is that so called conservatives even on free republic want to expand the role of government even to the protection of ANIMALS, a massive constitutional leap.
After reading people’s comments and seeing how upsetting this story was to many: #2 Why would you purposely decide to (fill in the blank here) degrade or belittle folks at this time?
First, my goal was to show people they were exibiting unbridled emotion in their decisions - not a healthy thing for anyone! Second, it's what this forum is for, except I was degrading or belittling nobody. Quite to the contrary, I was the one being directly and personally attacked. At no time did I come back in like kind however. I don't do that
Unfortunately, that level of societal censure is gone due to our turning away from our roots and pursuing the morally relative, hedonistic, "If it feels good, do it!" ethos.
Nature abhors a vacuum and in the moral vacuum, the only thing we have to fill it with is more and more laws.
Those laws shouldn't need to exist but for the overabundance of people who think roasting kittens is fun. So your exhortation that kittens are meat, while technically correct, does nothing to fill the moral void and leads to more laws--as the hedonism consumes everything.
I want to believe that people are good and kind and believe in the value of all life.
Who doesn't? That sort of belief can get you in real trouble, though.
Whenever I'm in doubt on that score, an Examination of Conscience removes any question that the human will strives perpetually to assert itself in all manner of ways when left unchecked by disciplined and humble obedience to the sorts of self-evident truths of our Declaration. =)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.