It is our obligation to make comfortable and feed human beings, not animals. Animals are DIFFERENT.
Once upon a time, we were sitting around the kitchen table at my grandparents' in Salina. A table at which I'd eaten venison and rabbit (perhaps squirrel) as a kid and from which you can see the backyard where my grandpa used to raise (and slaughter) his own chickens.
My Dad was telling the story of how he'd come home from the municipal pool on a bright sunny day and -- taking the last several steps of the basement stairs at one leap as was his practice -- landed square on the skull of a little white kitten they were keeping in the basement.
The kitten wasn't dead but clearly was suffering. My Dad either snapped its neck or shot it, I can't remember, but put it out of its misery immediately. As is the thing to do -- whether a million dollar race horse, prize pig or precious kitten that meets with misfortune somehow.
I burst into tears. The story was too much for my tender sensibilities and I had to run from the table to go cry my eyes out in the bathroom.
My grandma -- the Kansas housewife -- marched in after me and upbraided me in no uncertain terms. This was a mere animal, not some human being. How could it be I was reduced to maudlin tears over some stupid cat when -- for example -- the story of her own father's being scalded and burned to death by an explosion of hot tar certainly did not elicit such a response.
I was shamed to silence for being corrected thus. But I can assure you I stood there thinking she was cruel and heartless. "Counter-productive" to her cause, if you will.
Still, as it turns out, she was absolutely right. Hers was the trump card of Objective truth while all I held was rank emotion.