This was prompted by the recent death of my 4-year-old cat Mischa. When we first got him, he was the tiniest kitten I've ever seen. We were afraid Pixie, the other much larger kitten we got at the same time as him, would kill him because of how rough she was when she played with him.
Fast-forward to around a year later, and Mischa was a globular house of a cat with a dangling belly that would not stop growing. He was about the size of two Pixies.
He was fat and grumpy and unenthusiastic about human contact, and I couldn't pick him up because he squealed like a little pig. His belly wobbled hilariously when he ran, and he snored louder than I do.
He was my little buddy, and I loved him.
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| One of the few pictures I took specifically with him; it's an action shot cause he always RAN AWAY. |
Let me start off by stating this: we are all animals. Regardless of what the entire breadth of human culture, art, religion and morality teaches us about ourselves, we are still animals.
While our brains have developed to accomplish and build things far beyond what the other living organisms on the planet are capable of, this does not make us any better than them.
Like everything else, our only scientific purpose is to ensure the survival of our species—despite what the aforementioned societal structures may say otherwise.
In a strict Darwinist sense then, why should we care about other creatures if they do not directly relate to our own survival?
