| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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You look around and in the grass you find what looks like a baby rabbit or squirrel, hairless, swollen, deformed, and covered with ants and other bugs. It's screaming in pain. You know you have a shovel in the trunk of your car. Would you kill the rabbit to put it out of its misery? Would it be an easy decision? Would you have to psych yourself up to the task? If so, how long would it take to make yourself do it? Would you leave the scene feeling good that you've done a good deed, or would you feel sick for a while? |
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Some were scattered across the lawn. We brought them all in the house, put a heating pad in a box, set it on low, and put a heating lamp over the box (thier skin was still pink, with no fur). We called a vet, he told us how to try to take care of the rabbits. We had cats. the box was in my little brother's bedroom. He was told to leave the door closed at all times. I can't count how many times I had to get the baby rabbits out of the cat's mouth. A baby rabbit's scream is one of the most heart wrenching things you could here. We should not have taken them in. It was a slow and painful death for them. We tried to keep them warm and fed, but in the end, there was little we could do. I aspire to be more like my dad. You could feel the regret and guilt he felt over it. He is not a man who speaks very often, and when he was upset with you, he would speak even less. But you could tell when something was bothering him. |
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Well, Spunky is right in the fact that he doesn't speak often. You can't hold a conversation with the man, and I don't think I have held one with him since Spunky first introduced us. He doesn't let people in. It is extremely difficult for me to tell when he is upset and when he isn't simply because he doesn't show any emotion at all, so you don't know when it is bad, cuz it is always the same expression on his face. The only exception to this that I have seen is when he and his wife went on a cruise to the bahamas and he was smiling and you could look at his face and see how in love he was with his wife at that moment. It was a beautiful picture of him. I only hoped that Spunky would aspire to be more open than that, that people could understand him and not feel like he was cold to them all of the time. Sometimes you need more than the ability to read someones emotions only during times of heartache. I have been confronted with a situation very close to the one above, only it was a 5 month old kitten, with it's head partially caved in. Hit by a car and on our driveway. My father actually hit it, and felt extreme guilt over it for months, cuz he is the one who put the cat out of the house and then he accidentally hit her. When I found her I went directly into shock and I picked her up not knowing what to do, as she was dying and twitching and convulsing in my hand (she was so small she fit into one of my small hands). I reached out to him and asked what to do to help her I was so in shock, I was like a little child going "Daddy, how do I fix this?" even though I was not only an adult but married and very preggers with Hayley at the time. Eventually she just died in my hand and my father buried her out by the barn. We were both late for work that day. As I was going to pick him up from his job, some asshole (in a huge truck)cut over 4 lanes on the freeway without looking and hit the front passenger side of the SUV I was driving (my dad's not mine). I was so fucking pissed off then. I was yelling and screaming and chasing his motherfucking ass down, like a mad woman, and then I pulled off of the road and just broke down.....like a baby, cried and cried and cried. And I got told I was a candy assed drama queen, to cry like that over a kitten. |
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some people say I'm callous.. BUT, if the little animal was not hurt I would leave it alone, in fact i would give it a wide berth... I am not a hunter, and dont particularly feel the need to kill animals myself (although i have no problem with people who do). But in the scenario given above... definitly kill the thing.. |
but damn, that's some kinda scenario, spider. do you really have a shovel in the trunk? |
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you should hear dave talk to the guinea pigs every day. so cute. |
Myself, I would think I should kill it to end its suffering, but I don't think I'd be able to do it. I would be extremely upset by the screaming and the pain, but I would probably get as far as holding the shovel over the animal and then I'd be paralyzed. I imagine that I would feel worse knowing that I had ended the animal's life myself than if I had left it to die in pain. That doesn't make much sense, but that's how it is. |
If an animal is dying, and you can assist it's passage out of this world with a minimum of pain, that's what you should do. What does dave. say to the guinea pigs? |
We are still paying for letting that pregnent stray in the apartment back in october. I don't know if we posted about it or not, but it came in, we put it in our walk in closet, we fed her special food that we did not buy for our own cats, and took care of her and her babies. She did not have any fleas, but her babies were born with them. We found homes for mama cat and the babies, but she left us reminders of her visit. Our cats got fleas. We have been treating them with that crap that comes in a tube and you put it on the back of the neck once every thirty days, and have not found one yet that works. We have done flea collars, flea baths, and flea spray. Now our baby (Sidney, 5 years old, but still a baby to us), cat has tape worms. According to a website Eri checked yesterday, they can get this parasite by swallowing a flea. Muffin, one of the cats Eri's grandmother gave us, is starting to show symptoms of the worms. I am sure it is only a matter of time until our older, gay cat Punkin gets them too. I thought it would be a horrid thing to leave the damn cat outside in the cold rain when she was so pregnant, but now I realize that we HAVE to consider our pets above stray ones. |
lately three of them have been hanging out between the fence in my backyard and the garage on the otherside. I blocked up the hole but to no avail. Last week i had just lit the bbq when mama and her two baby skunks came waddling through. thank goodness skunks are skittish and will run 9 times of 10 and i managed to keep them out and at bay while i bbq-ed. the next few days, after dinner, enjoying a smoke, id look over and not 10 feet away see three skunks, making their way, along the fence line back towards to hole. again, make a little noise and expedite their journey. they dont spray unless directly threatened. such was the case last night. my friend W brought his pooch over, as he does often. the yard is enclosed. No problemo. the pooch is a 70# sheppard mutt mix. well, skunky magoo apparently was attempting to make their ritualistic trip through the backyard. whether it was mama and two shorties or just mama or what, i dunno. we heard a bark and moments later, from inside the house we smell. holy shit. i've smelled skunk, but never this strong. they managed to spray the pooch. they must have been on the otherside of the fence. he barely got it on the top of his head but enough to make you puke. poor pooch. poor friend who had to take pooch home. at least i dont have a coyote problem. |
Spunky and Eri, you should be careful about taking in strays for another reason, too, if you already have cats, and that's feline leukemia, which I think is infectious between felines. or maybe it's something else, but anyway, you need to have any stray taken straight to the vet for tests before you take them in. I admit I didn't with space ghost, but that's when I learned I should have. Thankfully, he was OK. Then there is monkeypox - i mean, you never know if that cat has been hanging out with someone's prairie dogs... |
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I hope those fucking kids that killed a bunch of animals the other day try to catch one. |
they're hard to catch and its painful for them to spray. the reason they spray around your complex is they are most likely running into ghetto kitties in and around the area. cats can catch a skunk quiet easily. FYI. If you ever get sprayed, supposedly tomato juice is the answer to getting it off, as recently confirmed by an episode of jackass where he got sprayed intentionally multiple times. |
To make matters worse with our cats, I found a place where we can get proper flea treatment to rid them of the fleas in like 2-3 months and treat the tapeworms in all of the cats (they all show symptoms, but in different degrees) for under $100. So I go to take the money order we have for $250 and cash it to get medicine for the cats, but since the name was crossed out, initialled and rewritten, they won't honor it or cash it and if we want a refund on it, then it will take 28 days. This money order is half pet costs and half student loan payment to my parents, so we can't wait 28 days. Our only hope is that Spunky takes it to his bank and cashes it there (they are willing to give all information to verify it is his money order and know us by name and sight, so no big deal for them to do this) but only he can cash it and he is at work. Patrick, tomato juice is the answer to skunk spraying, but I heard that in order for it to work right you have to take a bath in it, literally fill the bathtub and take a bath in it. |
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i just witnessed a woman with her seeing eye dog at the cross walk. Waiting for the light, the dog looked left, right. he waited patiently. Now its a tricky light, meaning, the walk sign doesnt activate upon stopping cross traffic. theres a funny turn signal, then the walk signal. i was curious to see if the pooch would be fooled. Nope. once the light changed and i stepped off along with others, he too led his friend safely across the street. i wonder what it is. are they trained to see the light? the stoppage of traffic? the movement of other people? a combo thereof? amazing. its hard though, when you see a seeing eye pup, they are usually pretty and cuddly labs and you want to hug and kiss their brilliant heads and noses and shower them with biscuits...which is a major no no to their concentration, but still. |
If I had a house with a decent backyard and some more money, I would just buy them a dog. Oh well, three cats, two hamsters and a fishtank are enough for now. Maybe too much for now. |