Slaughtering and eating cats (NSFW?)

[hadespussercats]

I suffer no cognitive incongruity--some emotional challenges--but no intellectual ones with regards to my choice to eat animals.

I have cared for, raised, killed and the butchered them to eat them. I know what it means to be a meat eater.
I know what it means to stalk prey, kill it, butcher it in the field, and bring the portions of carcass home to be food.

I recognized that meat = muscle and animals were killed for that muscle before I went to Kindergarten.

I majored in Biology and Veterinary Technology--I worked as a Tech and saw much suffering, avoidable and unavoidable. I assisted animals to a decent death; I've looked inside them to see the manifestations of their diseases. I cried.

The only compartmentalization is in coming to terms with the ending of a life, getting my own hands dirty--so to speak--doing the necessary deed.

I don't even think about being defensive until I am put on the defensive by the sanctimonious condemnation from some zealous vegetarians and the too common tendency to then accuse me of lacking compassion. I very much do not lack compassion.
I am only angered by them when they are also volitionally ignorant of the realities that encompass and entail the harvesting, raising and killing of animals for food.

It would be close to impossible for anyone to accuse you of not being mindful of what it means to eat animals.

What pisses me off about Dad (and the reaction from many other people that Tattuchu described and that I've experienced) is that I don't evangelize about the way I eat. I mean, I'm happy, generally, to talk about food and why I eat the way I do with people who are interested. But I've never asked Dad to explain or change his habits-- and I've never had a problem with other people choosing to eat meat around me.

But I'm frequently asked to explain why I don't eat meat-- and generally by people who really don't care about my answer. They just want me to serve as an intro to their rant about how ridiculous vegetarians and vegans are, how sanctimonious we are, etc., etc. It gets tiresome.

[Gallstones]

Disgust is a subjective reaction and an emotion. It is not an argument.
It is a legitimate impetus for changes made by the person, but it can not function as if it alone validates changes that would be imposed on others.

We cope with many things we find disgusting. It is a necessary factor of being alive in this world.



FWIW, I eat many vegetarian meals. I even have whole days where I don't eat any meat.

[tattuchu]

Disgust is a subjective reaction and an emotion. It is not an argument.
It is a legitimate impetus for changes made by the person, but it can not function as if it alone validates changes that would be imposed on others.

We cope with many things we find disgusting. It is a necessary factor of being alive in this world.



FWIW, I eat many vegetarian meals. I even have whole days where I don't eat any meat.

Naw, referring to factory farming, I meant disgusting as in unsanitary and therefore unhealthy. Like, cows knee deep in their own shit. That's why I steered ( ) toward pasture raised grass-fed beef as a result.

[Kristie]

My kids like 'special' burgers and chicken nuggets. I explained to my daughter that they don't actually have meat in them, they just taste like meat. She didn't care one way or the other. Personally, I've not had a veggie burger that I really liked.

Have you tried spicy black bean burgers with a salsa dip?

I've only tried the ones you can get at the grocery. I've never ordered one from a restaurant, mainly because they rarely are on menus around here.

[Gallstones]

Disgust is a subjective reaction and an emotion. It is not an argument.
It is a legitimate impetus for changes made by the person, but it can not function as if it alone validates changes that would be imposed on others.

We cope with many things we find disgusting. It is a necessary factor of being alive in this world.



FWIW, I eat many vegetarian meals. I even have whole days where I don't eat any meat.

Naw, referring to factory farming, I meant disgusting as in unsanitary and therefore unhealthy. Like, cows knee deep in their own shit. That's why I steered ( ) toward pasture raised grass-fed beef as a result.

Unsanitary and standing in shit is disgusting morally as well as aesthetically.

[Hermit]

Save the guts, they make baroque violin strings. We have switched to nylon on guitar but you cant bow nylon.

As I understand it, catgut is just a turn of phrase-- they use sheep intestines for violin strings.

...usually made from the intestines of sheep or goat intestines and occasionally cattle, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys, but never from the guts of cats.

[Robert_S]

Disgust is a subjective reaction and an emotion. It is not an argument.
It is a legitimate impetus for changes made by the person, but it can not function as if it alone validates changes that would be imposed on others.

We cope with many things we find disgusting. It is a necessary factor of being alive in this world.



FWIW, I eat many vegetarian meals. I even have whole days where I don't eat any meat.

Naw, referring to factory farming, I meant disgusting as in unsanitary and therefore unhealthy. Like, cows knee deep in their own shit. That's why I steered ( ) toward pasture raised grass-fed beef as a result.

Unsanitary and standing in shit is disgusting morally as well as aesthetically.

If all the meat around was free range, organic and humanely treated, I'd probably eat more of it. But not too much more because the price would probably be drive up.

[hadespussercats]

Save the guts, they make baroque violin strings. We have switched to nylon on guitar but you cant bow nylon.

As I understand it, catgut is just a turn of phrase-- they use sheep intestines for violin strings.

...usually made from the intestines of sheep or goat intestines and occasionally cattle, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys, but never from the guts of cats.

Yes, yes, I hadn't gotten to that post yet when I commented.

[hadespussercats]

Disgust is a subjective reaction and an emotion. It is not an argument.
It is a legitimate impetus for changes made by the person, but it can not function as if it alone validates changes that would be imposed on others.

We cope with many things we find disgusting. It is a necessary factor of being alive in this world.



FWIW, I eat many vegetarian meals. I even have whole days where I don't eat any meat.

Naw, referring to factory farming, I meant disgusting as in unsanitary and therefore unhealthy. Like, cows knee deep in their own shit. That's why I steered ( ) toward pasture raised grass-fed beef as a result.

Unsanitary and standing in shit is disgusting morally as well as aesthetically.

If all the meat around was free range, organic and humanely treated, I'd probably eat more of it. But not too much more because the price would probably be drive up.

I feel like it's still hard (at least in the States-- not sure about elsewhere) to be really sure where food comes from, unless you farm it yourself or know the farmers. Even "organic" seems to be somewhat up for grabs. It's frustrating.

[Robert_S]

I feel like it's still hard (at least in the States-- not sure about elsewhere) to be really sure where food comes from, unless you farm it yourself or know the farmers. Even "organic" seems to be somewhat up for grabs. It's frustrating.

If you have an Amish population around, you might try them.

[charlou]

It's funny how people react to the idea of vegetarianism. And I don't mean in this thread necessarily, but in general.

re the bit I've bolded ... Glad you clarified that .... I have no problem with people eating or not eating whatever they want, nor whatever personal philosophy may accompany their choices ... but I don't like emotive lectures, designed to hector and guilt people into accepting ones 'rightness'. Smacks of religiousness, to me. That said, I can walk away from this topic whenever I like and continue to make my own decisions about what I eat, so it's up to me if I want to read the debate on this and be annoyed by this one ... or affirmed by that one ... or influenced to reconsider my choices. I'm still looking in ... determined not to be annoyed, but take a more objective look at what everyone has to say.

[Robert_S]

It's funny how people react to the idea of vegetarianism. And I don't mean in this thread necessarily, but in general.

re the bit I've bolded ... Glad you clarified that .... I have no problem with people eating or not eating whatever they want, nor whatever personal philosophy may accompany their choices ... but I don't like emotive lectures, designed to hector and guilt people into accepting ones 'rightness'. Smacks of religiousness, to me. That said, I can walk away from this topic whenever I like and continue to make my own decisions about what I eat, so it's up to me if I want to read the debate on this and be annoyed by this one ... or affirmed by that one ... or influenced to reconsider my choices. I'm still looking in ... determined not to be annoyed, but take a more objective look at what everyone has to say.

Fine then, continue with the genocide of our furry friends.

I jest. I've found that there is hostility on all sides of the dietary issue. I spent some time looking for a Nina Paley cartoon from years ago but couldn't find it. On one frame she was eating a cheese sandwich in Urbana,Illinois and some guy was saying something like "Cheese? What's wrong with you? Get a real sandwich with beef in it. Then in Santa Cruz, California some guy was all like "Gross! and animal product! "

[Pappa]

Earthworms are perfectly edible if soaked in water overnight, by the way.

Imagine people going through a fastfood drive-through and ordering a bucket of bugs and being asked "would you like worms with that?" ... "Oh, goody ... and supersize it, too! ".

I'd definitely eat that!

[lordpasternack]

Charlou - one thing I will say is that there are things in this world that are ethically leaning more towards 'good' or 'bad'. Arguments for or against these things are bound to stir emotions in some, even if a person feels they've made a point quite plainly. Take all of Richard Dawkins' 'strident' arguments about gods and religion…

Take a statement like "slavery is simply wrong". I don't want to equate eating meat to slavery or anything else here - just take that statement on its own and consider it. It's uncontroversial, isn't it?

… So uncontroversial that the original US Constitution had a slave as being worth 3/5 of a free person, and it took a large-scale abolitionist movement, and a spot of bloody warfare between northern and southern states to finally outlaw slavery in America. 

People didn't just cock their heads a little and go: "Oh, yeah, you're right mate - I see what you're saying. Slavery's wrong. Just give me a minute while I go free the ones pickin' cotton on ma farm…"

No - they told the self-righteous bastards to stop meddling in their affairs, with all their stupid wet blanket emotive, pretentious arguments against their perfectly normal preferences. They waged civil war over it. 

And what about such unemotive, uncontroversial statements as "black people are equal to white people" and "women are equal to men"? People of course gladly accepted these common sense ideas - after a lot of activism, an assassination or two, a bit of force-feeding of prisoners of conscience and lots of angry letters to the editor from either side. 

Just saying…

[charlou]

Just saying…

I'm considering replying to all your posts that end with the smug and patronising and with this: and ... but that would be silly. Instead I'll just let you know I can do without your smug and patronising and at the end of every post if you're at all inclined to be engaging.