My sister Dadai told that me that she told her classmates that I once buried a family of cats alive. I can’t remember how she told me the reactions of her classmates were, but if I remember her words, she might have told me that her classmates were shocked at my cruelty. Well, her story is accurate; I did bury a family of cat alive once. But believe it or not it was the most merciful thing to do at that time.
We used to have a lot of cats. I remember a cat that my father brought home; he bragged that it was from Taiwan but it looked just like the common Philippine stray cat (we call them pusakal) and when it was released by my father the first thing it did was to poop. Correct me if I’m wrong but a cat’s poop is more powerful than a dog’s poop. “An apt nationality for a cat that poops, Taiwan” (tai-iwan in Filipino means someone who poops and leaves without cleaning it.) My mother laughed.
Animals were welcome in our home. In fact according to my mother and my siblings, I was too young to remember then, my late father used to have a menagerie in our front yard. He had a pair of sheep, a pair of goats, a civet cat, a family of cows, pigeons, and rabbits etc… even monitor lizards. My late father was one of those frustrated frontiersman. He loved living the primitive life. He used to bring home these large felled trees where my big brother would then saw them manually using those big, long two handed logger’s saw. Sometimes I would help him by holding on to the other hand and pretending that I’m sawing too. But I am more of a liability than an asset, I made his work more difficult, but he didn’t mind. Then my father would stack the cut logs the way those American frontiersman do, and daily he would get his axe chop them to small sizes just like those American frontiersman do too. We didn’t have problems with LPG then because we used wood fueled stoves that turn our house black and sooty but mosquito free. In fact my father loved western movies and actors. He idolizes Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cliff, Paul Newman etc. he also liked to watch those Terrence Hill and… I forgot his partner’s name, Bud Spencer I think his name was…movies.
Anyway, that cat from Taiwan became our official cat and that cat was the forefather or the foregrandmother (I didn’t know the sex of that cat from Taiwan) of the family of cat that I buried alive. I say it was the merciful thing to do then for it was really the merciful thing to do then. Why? Because of my eldest sister. My eldest sister was the official cleaner of the house. As far back as I can remember it was always she that did the house cleaning. I’m not saying that my other siblings didn’t do their part in housekeeping but, I don’t know, it was my eldest sister who made the greatest impression on me. Maybe it was because of the way she threw those cat and kittens through the door or the windows whenever she was cleaning our house. It was amazing. It’s like watching a school of flying squirrel gliding though air but with one exception—the flying was uncontrolled. Reminded me of those Japanese Mitsubishi Zeros hit by American anti aircraft guns complete with the dying whine of its engines, meooooooooooooooowwwwwww blag, blag, blag the only thing missing was the explosion.
No, my eldest sister is not cruel nor is she an animal hater. It was just that the cat poops. A single cat poop is a nuisance, two cat poops is nauseating but six or seven cat poops is a different matter, it is on the level of a biological weapon. Why? First it was very difficult to find them. They’re under the ref, on the bookshelves, under the sala set, in the laundry basket, etc. and this is what drove my eldest sister nuts because she had to smell her way to it which drove her crazier than ever and by the time she found one she’s already rabid and by the time she found and cleaned the fifth deposit she’s already psychopathic. She would pick these cute little kittens and throw them away with such force that one would think that they were canon propelled. But of course it was all a practice in futility. Cats have this ability to land on its feet no matter how high or a how forceful you throw it.
Second was the hair. Cats and kittens love to cuddle and since we have allergies we never pet them. We live with them, feed them or let them feed themselves, but petting was a no, no. Our cats and kittens deprived of human affection and warmth must look for alternatives and the best alternative that they found was to nest in our clothing cabinets. Cats’ hair on cloths is embarrassing, you know, it’s short about the size of nose hair, and if you have a lot of them hanging on your shirts people would think that you were losing your nose hairs. My golly, the sneezing was another thing. Those hairs were an asthma trigger. So, whenever my eldest sister found cats’ hair on her clothes she’ll pick one of them kittens and off they go to another air combat mission.
I got tired of this scene. I have two alternatives, one was to get rid of my eldest sister, or two get rid of the cat and her kittens. Since my mother would never allow me to do the first, I had no choice but to do the second alternative. What I first did was to gather the cat and her kittens, put them in a rice sack, circled the sack around our house post three times and left the sack to an unidentified location very far from our house. You have to circle the cat around a housepost three times because according to the science of animal magnetism and polar magnetic shifts, this must be done to haywire the cat’s global positioning system so that they can never come back home when they are left in the wilderness. But of course they were back before I did. I realized that you cannot get rid of cats by getting them lost. They have an efficient biological global positioning system that I think deserve some study—better than the pigeons’ may I say.
Abnormal as I may be, I don’t like blood, so, cutting the cat and the kittens’ throats was out of the question and you cannot buy over the counter poison here especially if you’re a twelve year old cat murderer like me. I did was I think the best alternative then and that was to bury them alive.
I was young then and the ethical treatment of animals never entered my mind. In fact majority of Filipinos never think about the ethical treatment of animals. I read Tom Regan’s (American Philosopher and animal rights activist) “The case for Animals Rights” and I am convinced by his arguments—“animals are not our resources”, of course this does not mean that I will adopt his view to its fullest—no meat, no burgers, no hotdogs! No way! There’s also Jurgen Moltmann (a theologian) who argued that in creation there is the image, the mirror of the majesty of God, there is a part of God in creation, and that what we do to creation reflects... It is the misunderstanding of creation that brought about the environmental disaster that we are in, especially the biblical passage about the “subduing the earth”.
I don’t know, but when what it comes down to is that animals have rights too and they are not “resources” as emphasized by Regan (I hope he only eats non--biological food because if he does otherwise I’ll be very disappointed) and whether they reflect God or not is beyond me to prove although I believe that God everything created is good. What I’m trying to say is this, animals have rights but once that right impinged on man’s right to be free from biological waste and asthma, then the higher order specie must win (this is called speciesm and I don’t care).
Anyway, I have learned my lesson and I think I’m getting the bad karma. See, my younger brought home a Labrador retriever. We have two native dogs and a pedigree Labrador. I have no problem with dogs except their hair. They make me sneeze to amithereens. But I love them anyway. The problem is when they poop. My brother and I take turn cleaning their habitation. Now, a native dog (a little larger than a cat) poop is one thing but a wet Labrador poop is another humongous thing.
What moral lesson did I get from my eldest sister and her flying cat and kittens, don’t hurt ‘em lest they haunt you back in the form of a large dog.
(My borther’s Labrador’s name is Princess Tamia and she’s one fine Labrador. Good mannered, a people dog as they say, it’s just the poop, my gulay! The poop…anyway I’ve grown to love the dog and the other thing is my brother bought the new computer I am using now, so, as they say in Filipino “don’t bite the dog of the hand that bought the computer. He, he, he,)
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