rip-roaring stupidity

A girlfriend of mine has been having sleepless nights this past week because she is desperately trying to find homes for the stray cats who live in her condominium estate. It seems that the condo's management committee has unanimously voted to cull the stray cats within the estate because they've been "scratching our cars".

Most of these stray cats have already been neutered, and are regularly fed by animal-loving volunteers who spend their own time and money feeding and taking them to the vet for sterilization when they are old enough. So they are actually tame cats without a proper home to call their own.

I wish I could take them all in, but I already have a full house.

But that's the trouble, it seems. People are either animal lovers or animal haters.

Those of us who love them find it hard to stop once we start taking in stray, abandoned or abused animals. It's hard to stop because there are just so many of them and not enough of us.

The sad truth is, we simply can't save them all although we do our best.

But sadder still is the fact that there are educated people who love their material possessions so much that they think nothing of taking another life just because they feel their possessions are at risk.

Listening to them complain, you'd think it was some big wild cat, like a tiger or a lion, that was coming up to their sturdy, heavy metal vehicles and leaving huge scratches on them, instead of a cat who probably scratches at a heavy duty tyre now and then.

Hello?

What will it take to make people learn to respect and value life more than they do inanimate objects?

I wish I knew.

All I can say is, they deserve the rat and roach problems that they're likely to get once there are no more cats around to keep them at bay.