Jonah poses next to a pile of Kittenaid2011 zines.
About the most common criticism we hear about our work with and for cats is “but how can you be worried about cats when there is (insert world hunger, homelessness, or any other major problem the speaker is involved with or worried about) going on?”
The Implication is that we are woefully out of touch. Sure, people think, it’s sad that cats die every day, but there are so many other things going on. If you are trying to make the world a better place, shouldn’t you be focused on something else?
It can be difficult to explain to people with this mode of thinking that, in fact, this is exactly the reason we do the work that we do. Their logic seems to be that, in a world with many problems and issues, you must first assess which is the most important issue, and then work on making it better. Feral cats simply don’t make the cut. Our logic is, in a world with many problems and issues, well:
a) Who is qualified to know which is most important anyways? and
b) The issues that seem to be of lesser importance will always lose out. Even if we firmly established that the most important problem in the world was world hunger, that would still be problematic. With everyone working to solve hunger, no one would say, work on improving public education.
Animals seem to be near the bottom of the list for a lot of people. Even if animals make the cut, it’s rarely feral cats.
About two months ago, a bunch of us had a meeting, and decided that if at all possible, we should have our event, Kittenaid2011, on National Feral Cat Day. I contacted the Trumbullplex, and they said great, sure. So we booked it, and then we booked bands, and then we started planning, and making things.
And then a thing none of us who were at that meeting anticipated happened – Occupy Wall Street, and it’s many satellite protests. On Friday, Occupy Detroit started up. There are people who are very excited about these protests, there are people who think they are ridiculous, and there are people who think they need to be done better, and we should think critically about them. There is a way that people look at me, that seems to say that it is ridiculous for me to be staying up half the night getting ready for a benefit for feral cats when this very big, and very important thing is going on.
Today is National Feral Cat Day. It’s 1:00am now. At around 7:30pm yesterday, I put out cat food and treats for the ferals on my block. Later, the kitten who I keep seeing around came around to eat. She is small and it is starting to get cold at night. She had been existing mostly on bread crumbs left out for birds. We are hoping to catch her before she is too old to socialize, and then find a good home for her. We are hoping to catch and spay her mother, so that she can live out her life without the stress of constant pregnancies.
If I go and try to make the world a better place in the way that seems most important to someone else, she will still be hungry.
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Thank You!
