Here, Kitty, Kitty....

Do you have a pet, a dog or cat or maybe something else? I have nephew who's girlfriend has a rat. Not what I would consider cuddly, but to each his own I guess. If you have a pet, more than likely you are an animal lover. Or a glutton for punishment, but that's a conversation for another time, isn't it?Odds are, if you have a pet(or two or three) you are feeding it and caring for it and taking it to the vet and all of the things that responsible people do. Good for you. Perhaps you even get upset when you see other animals that are mistreated. Again, good for you. I'm a sucker for sad eyes, and I think there should be a death penalty consideration for people who hurt animals on purpose. Don't get me started on Micheal Vick. I'd like to see him tethered and and taunted and made to fight some other helpless jackass like himself. But that's a rant for another time. I've had all sorts of pets over the years -dogs galore, cats,fish, lizards, snakes, even a cockatoo that loved chicken. It was cannibalistic, I know, but that bird went nuts when there was fried chicken in the house. And I suppose that technically fish are more of a decoration than a pet, but they learn to come for the food quick enough, don't they? So if you enjoy pets anything like I do, imagine my horror when I watched a support manager riding around on a motorized wheelchair shooting at the birds in the store. It was amazing. And he seemed to be having the time of his life, he seemed for all the world like a big game hunter on safari. One of the birds that he shot was only wounded, so he stepped on it to finish the job. I decided that I didn't need the sweats that I went in for and went home. When I called the home office, it was as if they were trying a jedi mind trick. I told them what I saw. Are you sure? I was asked. "Yes," I told them, "the bird didn't fall out of the sky and dive under his foot. Why don't you trap the birds and let them loose outside?" We do trap some of them in nets by the doorways, but that doesn't get all of them. I was told. "So why don't you try to live trap them instead of shooting them out of the air? "We'll look into that. But I think it's to protect the customers as well. Thank you for bringing this to our attention." I hung up the phone in distaste. The last time I saw customers in danger from a wren was in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. When I asked one of the associates about it, she said that most of them get trapped in the nets by the receiving area. When I asked when they got the birds out of the nets, she assured me that dead birds were removed promptly. Eeww. So I was not surprised to read online that Walmart had agreed to donate an undisclosed sum of money in response to beating some cats to death in a storage trailer. Mr. Sam must be so proud. I guess so long as it wasn't his dog Ol' Roy, it's okay. Think about how a person treats an animal around them. It's been proven that a lot of sadistic killers started their path by torturing animals. I'm not saying that the world's biggest retailer is staffed by sadists, but I am saying that you can judge a lot about a person-or company- by the way it treats the lesser animals and creatures around it. Think it over, you'll thank me later.