Friday, February 5, 2016

The mouser and the vegan

Run, little mousie, run!
Puff is a mouser. She lives with a vegan. At least for now. The vegan is me. I'm trying to connect with her hunting and eating habits. So, how does that work out? How does a vegan live amicably with a cat that love, love, loves to catch and eat mice? Well, it's not easy, for sure. But let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Puff showed up on our doorstep last week sometime. Poor baby. Her collar was so tight that her hair was all gone underneath it. Boy, was she glad to have a warm place to sleep that night and a bowl of food and water.

Well, one night became another and another and another. We're still trying to find her owner, but to be honest, I'm pretty sure she's been on her own for at least 6 months due to her condition. It's pretty likely that they've stopped looking or never looked very hard in the first place. But I digress.

Let's get back to the whole mouser thing. We knew we had mice before Puff showed up. We just didn't know how many. Boy, do we have a lot of mice in our garage! And unfortunately, some of them have inevitably found their way into the house. So, every night, Puff catches at least one. And every morning I get to pick up the pieces. Literally. They're tiny, but....

It's disgusting to say the very least. Oh, I don't touch them. I use a broom and dustpan. Still disgusting. Still not fun for a vegan. And if I happen to be awake during the battle.... Well, the squeaking is just heart wrenching. Poor little mice! Puff really enjoys the hunt. Sometimes if she takes too long, I scoop the mice up in a foam cup and put them outdoors just to save them from being batted around and tortured.

But here's the thing. As a vegan, I hate seeing any creature harmed including those I don't exactly want in my house. But Puff is a cat. Cats are carnivores. They eat mice. And also, something a lot of people don't know is that vegans are all for natural balance. Which means that even though I feel bad for the mice Puff catches and consumes, I understand that she's following her natural instincts.

As vegans, we don't believe that humans are natural carnivores or omnivores. We believe that humans are herbivores, as is evidenced by our physical makeup. Our digestive systems and teeth are designed to chew and digest vegetation, not meat. Plus, we haven't the claws or the width of jaw it takes to tear through live flesh.

But cats? Well, no one can say they're not intended to eat meat or fish or chase and eat mice. It's pretty much what they do. It's natural for them. And so, being as how we obviously have more mice than catch and release methods can handle and being as how Puff is a natural born mouser, I guess this vegan is just going to have to deal with it.

Of course, all these theories just went out the window this morning when she tossed a dead mouse in my lap....

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