Ron Sala, Minister
The Unitarian Universalist Society in
Stamford
20 Forest Street
Stamford, Connecticut 06901
Interim Minister (formerly)
UU Fellowship of Northern Westchester
Mount
Kisco, NY 10549
How
many times have you heard someone say, "I was just minding my own business?"
If you turn on the news tonight, you’ll probably hear somebody say something
like, "I was just walking down the street, minding my own business." And
then something happened: a robbery, a tornado, a fire. It’s never, "I had
a feeling something important was going to happen today, so I decided to
look for it." No, they’re always just minding their own business.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m as good at minding my own business as anyone else. I find it so easy to go through the day preoccupied with my own plans, hopes, and fears. It’s so easy, isn’t it, not to pay attention to what’s going on around us? But sometimes something happens that jars us out of our complacency.
A couple summers ago, I was "walking down the street, minding my own business," and one of those somethings happened. I was walking in my neighborhood in Queens when I heard a squeak coming from behind some trash cans. Well, if idle curiosity were a crime, I’d get life, so I stopped to investigate. What I expected was a rat, not an unusual expectation in New York. Instead, I was shocked to see five tiny balls of fur I quickly realized were kittens!
They were in a cardboard box, lying in the hot August sun. Their eyes were still shut. Umbilical cords hung from their bellies. Unable to walk, they rolled around, mewing pitifully. My shock quickly turned to confusion and then to anger. Who would leave newborn kittens on the sidewalk, subject to sweltering heat and wandering dogs...?
What should I do? The kittens would surely not last long under these conditions. With total clarity, and not a little apprehension, I knew that I might be all that stood between these helpless creatures and death. Simply minding my own business was no longer an option.
There was an open cellar door down a flight of stairs. I went down to see if I could make any sense of this. There was a woman inside cleaning. She casually explained that her cat had had kittens—and she didn’t want them. I could have them if I liked. I knew it was no time to argue with her about her treatment of animals. If I did, she might refuse to give me the kittens, and that would certainly leave them to an unpromising fate.
"I’ll take them," I said.
My taking the kittens under these conditions was something any decent person would have done, especially somebody to whom cute animals are like what Kryptonite is to Superman. Now that I had them, though, what was I to do with them? I recalled that my apartment had a "no pets" policy … so I decided to take them to my fiancée ReBecca’s apartment until I could find a more permanent home. Becca was away on vacation, so all kitten care would be on me.
I quickly discovered what that meant. No shelter would take kittens until they were six weeks old. Furthermore, the vet told me newborn kittens need to be hand-fed formula every two to three hours—around the clock! They also need a hot water bottle at all times to keep warm, and help going to the bathroom! All of a sudden, I was a mommy cat on two legs....
I moved into Becca’s place and set the alarm for the constant bottle feedings. It wasn’t exactly pleasant to get up at three in the morning, but the nursing sessions gave me a chance to really get to know them. The kittens seemed to divide their time between squeaking, purring, and sleeping. There was one calico, two grays, and two orange ones that looked like little five-inch tigers. They were cute beyond words, and they were all starting to show personalities.
After about a week, their eyes started to open. Like the vet had predicted, I was getting attached. Becca was getting attached just listening to me talk about them on the phone.
Not all was well, though. The littlest one seemed to be in trouble. His movements were getting sluggish. He slept more than the others and kept to himself. I was worried.... So I had him checked out at an animal hospital. The vet there told me that newborn kittens often don’t survive. "Kitten Wasting Syndrome," she called it. They were especially susceptible if, like these kittens, they’d been deprived of two weeks of their mother’s milk. There was nothing anyone could do but hope.
By the day Becca got back from her trip, the little one had grown even weaker and was refusing to eat. That very afternoon, she held him in the palm of her hand. "Baby," she said, gently stroking him, "Oh, baby."
A few minutes later, he took his last breath….
Becca and I just held each other and cried. All our hopes and prayers had come to nothing. This kitten would never live to run and play. My only consolation was that he had known a few moments of kindness, and that Becca and I were there to comfort one another in our pain and sadness…
The Universe just then seemed quite unkind, or at least coldly random. But the actions of people are never so random. The woman who had abandoned the kittens on what must have been their first day of life could not claim innocence. As Dr. King once pointed out, the harm done by active evil cannot match that done by indifference.
I’d caught a glimpse of a national shame. According to animal rights activist David Sztybel, over ten million animals are abandoned each year in our country. Sometimes human cruelty approaches the infinite.
Not long after this, I was amazed that a young boy in my New Jersey congregation had a similar experience. On the edge of a construction site, he found a Burger King bag full of kittens. In our sharing time, his mother said she wondered what to tell him about this glimpse of the nastier side of human nature. She told him that maybe the person put them on a busy construction site so someone would find them. Sometimes finding a silver lining is the toughest job of all.
And abandonment is only one of the cruelties our species inflicts upon others. Another is the widespread use of factory farming, in which animals are often forced to live their entire lives in cramped cages and pens, so small they can hardly move. In order to control the diseases spread among the animals by overcrowding, they are pumped full of preventative doses of antibiotics—endangering both animal and human health. And, in the case of dairy cows, they are often given rBGH, a synthetic hormone that sometimes sickens them in an effort to produce cheap milk. As to those who drink that milk, we are what we drink.
There’s also the area of the animal testing of cosmetics and household products. Though no law requires these tests, and safe, humane alternatives do exist, animal testing remains widespread. Major companies, with household names like Procter & Gamble or Kimberly-Clark, routinely engage in this practice.
Some examples of such tests include caustic chemicals "forced into the eyes of rabbits and applied to animals’ shaved and raw skin. Laboratory workers place the animals in restraining devices so they cannot struggle...." Sometimes the animals break their own necks or backs trying to escape the pain. Or another test applies pads soaked with human excrement to the shaved backs of mice for several days until it causes festering sores. [1]
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t disparage the raising of animals for meat, when they are treated decently, nor am I calling for the elimination of medical testing on animals in cases where alternatives may not exist. What I am saying is that we need to reexamine our priorities and our values when it comes to the unnecessary suffering of our fellow creatures, driven by greed.
We seem to have a national schizophrenia when it comes to our treatment of animals. Walk into any supermarket and you’ll find an entire aisle devoted to every need and want of our cherished pets. A survey has shown that 54 percent of pet owners would choose their pet as a companion if stranded on a desert island—over another human. And yet, out of sight and out of mind, millions of farm animals and experimental animals undergo such tortures as would be on the front page of every newspaper were they applied to people.
Indeed, sometimes finding a silver lining is the toughest job of all.
But there is another side of human nature. The best among us have spoken about it. Unitarian Charles Darwin said, "The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of [hu]man[ity]." Gandhi taught, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." And Leo Tolstoy wrote, "If a [person] aspires toward a righteous life, [their] first act of abstinence is from injury to animals." The Bible also speaks on the subject. Proverbs 12:10 reads, "The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel."
There is another side of human nature. It lies deep within us until we care enough to bring it out.
There was a story in the news recently about a family who went to the local animal shelter looking for a cat. They picked one and named him Doc. The family didn’t have Doc long before one night a fire broke out in their home. As the house filled with smoke, Doc jumped on the chests of family members until they woke up and escaped to safety.
Of course, it’s the rare pet that saves its human companion’s life, but I believe the story is nonetheless full of meaning. Animals give to us in so many ways. There’s warmth and affection, certainly. Indeed, studies have shown that pets can prolong the lives of elderly persons. But animals also give us the opportunity to stand up as responsible citizens of our planetary home. When we commit ourselves to protecting the rights and well-being of our fellow creatures, we give ourselves the gift of a clear conscience and a developing character.
There is another side of human nature. We bring it out when we do things like making thoughtful choices in the products we buy, when we adopt abandoned animals, or when we speak out about animal welfare.
There is another side of human nature. Goodness and hope can be found within us. This has always been our message as Unitarian Universalists.
There is another side of human nature.
It’s the side exemplified by a mother and son, who took in animals others had thrown away.
It’s the side shown by ReBecca, who’s raising happy, healthy cats.
It’s the side acted out by UFETA, Unitarian Universalists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
It’s the side told by the teacher of Galilee about the shepherd who left comfort and safety to search for one lost sheep.
It’s the side related by Loren Eisley about the one who rose early in the morning to toss starfish back to sea.
It’s the side that recognizes the interdependent web of all existence.
It’s the side that knows that to cut any creature out of that web is to cut out ourselves.
It’s the side to find and strengthen in us and among us as we decide with all our fellow creatures in mind.
It’s the side that knows "our business" is wider and deeper than we have imagined.
Amen.
