Not So Humane Society

Posted on October 20, 2002 in Social Justice

Bink called attention to a recent episode of Animal Planet that showcased the New York City ASPCA. She pointed, in particular, to the not-so-humane action undertaken by three ASPCA staffers:

These ASPCA workers found a man living in a van with three dogs and one cat. The cat had an eye infection. This concerned the workers. They gave this man a citation which demanded him to take this cat to a vet to get his eye checked out. Let me say this again, this man lived in a van with three dogs and one cat. He lived in a van with all of this belongings.

Neither Bink nor myself hate animals or endorse wanton cruelty against them. But both of us question the wisdom of punishing a homeless person who cannot afford veterinary treatment. Would they have rather that he do what many others do and dumped the cat and three dogs out in the country somewhere or maybe on a busy expressway? Bink remarks that she is “waking up to the real America”. I agree that we are seeing a dark aspect, the valueing of the soft fuzzy over the rougher human face.

Plus, as Bink begins to observe, there’s another aspect that goes unnoted. These public servants are tied to doing only one job, that of protecting animals. This neat compartmentalization of duties, I think, allows city governments to carry out legalistic pogroms against the homeless. “Your homelessness is not my problem,” you can hear the animal cops saying.

But it is. I think now of John Donne’s great sermon “No Man is an Island.” In this moving soliloquy, Donne observes that whatever happens to another person happens to the whole. When we mistreat the homeless, we mistreat ourselves. When we bomb Iraq, to extend this further, we bomb ourselves. As citizens in a republic whose elected officials are supposed to defer to our judgement, we must demand wiser regulation than that which produced this incident — for our own protection.

Personally, I would have coughed up the money for the vet. Charity may not be part of the job, but it shouldn’t be illegal either. Better still, how about using our tax money to ensure that everyone has a home?