Fraidy Kat Sez

hello small-timid-cat.

Hello bobcat. Thanks for coming to visit me again.

bobcat tell story small-timid-cat. friend one-eye-cat-torn-ear tell story bobcat. story make bobcat happy.

Oh yes, please. I’d like to hear a good story.

story good human. 

bobcat cousin cougar. lion big cougar. lion big big. human hurt lion. lion mad human. lion hurt human. no end.

some human friend animal. story human friend lion. good good story.

Greetings young Fraidy Kat. It is I. May I humbly request the pleasure of your company this evening?

Hi Mr. Katz. How are you?

Oh Miss Kat, how I wish I could say that I am doing well. Unfortunately I have the thankless task of speaking with you tonight on the subject of humans and their horrific propensities to inflict pain.

Have there been more cats taken to labatories?

I’m sorry, little one, but that continues every day. There will be cats and other creatures taken to so-called “research” facilities until humans develop a sense of decency, which may not happen in our lifetimes. 

So what is new that you need to tell me?

Thomas was relaying to me the substance of his last talk with you, and he told you that if humans did to each other the things they do to animals, most humans would demand that such individuals be executed or locked up. It was my distinct displeasure to disabuse him of that notion. 

Sadly, humans have tortured other humans for as long as recorded history. In some places this was eliminated, but in our nation, for the first time ever, powerful individuals have succeeded in torturing humans with no consequence to themselves. I am speaking, of course, of those most loathsome humans know as “Republicans.”

Feral Tom has told me about them, but I didn’t know they were that awful.

It pains me to say so, Fraidy Kat, but the evil perpetrated by that scurrilous cabal seems to have no limit. In this country the mass of humans have approved of what the Republicans are doing, even though nations of the world have recoiled in horror at the thought. 

Several years ago some angry people attacked this nation, and the ruler of the humans, a Republican named “President Bush”, commanded his minions to gather up people who were the same color as the attackers and to torture them. The servants of this monster were able to force confessions of crimes whether they were true or not. In this way the blood lust of this nation’s humans would be temporarily sated.

Many innocent humans have been subjected to unendurable pain for longer than you could imagine, even though the laws of this nation forbid it.

If it’s against the law, how can they get away with it?

At another time, Miss Kat, I will explain to you the concept of Propaganda. These monstrous creatures have developed a system of deception that they call Religion, and another known as Patriotism, by which they can manipulate humans less intelligent than themselves. It has been easy for them to commit crime after crime for seven years now without cease.

These craven, cowardly humans learned about the best ways to torture by studying the fearsome tyrants of human history. But the most frightening thing of all is that they have had the help of doctors in perfecting their unconscionable abominations.

Do you mean doctors like the one that my human takes me to when I’m sick?

No, my child, your doctor human doesn’t want to hurt you. I mean the kind of doctor that performs the torture on animals in a laboratory. 

Oh No!

Yes Fraidy Kat, it’s true. For many years there have been those who subjected our fellow creatures to unspeakable indignities in their search for knowledge. Some humans have protested that this is immoral, but those practices have continued nonetheless.

The research doctors claim that they gain valuable knowledge and they have proven themselves right. By studying the reactions of animals to torture they have learned a great deal about the best ways to torture humans. The torturers have received a great deal of advice from the animal researchers right from the beginning. One such individual, when confronted by a member of the press, said that the guidelines followed in one form of torture was based on “good science.”

So let no one say that animal research is for naught. 

Oh Mr. Katz! No more, please!

Goodnight Miss Fraidy Kat. You will be safe under your bed.

What is it Tom! You look like you haven’t slept at all today.

It’s worse than that Fraidy Kat. I spent last night and most of today lying with a dying cat. I licked him and purred almost non-stop but in the end he died. In a way it was a relief for him, after the way he had been treated most of his young life.

What do you you mean?

He had escaped from a laboratory, and lived only a few days until he died of starvation.

What’s a labatory?

How can I even begin  to describe it? I would never have believed it if he hadn’t told me so much about it. A laboratory is a place where they do horrible things to cats every day without a rest. 

When this cat was still a kitten, his entire litter, along with their mother, were captured by cruel men who put them in a big car along with other cats and dogs and took them to the laboratory place. When I found him he had wires sticking out of his head, which had been getting caught on things and making him bleed. He was delirious and totally exhausted from his mistreatment. A young man who took pity on him had helped him and other prisoners to escape, but then they were alone not knowing anything about how to survive out in the world.

What kind of humans would hate us that much?

It’s the same as always, Fraidy. They don’t hate us at all. They just think that they own the world and everything in it, and they never think of us as living, feeling creatures. We are just things that they can do whatever they want to for any reason they can think of. The cat I met didn’t even have a name: they just called him by a number.

Think now, little one, about times when your human put you into a cage and took you to a place where you got poked and made to swallow things. You might not have liked it, but your human was trying to help you when you were sick. Now imagine if you had to live in that cage your entire life, and people took you every day to do terrible things to you. That’s what it’s like in a laboratory.

Oh no! What kinds of things? 

It makes no sense, but they torture animals every day and watch how the animals “respond”. All they ever learn is how an animal responds to imprisonment and mistreatment. They are even cruel to monkeys, who are cousins to humans the way we are cousins to bobcats and cougars. Any human who did the kind of things to other humans that they do to us would be considered a monster. The humans in The City would kill that person, or lock him up forever. 

This cat with no name had been caged but not tortured when he was still a kitten. Then, when he was nearly grown, they started in on him. They put the wires in his head and then started watching him all day and all night. When he napped they left him alone, but every time he tried to really sleep they would wake him up. He saw other cats who had been treated this way, and those cats went insane. They became too distressed to do anything at all except claw at the wall of the cage and attack the humans and the other cats. Eventually the humans would take them away, and the other laboratory cats said that they would be killed, and then the humans would cut them up and poke around inside their dead bodies.

Why would humans do those things unless they really hate us?

You really don’t understand humans Fraidy Kat, and an innocent creature like you probably never will. These laboratory humans don’t understand their own feelings, so they are curious to find out about the animals’ feelings. They are proud of their curiosity, which they call a search for “knowledge”, and will do anything just to see what will happen. Sometimes they learn things that will help other humans, but mostly they just want to be masters of the whole world. 

When you think about it, Fraidy … . Fraidy? Fraidy Kat?

Well, I can’t blame her. She always feels better once she’s back under the bed.

hello small-timid-cat. come out talk.

Who are you?

am bobcat. new friend one-eye-cat-torn-ear ask bobcat see you.

Is your name Bob Kat?

no no. am bobcat. bobcat not understand name. only animal live human have name. 

Do you know anything about humans?

yes yes. human take bobcat land. no place hunt. bobcat leave wild home. move city.

Are you safe in The City? Can you find food?

yes yes. bobcat small. bobcat hide day. much food night. no human night. no dog night. small cat afraid bobcat. raccoon afraid bobcat not fight.

cousin cougar big not hide. human kill cougar. cougar not safe wild not safe city. cougar no place safe.

Is a cougar that big cat that Tom says eats deers in The Wild? What do they eat in The City?

cougar eat big animal eat small animal. only fear human. human chase cougar. cougar no place go. cougar die. no animal eat deer. today many many deer.

I think deers are pretty. Do they eat people?

no no. deer eat plant human eat. take food human. human say deer pretty. human not kill deer. no cougar stop deer eat all food.

But if deers are eating the human’s food, why don’t the humans kill some of the deers?

human stupid. not like animal. human kill cougar not kill deer. bad thing kill cougar not kill deer. mother all life punish human. deer carry tick. many many tick hurt human.

What’s a tick? If they ride on deers how can they be big enough to hurt humans?

no no. tick small bug. ride on deer find human. drink blood human. many human sick. human sick bad bad. not cure sick. 

human hurt wild place kill animal. human hurt air hurt water. hurt mother life. mother mad human. human not see. human not stop. mother kill human. maybe all human die. 

But what will I do if my human dies? 

sad sad. some human good. all human die. good human bad human die. sad sad. many animal die. sad sad.

Oh bobcat! I This is terrible. I’m going back under the bed.

good night small-timid-cat. bobcat see again.

Hello Tom. I haven’t seen you for days. Where were you?

I’ve decided it’s time for me to learn more about humans, so I’ve started exploring the city. It’s a big place, and everywhere I go I see humans doing different things. They are so complicated! I don’t think that rational animals like us will ever understand how humans get themselves into so much trouble.

I found a place called “convention center” in the next neighborhood. There were plenty of trees and bushes around, so I hung out all day and watched. They were having a meeting about biofuels.

Buy-a what?

That’s bio-fuels Fraidy. Biofuels means that they grow plants to burn in their cars. They call this “renewable energy”

I hate cars! They make the air around them so nasty it can make you choke.

Well, that bad air is so bad that it’s making all the weather change everywhere. Nothing will come in its right time once the order of the seasons has changed. It will be really bad, but most humans pretend it isn’t happening

The scariest thing about humans is that instead of looking at evidence most of them will just believe what they want. They get mad if anyone tries to tell them that trouble is coming.

But that’s crazy!

Of course it is. Animals are smarter than that. No animal would ever want to be fooled. When other cats challenged me I was always smarter. I knew the territory. I was alert to every sound. Humans are not that smart — most humans, if they have to chose between facts and their personal beliefs, will deny the facts.

So the Republicans kept telling humans that they should not believe the facts about climate change. They became “deniers” because they deny what is obvious.

Were some Republicans at that meeting, telling humans to deny the facts?

No Fraidy, that’s the reason I’m so upset about what I saw there, because there were no Republicans at all. It’s impossible to talk to anyone who has already made up his mind, and that includes the Greens.

Aren’t they the ones who want to be good to all the plants and animals?

Yes they are, but they thought biofuels was some kind of good idea, and now that the facts show they were wrong they try to explain away the facts.

There was a human outside the door handing out leaflets against what they were doing at the meeting. I listened to him for hours talking to the other humans, trying to explain that growing plants to burn in your car means that rain forests are being cut down. But most of them did not want to admit they were wrong. The human with the pamphlets said it was just like talking to a climate-change denier.

Is it bad to cut down rain forests?

Oh yes, little one. It is a terrible, horrible thing. In a rain forest there are many many kinds of animals, and many many kinds of plants. You have monkeys and other animals that spend their lives in the trees. You have a beautiful cat known as the jaguar, and…

Oh no! Those poor cats!

Yes, Fraidy, remember when I told you about bobcat, who had to move into the city because his territory was taken over by humans? Well, you could never count high enough to know how many creatures are being killed or becoming homeless from human greed. Humans want to get rich by growing plants so that other humans can burn them in their cars.

But humans are going to kill themselves if they destroy the rain forest, because that is the main place where good air comes from — what they call oxygen. Humans don’t care if they kill themselves and their young. All they can think about is their greed.

Are the Green humans greedy?

Not in the same way the Republicans are. But they’re human, and don’t want to think that they might be wrong. They deny the evidence in many complicated ways, so they won’t have to think about the results from something they thought was good.

It’s the same old story Fraidy. If people who want to be good refuse to stop doing something bad, how can we ever hope that the people who get rich from doing bad things would ever change?

I keep thinking about all those cats losing their homes. I ‘m getting back under the bed!

Goodnight Fraidy Kat.