Pharyngula

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | June 5, 2009 5:25 PM

.

Posted by: Michelle R | June 5, 2009 5:29 PM

Glucagon...What's PETA got to do with it? If they had their way, we wouldn't have pets at all.

...Sigh... That woman is one sick fuck. I can't say more than that. I'm speechless. Terrible death.

Posted by: Michelle | June 5, 2009 5:29 PM

I've got a really strong stomach - I work in a research hospital/university where they do animal research - but this sort of random, meaningless, pointless act of absolute cruelty is even turning my stomach. I've got pets... and I would kill anyone who did something like that to one of my pets.

Those girls are sick, and I hope this haunts them for the rest of their lives. I hope they have nightmares for years about being thrown in an oven and baked alive.

I think I need to hug my cat now.

Posted by: Shamelessly Atheist | June 5, 2009 5:31 PM

"Yet you trash PETA, when this is the type of message they try to propagate???"

Glucagon, it is a matter of public record that PETA would do away with all pet animals, as in KILL THEM.

As a person owned by four cats I am nauseated by this.

Posted by: Kate | June 5, 2009 5:32 PM

Read this, burst into tears.

My heart hurts.

Posted by: Greg F. | June 5, 2009 5:32 PM

Yet you trash PETA, when this is the type of message they try to propagate???

No. According to PETA, if you have a grilled chicken sandwich you're just as bad as the moron who tossed a live kitten into the oven to be bunt alive. And they're more than willing to capitalize on tragedy to promote their nonsensical message.

Posted by: E.V. | June 5, 2009 5:34 PM

Let the punishment fit the crime.

Posted by: Shamelessly Atheist | June 5, 2009 5:35 PM

@#11

I hear ya. I wish I hadn't read this, actually.

Posted by: FannyBabbs | June 5, 2009 5:36 PM

I threw up a little.

He trashes PETA for their methods and their extremism, not necessarily their message. What happened here wasn't so much an animal hate crime as it was the result of an unbalanced and SOCIALLY USELESS individual acting upon violent and destructive impulses. It cannot be understood. Clearly, this girl needs some kind of psychiatric help before she can be allowed to be a member of the general populace. It wasn't even done sadistically is the part that frightens me. She didn't stick around to take pleasure in what she had done. This crime was a nihilistic one, almost identical to the scene in Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut's best work, in my opinion) where the homeless nihilist destroys the narrator's house and murder's his cat, because it didn't make a difference. Clearly, this girl did not seem to feel like her actions were meaningful at all. Simply destruction for no sake at all, not even the sake of destruction.

Posted by: akshelby | June 5, 2009 5:37 PM

That made my stomach turn and my eyes well up with tears. I can't imagine what that poor cat went through. I am allergic to cats but I wish I was not because they are so cute, fun and cuddly. I need to go give my dog some love now.

Posted by: Alex | June 5, 2009 5:38 PM

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/

Posted by: Walton | June 5, 2009 5:40 PM

I like kittens, and I think this is tragic.

Posted by: akshelby | June 5, 2009 5:41 PM

And, no, this is not what PETA tries to prevent. PETA would have have killed the kitten immediately.

This is what the ASPCA tries to prevent. You will note that it was the ASPCA that investigated this and made the arrest. It's time to donate to the ASPCA.

Posted by: FannyBabbs | June 5, 2009 5:42 PM

#13

*golfclap*

Posted by: Eamon Knight | June 5, 2009 5:44 PM

Similar story from last year -- bastards trashed the house, put the cat in the microwave, and didn't get slapped nearly hard enough for it:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/09/04/camrose-sentence.html

Posted by: dbn | June 5, 2009 5:45 PM

it is really had to find the words to discribe such unmitigated barbarism.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | June 5, 2009 5:47 PM

I simply do not understand that kind of behavior at all.

No, it's truly deviant, and an indication of the good possibility that this person will harm and abuse humans in the future.

I'd get sarcastic about its being a "joke," but she probably does see it that way, and no one except deviants agree with her anyhow.

Then again, isn't this about like telling us to drive safely? I'm sure almost everyone here is revolted at it, and anyone who is not will know better than to admit it.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592

Posted by: Alverant | June 5, 2009 5:49 PM

This woman is evil. I can't add anything that hasn't already been said. I need to go home and love my cats. Especially Sarge, a poor cat who was declawed, abandoned, and had to wait 6 months to find a home. He's my buddy. He's been sneezing for the past week (could be alegeries, could be illness) and deserves some special treatment.

Some good news though. I saw this on rawstory.com. Parents who tried homeopathic therapy on their daughter who then died were convicted of manslaughter.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/parents-guilty-of-manslaughter-over-daughters-eczema-death-20090605-bxvx.html?page=-1

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 5, 2009 5:52 PM

Ridiculous as it is, I always check inside before I preheat the oven to make sure a mouse or something hasn't found a way in. The idea is just sickening.

How anyone could do this to a helpless animal is beyond me. They must have no empathy at all.

I'd rather someone rip my apartment to shreds and destroy or take everything of value than kill my pets in such a horrifying, excruciating way. I don't think I would ever sleep soundly again if my dog were cooked alive. Just the thought of it makes me physically shake.

Posted by: Faintpraise | June 5, 2009 5:53 PM

Absolutely sickening. And no, I can't see them being much better with human beings.

And it was not a shock to learn via these comments that Peta in addition to being morally reprehensible, misogynistic,and just plain daft (see "Sea Kittens" campaign) are also hypocrites. Why does anyone support these people again?

Posted by: MikeM | June 5, 2009 5:54 PM

Has there ever been a more appropriate time to use your phrase, "DEMENTED FUCKWIT"?

It certainly applies here.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | June 5, 2009 5:55 PM

*cries and hugs own cats*

That's awful. Makes me glad I donate to the ASPCA.

What else can you say? That girl is already well on her way to being a sociopath.

Posted by: SteveN | June 5, 2009 6:01 PM

A lack of empathy is exactly the problem here--the same empathy so recently mocked in Obama's supreme court nominee.

There are some things one just does not do to other beings of, even those of lesser sentience than oneself. As Shakespeare said regarding casting someone out into a storm, "My enemy's dog, though he had bit me, should have found refuge by my fire on such a night."

Posted by: Alyson Miers | June 5, 2009 6:04 PM

That girl is fucking sick.

How can anyone look at a kitten--a helpless, furry, snuggly, baby animal--and think to herself, "You know what would be funny? Roasting this critter in the oven!"? I don't want to think of what Valerie Hernandez is feeling right now.

I've raised a kitten, and the thought of this atrocity makes me wish I could teleport back to Albania and visit my host family just to make sure the kitty is okay. If only the host fam had an email address.

Posted by: Daenyx | June 5, 2009 6:12 PM

I cried reading this, that's so horrible. I need to go find my cat now and hug him.

So pointless, so sick.

Posted by: david ellis | June 5, 2009 6:13 PM

The punishment under the law for this kind of animal cruelty should be far, far greater than it is.

Posted by: Felix | June 5, 2009 6:16 PM

What's the law on this behavior? Over here it's up to three years in jail plus financial damages.
I guess in the US they could (and should) be sued for something like 8.4 Billion dollars in compensation for emotional distress?

Posted by: Arnold T Pants | June 5, 2009 6:16 PM

Oh man. I need to get home and hug my cat, she's like my little child.

Posted by: Lunacrous | June 5, 2009 6:22 PM

Having grown up in a neighborhood where I had to constantly guard our cats from this kind of sociopathy, I know too well just how monstrous some people can be. And I know just as well how scarring this will be for the kitten's owner...

As Ian said above, anonymous is more likely to go into attack mode in the wake of this than joke about it (though I'm sure there will be some of that too...). I can only hope that they don't get bored for a very, very long time.

Posted by: James F | June 5, 2009 6:24 PM

This reminds me somewhat of the recent case of Lance Cpl. David Motari of the U.S. Marines, who was caught on video throwing a puppy off a cliff while he was serving in Iraq. Motari justified his actions by saying that the puppy was sick and he couldn't have taken it back to base with him, so he was giving it a quick death, but if you watch the video (just Google, I'm not linking it), he treats it like a joke, saying, "Awww, so cute, so cute!" before hurling the little creature to its death. The absence of empathy is more than heartbreaking, it's chilling - how does it disappear in the first place, and how far will it extend in the future?

Posted by: rob | June 5, 2009 6:28 PM

Sure, now that it's fashionable you all come out against burning kittens alive. Anti-kitten-burning has been my platform since my very first campaign. That's true leadership, getting out ahead of the kitten burners.

Posted by: Buzz | June 5, 2009 6:30 PM

Sociopaths--just lock them up.

Posted by: Akiko | June 5, 2009 6:34 PM

Many teens think that killing or hurting things smaller than themselves show how "cool" they are. These are the same ones that deface cemetaries or vandalize churches. they are nothing and they suspect that fact. Very low IQ + poor educaiton + lots of TV/marketing = sociopath

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | June 5, 2009 6:44 PM

Janice,

I hope that the pet-owner and former roommate, whose place she trashed, presses civil charges since I'm pretty sure that the criminal charges won't amount to much in the end. If nothing, hitting her in the pocketbook might make her think twice about what she's done. A full-scale shunning in her community would also be a start!

She's 17 and living in the Bronx. I doubt she has much of a pocketbook to hit. I do wish the law was more severe though.

Posted by: William | June 5, 2009 6:45 PM

Holy shit. If anyone did that to my cat, I would beat them to death with a baseball bat.

Posted by: Arnold T Pants | June 5, 2009 6:46 PM

Even if it's a maximum of two years (for this one count- she's charged with multiple crimes) having been convicted of a felony is pretty damaging. I don't know what her life situation was before this, but she's pretty well screwed.

Posted by: Felix | June 5, 2009 6:48 PM

Akiko,
I think you are wrong. Many in groups which vandalize churches or cemeteries have nothing at all to do with animal cruelty. It is true that the lack of empathy can lie differently, against animals for one person and more misanthropic for another. Animal cruelty is an indicator of certifiable sociopathy (exactly what a majority of future serial killers have been found to have exhibited in their youth; that and/or pyromania), vandalism is not. Many sociopaths and a significant (almost exclusive) majority of serial killers have a high IQ.

Posted by: Sastra | June 5, 2009 6:53 PM

Years ago I read something interesting about preacher Jimmy Swaggart, and a similar "joke."

Swaggart evidently had a favorite story he used to tell about his father, a nasty man by all accounts. Seems his dad worked with a guy originally from Scotland, and this man had a reputation for always complaining. His friends and he decided to play a "joke" on the co-worker. The dour old man was unmarried, and lived alone with his only friend -- an old tomcat. Swaggart's dad therefore went to the guy's house one workday, stole the cat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it. He and his friends then presented it to the unsuspecting co-worker as a "present," not telling him what it was, but telling him they cooked it special just for him. They wanted to see if he would still find something to complain about -- even with a gift freely given -- expected he would -- and then they'd get to see the look on his face when they all told him!

Swaggart told this story as an example of how "mean" his daddy was -- but he thought it was a funny, funny story. He'd laugh and chuckle all through it. Great joke.

Gives an insight into his mindset. Or, a certain kind of mindset.

Posted by: Procyon | June 5, 2009 6:53 PM

This is the world we have created. Where will it end?

Posted by: whitebird | June 5, 2009 6:56 PM

Lonewolf @23 - "Those girls sound like sociopaths in the making if you ask me...isn't animal cruelty one of the first signs of serial killers and other deviants?"

In the making? Sounds like they're already made to me. Now I must drink beer and snarfle my kitteh's belly.

:( x infinity.

Posted by: Diego | June 5, 2009 6:56 PM

Oh no! We just rescued a stray 7 week old female kitten, and this news really affected me. And I need to avoid mentioning this to the girlfriend. She'd never forgive me for ruining her evening with such news.

Posted by: Bridget McKinney | June 5, 2009 6:58 PM

What a sick thing to do. Off to find something uplifting after this.

@Alex #22
Wow. I'm not sure if I'm glad or not that I clicked on that link and read. I guess I'm glad to be a little better informed about PETA. I always thought they were a bit nutty, a little crazy, overzealous, etc, but killing a couple thousand pets every year? Wow.

I keep waiting to get old enough that this sort of hypocrisy and horror will stop surprising me, but every time I think I've become immune to the shock it rears its ugly head.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 6:59 PM

So, I'm going to kind of play devil's advocate here. Keep that in mind when responding.

So why are you all so offended by this? Can you explain why a human being values an animal like a kitten, why we find it repulsive to harm? Once identifying why, do you feel the reason is still justified?

Basically my view on it is that of evolution's aim slightly off. We have genes that cause us to feel bad or wronged when certain triggers are hit. Such as a soft body. Certain facial features, large eyes, the status of being weak, etc. These genes were favored because it caused us to care about other beings that shared the same genes (kin selection, etc).

But the aim of evolution is a bit fuzzy (it has no aim). The traits we value are equally present in fuzzy household pets. A case might even be made that the features of household pets are evolved to be favored by us. Much like the cookoo. Those of you who know what I'm talking about know where I'm going here.

So our feelings towards small warm fuzzy animals is a side effect of evolution. Does that make it justified?

As far as I see, it doesn't affect the justification. It is fact about how humans are regardless of whether it is fact or not. I acknowledge that. But does it REALLY effect teh character of an individual if that individual has more refined selection criteria? Is it not in fact possible for the neurological criteria to be set up 'ideally'... favoring humans of close relation and not other random animals. Isn't it a broad stroke to say that because these people value cats so poorly, they also must value humans so poorly? And if in fact they do hold humans in high regard, does it negate the anger towards their action to cats?

Things to think about.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 7:00 PM

He trashes PETA for their methods and their extremism, not necessarily their message.

Considering that PETA's message is "LOOK AT ME!! LOOK AT ME!!", I bloody well trash them for it.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 5, 2009 7:01 PM

Stories like these just make me sick to my stomach. If that girl is also setting fires, the homicide squad will want to start of file. A very disturbing, and disturbed, person.

Posted by: rrt | June 5, 2009 7:03 PM

I agree, this sounds like a budding psychopath. There's something wrong there.

But.

I know of an instance of someone doing something like this as a child (no, honestly not me, but for their privacy I will skip all details.) The person could not be more horrified and guilt-ridden today, and the guilt has effects on their behavior that I don't think they're aware of. I know them incredibly well and I'm certain nothing like this has ever happened since childhood, or could happen.

It's an anecdote, I know, but I have to take this as evidence that sometimes these things happen and the person turns out pretty much normal--a little scarred, perhaps, but not remotely psychopathic. But if that's true...how is it so? I have never understood this incident, and the person can't explain it either...indeed that's part of their horror, the fear that this kind of behavior could still lurk somewhere inside. Given the broader context of what Cheyenne Cherry also did, it seems likely to me that Cherry really IS "wrong" somehow, but I would love to understand how the neurology works that allows for this sort of cruelty to happen in those we'd consider normal.

Brownian @69: I can't tell you how many times I've thought the exact same way.

And I agree, Angel. Unicorn chaser, please.

Posted by: Bjørn Østman | June 5, 2009 7:04 PM

Fuck! I nearly puked when I read that. Imagining the details of what that kitten went through in that oven makes me queasy. Damn those kids.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 7:08 PM

I'd also like to take on those of you who have angry reactions about this.

Keep in mind that your reactions might themselves be the by product of evolution on the side of cute animals taking advantage of you. Your anger is caused specifically because cute fuzzy creatures have evolved to make you angry at these people. As a protection mechanism. Selfish.

Does that change anything about your feelings of anger at the situation?

Posted by: Prof. Henry Armitage | June 5, 2009 7:11 PM

#1, it's been proven that /b/ may hate anything and everything, but they love cats.

Very true.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 7:14 PM

Does that change anything about your feelings of anger at the situation?

Yes. I now feel significant additional resentment towards your tone-deaf and inexcusably smug attempt to hijack this for the purpose of a rhetorical exercise that straddles the fine line between thought-experiment and verbal masturbation.

Posted by: JJR | June 5, 2009 7:16 PM

Future serial killers in training, just wait & see.

I'm also nauseated reading this account.

Posted by: ERV | June 5, 2009 7:18 PM

Watching this over 9000 times usually helps me feel better.

Also, /b/ is trying to take care of things, which makes me feel a LOT better.

Posted by: RM | June 5, 2009 7:21 PM

One of the many reasons I don't care much for humans and love my dogs so much.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 7:22 PM

See this is interesting. And I'm a bit suprised about the style of replies so far. Instead of addressing the actual argument I put forward on it's merits (or lack of, if that's the case), we have so far seemed to stick to ad hominem. And I know most of you know better than that.

I put forward a real argument. I'd expect real replies to said argument. The idea of 'hijacking' a thread... what does that even mean? I happen to not be a part of your cry party, so I'm now hijacking a thread?

Posted by: JThompson | June 5, 2009 7:26 PM

I have to admit, my first thought would be violence towards someone that did this to one of my pets.
I'd like to think I'm civilized enough I wouldn't act on it, but I'm not sure.

Posted by: Sastra | June 5, 2009 7:29 PM

Jerome Haltom #98 wrote:

Is it not in fact possible for the neurological criteria to be set up 'ideally'... favoring humans of close relation and not other random animals. Isn't it a broad stroke to say that because these people value cats so poorly, they also must value humans so poorly? And if in fact they do hold humans in high regard, does it negate the anger towards their action to cats?

I'm not sure it would have been possible for the human animal to have evolved in such a way that empathy for other animals would be completely absent, but everything else the same. Talking about this hypothetical as more "ideal" than how we did evolve seems too teleological to me.

I also suspect that enjoying the suffering of animals is going to spill over into how one sees and relates to other people. If nothing else, this particular incident shows that Cherry had no genuine regard for the feelings of her 'friend' Valerie, that she would kill her pet.

It's not just fuzzy, babyish animals. Sili at #5 told a repulsive story about someone killing chickens for fun, and it trips the same intense dislike. In fact, someone taking delight in breaking something beautiful or old is also problematic, possibly on the same continuum.

nicholas #93:
I am so, so sorry you had that sad accident. That's the sort of thing that could have happened to any one of us. Try not to feel morally responsible.

Posted by: BobbyEarle | June 5, 2009 7:30 PM

ERV @104

Also, /b/ is trying to take care of things, which makes me feel a LOT better.

We are Legion.

Posted by: Quiet Desperation | June 5, 2009 7:33 PM

I simply do not understand that kind of behavior at all.

What's to understand? There's some seriously broken people out there. Or can they even be called broken? They are just wired up differently. I'm amazed anyone is surprised by stuff like this anymore. Maybe I've read too many too many criminal profiling books, or something. I also have a family member in the emergency health care field, so I hear all the stories there of what people do to one another.

Why would anyone commit such a random act of unmitigated cruelty?

Animal cruelty is a common starting place for sociopaths. It's something they can often do without being discovered, and it acts as a first step. Whether this girl got a thrill from it or she just considered the cat no more than an object is unknown. There's many different flavors of sociopath. Some enjoy hurting others, some do so because they just don't see the wrong in it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go hug my cat.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 7:34 PM

#112

That's why I put 'ideally' in quotes. I might define 'ideally' as closer something which would be more apt to increase the number of copies of the genes than the current configuration.

And I agree with you that humans could likely not have arrived at anything else.

Your idea that Cherry had no regard for Valerie is a perfect rebuttle to my thought-experiment.

Posted by: ERV | June 5, 2009 7:40 PM

They know everything about her. And its Caturday in Europe.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 7:40 PM

See this is interesting. And I'm a bit suprised about the style of replies so far. Instead of addressing the actual argument I put forward on it's merits (or lack of, if that's the case), we have so far seemed to stick to ad hominem. And I know most of you know better than that.

"Ad hominem" as a fallacy refers only to the use of derogatory statements about another party as premises of an argument. "You are a despicable human being" is a conclusion here, not a premise.

I put forward a real argument. I'd expect real replies to said argument.

No, you didn't. At best you're asking misguided rhetorical questions with reckless, callous disregard for the genuine pain that sentient beings like the rest of us feel in response to this sort of thing, and therefore as much of a worthless piece of shit as philos from the thread I linked to (that's a conclusion, again). At worst, you're another sadistic psychopath.

The idea of 'hijacking' a thread... what does that even mean? I happen to not be a part of your cry party, so I'm now hijacking a thread?

This statement is substantially true, your attempt (hypocritical in light of your whining about "ad hominems" abovve) to dismiss our feelings as a "cry party" notwithstanding.

Posted by: Sastra | June 5, 2009 7:43 PM

Jerome Halton #96 wrote:

Does that change anything about your feelings of anger at the situation?

No, it doesn't.

How we evolved our shared moral sense isn't really important when it comes to dealing with morality, and wouldn't change my view of the situation -- either way. If empathy is an unnecessary "byproduct" of other factors which drove human evolution, that's no more significant than human evolution being an unnecessary "byproduct" of a larger eco-system. Morality has to do with relationships between people; we don't try to bring it in and make it work on the level of physical cause.

Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | June 5, 2009 7:44 PM

Jerome@ 108 &cetera--

There's little or nothing that isn't emotion
In thoughts that we claim are a logical stream;
It's not as if science has bottled a potion
That separates things from the way that they seem.
The kitten has hijacked my baby-detector,
Making me care when I maybe should not;
So what? Is that reason to cruelly reject her?
To not give a fuck if she's cooked or she's shot?
All humans are products of natural selection--
We are what we are, and we do what we do
We're fooled into thinking that cats need protection;
The kitten has forced me to tell you "fuck you!"

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 7:50 PM

I don't care for PETA, but get your facts straight. People at PETA headquarters own pets. I used to live in Norfolk, where they are located.

PETA leadership are hypocrites.

This is news?

Posted by: kimberly b. | June 5, 2009 7:51 PM

@# 85
It's easily reconciled. The octopus was killed humanely and for food. It was also quite dead when tenderized and cooked.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 7:54 PM

#125

Huh? Why would I be doing that? You people are weird. Are you seriously thinking I'm anti-evolution? Nothing I said in that post indicates that.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 7:59 PM

#126

Spectacular.

Posted by: Kevpod | June 5, 2009 8:02 PM

Again, I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance that I'm hoping PZ can reconcile.

From April, with empathy fully absent: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/perversely_brutal.php

Perversely brutal
Category: Cephalopods
Posted on: April 21, 2009 9:44 AM, by PZ Myers

ll right, I like cephalopods. I admit it. So why do I find this article about hunting octopus in the Mediterranean so entertaining? I mean, the guy is diving down, stabbing the octopus between the eyes with a pointy stick, and then…

Next step: the octopus must be tenderized by slamming it against a large rock at least a hundred times or more. When its natural color changes to white, I rinse it repeatedly in sea water and drag it back and forth over a rough rock surface with a rhythmic motion. A white foam is released, and this movement must continue until all the foam disappears. When the muscle has completely relaxed, the texture of the flesh changes and the color turns to a grayish white. I grab two tentacles and pull them apart gently…the flesh should tear. Then—and only then—is the octopus ready for cooking.

What follows are recipes. Forgive me, I must be truly evil, because he had me drooling.

Posted by: CatBallou | June 5, 2009 8:03 PM

Jerome, I think you're missing (at least) two points:
1. Even if we had not evolved with the kind of empathy that spills over to non-humans, most of us would still be repulsed by the wanton cruelty. Not rescuing a kitten that's drowning, for example, because your species' empathy doesn't work that way, is quite different from deliberately inflicting excruciating pain and death.
2. So many people are calling this "psychopathic" because killing small animals is indeed often an early sign of serious mental illness, not necessarily because the act of killing small animals is itself psychopathic, as rrt's friend (#92) demonstrates.

Posted by: Crudely Wrott | June 5, 2009 8:10 PM

"We live in a world of symbols and abstractions and many a man dies by his own cliches."

--source?

Some people like to believe in God. Some people like cherries.

--old proverb, Czechoslovakian perhaps

Some people delight in life of all sorts, some only in their own sort.

--Me, just now.

Posted by: Hank Fox | June 5, 2009 8:14 PM

I agree with everyone here that this is sick.

However, this is also a child. I'm sure the law will see her differently, but a 17-year-old is still a kid.

Absolutely yes, she's done something truly disgusting, but that doesn't automatically make her garbage that should be thrown out.

Maybe she is a sociopath, but that's yet to be determined. I grew up with people who were hell on their horses and dogs, and looking back on it, it just seems nasty as hell. I saw more than one person beat a horse in the head with a board (during “training”), and I had to accompany my stepfather on the errand of doing away with my own dog, just because he didn't want to feed a pet (as opposed to hunting) dog. (In case there’s any doubt, it still hurts me to remember it.)

On the other hand, I see those people's actions as a single piece with that time and culture. Nobody back then and there really thought dogs or horses had feelings. Hell, they didn't think people of other races had them.

I'm willing to entertain the notion that this girl might be a sociopath. But she also might, MIGHT, be simply a product of one of those little cultural eddies, and might not have known in that moment (or even yet) what she was doing.

Regardless, I'd rather see some sort of treatment and long-term counseling than just react automatically to my own horror and compound the tragedy by throwing some idiot kid in prison and helping wreck the entire rest of her life after this single terrible act.

No part of what I’ve said above is meant to imply that I think burning kittens to death is okay. Hell, I sometimes think people who participate in dog fighting ought to be beaten with axe handles until they’re mushy. But those people, most of them, are adults, who MUST be expected to know better.

I’m just saying, this girl is still a child. I WANT kids to have learned compassion by the time they’re 17 years old. But not all of them do, and it is sometimes — possibly even often — not their fault.

This is a tragedy for the kitten. It’s a tragedy for us to have to witness and imagine it. But it’s also a tragedy for that girl.

In my opinion, the American legal system is just a little bit too bloodthirsty when it comes to penalizing young people. Kids, most of them, are reclaimable. But after they go to prison, it probably gets a hell of a lot harder.

..........

Regarding the posting of this news item here, I kinda have my reservations that it’s worthy fodder for Pharyngula. It doesn’t seem related to either religion or science, and it verges on the sensationalistic.

Some news stories (I worked in the media) are deliberately engineered to manipulate readers’ feelings, and you have to keep that in mind when you’re choosing how to react to them. Sometimes you have to realize that you’re being emotionally puppeteered, and deliberately refuse to allow it in order to maintain your own mental/emotional independence.

A big corporation, having no feelings, makes a poor teacher of appropriate ones.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | June 5, 2009 8:16 PM

It was a cat, not a human. You want her life to be miserable and destroyed because of that? No one condones her actions or isn't horrified by them, but have some perspective otherwise you look as crazy as she does.

what part of me not giving a flying fuck did you miss? I am crazy, in the sense that I'm wired all wrong; I'm a misanthrope and I expect humans to treat other humans like shit, but I cannot handle cruelty to cats. As such, I'd get over the murder of an infant quicker than I will get over the mental image of this. And I can fucking well live with myself for that.

-- Crazy Old Cat Lady In Training

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 8:21 PM

Hank:

A 7 year old, yeah, I can kind of buy that.

17?

"A person can reach the age of 17 without learning better than to torturously kill pet kittens for no reason at all, and still be reformable/redeemable" is one of them "extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence."

Posted by: SC, OM | June 5, 2009 8:23 PM

I agree with everyone here that this is sick.

However, this is also a child. I'm sure the law will see her differently, but a 17-year-old is still a kid.

Unless (s)he's African:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/21/national/main4958514.shtml?source=related_story

Then, we need no historical or personal context, of course...

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 8:24 PM

Oh, and when I said "I think I can explain it" I wasn't really explaining it. I know that. It's simply not purely logical. My normal approach doesn't work here.

Posted by: Crudely Wrott | June 5, 2009 8:26 PM

JohnT, if

It was a cat, not a human. You want her life to be miserable and destroyed because of that? No one condones her actions or isn't horrified by them, but have some perspective otherwise you look as crazy as she does.

is exactly what you meant to say then riddle me this:

Explain in detail how a cat could make your life miserable. Have you never lived with a critter other than relatives and reluctant acquaintances? Wise up, boy!

Are you that easily distracted? Dis-cat-ed? How on earth can you reasonably expect anyone to agree that her mere discomfort was sufficient offense to burn a cat from the inside out as it inhaled the broiling hot air to call once more for help?

That cat had a hold on life much stronger than you seem to have. In addition I suspect that that cat valued its life more than you value mine. Or, in a pinch, yours.

You might want to explain yourself further . . .

Posted by: luna1580 | June 5, 2009 8:28 PM

hank fox-

17 is well old enough to know cruelty is wrong, hell we trust 17 year olds to join our military and give them guns.

and the fact that she threw the kitten in the oven at the end of her vandalism and left, so she wouldn't hear it suffering, is further proof that she knew it was wrong and had some guilt about it. if she knew it was wrong but was sadistically enjoying it she would have roasted it at the beginning of her apartment trashing. if she felt nothing she wouldn't have left quickly to avoid hearing the suffering she directly caused.

she should be judged as an adult for this. whether that means jail or therapy, there is no reason to pretend this was the act of a young child who didn't understand her actions, that's just not true.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 8:30 PM

Jerome:

Perhaps I've been overharsh at points, but...

Why does this matter and why do you think this is the time and place?

Posted by: Meat Robot | June 5, 2009 8:30 PM

"What has Christ got to do with anything?" That is a fantastic question.

Ok Jerome, you're not a callous, insensitive Christian prick. You're a callous insensitive prick of some other description.

Posted by: Crudely Wrott | June 5, 2009 8:38 PM

Eye for Eye:

No

Can't you see?

I ask assuming that you have eyes with which to see, observing that you value eyes highly enough to make them worth putting out.

How then shall we see better?

Posted by: Sastra | June 5, 2009 8:40 PM

Jerome Haltom #145 wrote:

The acceptance of 'the way we are is the way we are, and it does not matter', leads directly back to us choosing to not really care that the girls killed the kitten, because apparently 'it's the way they are, and evolution made them that way,' and we should just accept that?

If the girls really are psychopaths, and their brains are 'mis-wired,' then we can regard them as handicapped, and your "it's the way they are" argument makes a certain amount of sense. Otherwise, they do understand empathy, are capable of feeling it, share in the common values, and made choices contrary to what they themselves knew was right. (Oh, I really hope this isn't going to get into free will/determinism...)

Okay, keep in mind, I am an atheist. And absolutely starkly pro-evolution and anti-theism. But at some point, we all seem to make decisions that, at the end of the day, defy simple logic. We're all wired to do so. Is it then that wrong that theists do the same?

Yes. Whether God exists -- or doesn't -- is an assertion of fact, not values. Approaching a fact claim ("does homeopathy work?") as if it were a moral claim ("should I love my mother?") is a category error. Theists recognize and agree with that -- and yet are inconsistent when they approach their own religious beliefs.

Posted by: Angel Kaida | June 5, 2009 8:43 PM

I feel like my morality has seriously gone out the window for this, but sometimes I'm so viciously, painfully glad that 4chan exists. I don't think they've ever harmed anyone physically (do correct me if I'm wrong, because that's important), and I don't expect them to cross that line in this case.

I do think, though, that the people who are seriously advocating for physical violence (and not, in the style of yesterday's Karma comic, dismissing their momentary lapses into rage with an explanation of why such things should not occur in reality) against Cheyenne Cherry should shut the hell up. They're not helping by increasing the level of brutality and violence in the world; their righteous anger against this horrible act does not make that okay.

Posted by: rrt | June 5, 2009 8:43 PM

Sigh. Jerome, your comments are too close to concern-trolling, which we've come to expect from godbotting creationists. And they can easily be interpreted as dragging out hoary old godbotters' memes about nihilism, naturalistic fallacies, etc. And..."cry party?" Sorry, can't take you seriously, even if you are. Maybe you should look into that.

Posted by: JHS | June 5, 2009 8:45 PM

That makes me physically sick to my stomach. The people who did that are sick at a very fundamental level, and I can only hope that they get the help they obviously need. If they don't see anything wrong with killing one small, helpless animal, they may not with another, even if it might grow up to look a little more like them.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 8:50 PM

#166

Hmm. Except I'm not using my ideas to attack evolution. I'm just talking about it. Though I do see how many creationists would take the same line of thought.

And by "cry party" I mean the huge number of posts of people saying they are "sick to their stomach", or "I'm going to have nightmares for weaks." That is a cry-party. A bunch of people feeling emotionally bad.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | June 5, 2009 8:52 PM

Crudely Wrott,

How on earth can you reasonably expect anyone to agree that her mere discomfort was sufficient offense to burn a cat from the inside out as it inhaled the broiling hot air to call once more for help?

I really wish you hadn't posted that. It was hard enough thinking about this poor little kitten dying, but having a vivid description of its torment has renewed the tears.

*hugs cats again*

Posted by: Benjamin Joseph Clark | June 5, 2009 8:54 PM

""Yet you trash PETA, when this is the type of message they try to propagate???"
Glucagon, it is a matter of public record that PETA would do away with all pet animals, as in KILL THEM.
As a person owned by four cats I am nauseated by this."

Lies. Plenty of PETA member are caretakers of dogs and cats. They encourage adopting rather than buying companion animals, and certainly do not want to exterminate everyone's animal friends.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 8:56 PM

#173

Since you don't seem to understand it, their perfectly natural grief and outrage is equivilent to the perfectly natural grief and outrage expressed by the nutjobs who worship crackers.

I am on your side in this. I think the cracker thing is silly. I think burning cats pretty much sucks. But I'm not going to pretend that from the point of the view of the person being offended there is any difference.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 8:58 PM

To all things, there is a season. Try and tune into the affective, not just the rational.

There's nothing "rational" about syllogistic wankfests, ever.

Posted by: Denis Loubet | June 5, 2009 8:59 PM

Since we created the domestic cat, it's kind of like we're their god.

Or gods, rather. We are the 6.5 billion gods in the cat's pantheon. For the most part, we look after them better than the fictional god of the bible looks after its creations. We actually physically protect our charges from natural and man-made disasters, and restrain them from harming each other.

We're better than the Christian god.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 9:00 PM

Since you don't seem to understand it, their perfectly natural grief and outrage is equivilent to the perfectly natural grief and outrage expressed by the nutjobs who worship crackers.

I am on your side in this. I think the cracker thing is silly. I think burning cats pretty much sucks. But I'm not going to pretend that from the point of the view of the person being offended there is any difference.

Cats suffer. Crackers don't.

Posted by: Emmet, OM | June 5, 2009 9:04 PM

I'm not much of a cat person, but that is so far beyond horrible that words fail me.

Posted by: emote_control | June 5, 2009 9:06 PM

Cuttlefish, you kick ass.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | June 5, 2009 9:10 PM

The general line from both of you seems to be to not discuss things that might offend those in your company. I don't operate this way. If I did I'd not be critical of religion.

I've just reread all of Jerome Haltom's posts. In his first post (#86) he started off weakly:

So, I'm going to kind of play devil's advocate here. Keep that in mind when responding.

He then asked his questions:

So why are you all so offended by this? Can you explain why a human being values an animal like a kitten, why we find it repulsive to harm?

In other words: "Why do you folks care about inflicting unnecessary pain and suffering to an animal?" I'll pretend that this is a legitimate question. The answer is that we have an emotional attachment to weak, small, unoffensive critters and we object to bullies killing them in cruel, painful ways.

As far as I'm concerned, Jerome's questions would be appropriate for a four year old to ask, not for an adult. Unless he's a sociopath trying to learn how to operate in normal society or is otherwise emotionally deficient.

Posted by: Sastra | June 5, 2009 9:10 PM

Jerome Haltom #176 wrote:

Since you don't seem to understand it, their perfectly natural grief and outrage is equivilent to the perfectly natural grief and outrage expressed by the nutjobs who worship crackers.

The moral issue in that case wasn't over whether it is reasonable to feel grief and empathy -- or whether the murder of a cat is equivalent to the murder of a human being -- but whether blasphemy is ethically equivalent to murder, and should be considered so in a secular context.

Posted by: Nova | June 5, 2009 9:11 PM

Such disregard for the horror, she thought of it as a joke... It is true that psychopaths often torture animals in their youth and move onto people later in life so this girl is very dangerous and needs a close watch after a long stay in a secure mental unit (not prison).

Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | June 5, 2009 9:15 PM

Jerome @145:

The acceptance of 'the way we are is the way we are, and it does not matter', leads directly back to us choosing to not really care that the girls killed the kitten, because apparently 'it's the way they are, and evolution made them that way,' and we should just accept that?

We may note with some confusion
That this empathy illusion
Makes us feel a certain feeling, and decide that we won't play.
We may feel it holds us captive
But remember, it's adaptive,
So dismiss it at your peril, cos it got us to today.
I don't think I have to mention
We're unique in comprehension
But that does not make us logical, no matter what we hope;
We are animals--with passion
And with reason, each in ration,
We may think ourselves a genius, when we're really just a dope.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 5, 2009 9:19 PM

I'm convinced that the girls' horrible behaviour stems mainly from her thoughtless lack of empathy. In this moment she could be sitting in an interrogation room, being yelled at and wondering a) why she doesn't feel bad about what she's done (except for the annoyance of having been caught) and b) lacking the slightest clue about why she did it. It is almost a nice thing to say that she should suffer for her deed, because I assume that someone capable of such a heartlessness doesn't actually feel very much. Remember Lyndie Englands stupid, self-pitying face? It's about the same ballpark, just a few leagues further. We must acknowledge that our society tends to produce sadists and sociopaths, of whom we get to recognize just the extreme ones. In this scandals (also school shotings) we tend to get distracted from the coldblooded, alienated and sickening "normality" we all kind of live in.

Posted by: Anri | June 5, 2009 9:21 PM

Jerome at #145 has asked us to consider if we should be a bit easier on the religious due to our own presumably less-than-logical, possibly even less-than-rational reactions.
(Of course, as cruelty of this sort is often closely linked with further criminal acts, our concern is not totally unwarranted. but I'm dealing with the emotional side of things, not the statistical.)

One major difference is that we understand that we are being emotional, reactionary, shooting from the hip, maybe not thinking straight, when we feel deep anguish over this. We *don't* assume we have found the sole cosmic truth that is fated to save all of humanity from an eternal hell.

I believe one can, under certain circumstances, be fully justified in being irrational about some things - so long as they understand they are being irrational about these things. That's one of the most serious problems with religion.

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 9:25 PM

#198

I think you're the third person to fully understand what I'm saying! Yay! Unfortunately, it means that a good deal of people here are in fact NOT aware that they are being irrational. That's too bad!

Posted by: scooter | June 5, 2009 9:33 PM

George W. Bush used to have some innocent childhood fun by sticking firecrackers into frogs and blowing them up. It's a telling sign.

I lived in Midland TX when I was 8-9-10, and we used to play with the frogs after the rains, also catch tadpoles and keep them to watch the metamorphis.

We never abused them at all.

I guess it was just the rich kids.

Posted by: mas528 | June 5, 2009 9:35 PM

Jerome.
Yes. Because all animals are cute to take advantage of humans.

That explains why rabbits, elephants, giraffe's eyelashes, merekats, zebras, gazelle, deer and pandas as well as cats are cute.

Do you really think that humans are the only selection pressure on other animals?

I don't think you really understand what the "selfish gene" is.

The selfish gene promotes anything that promotes survival. That includes cooperation, medicine, altruism, unions, dams, trains, and airplanes.

Since I phrased it in the way that I hate (genes evolve to survive),let me phrase it more accurately. The ones with the traits that make it more successful at survival, get a chance to reproduce.

By the way, identical copies? Ludicrous!

As an example:
Humans have a farm where they are growing vegetables.
Rabbits. birds, and groundhogs eat those plants, which reduces that amount of food that can be harvested.

A couple of cats move in. They kill birds, groundhogs and rabbits and leave the crops alone.

They also get the warmth of the barn.

This makes more food available to the humans, thus promoting survival.

The humans and cats eventually become used to each other and adopt each other.

And I have been around here long enough to know that if I represented evolution incorrectly, the commenters and possibly even the blogger himself will set me straight.

Posted by: RickD | June 5, 2009 9:40 PM

Posted by: Jerome Haltom | June 5, 2009 8:56 PM

#173

Since you don't seem to understand it, their perfectly natural grief and outrage is equivilent to the perfectly natural grief and outrage expressed by the nutjobs who worship crackers.

I am on your side in this. I think the cracker thing is silly. I think burning cats pretty much sucks. But I'm not going to pretend that from the point of the view of the person being offended there is any difference.

Most Catholics are quite aware of the difference between animal abuse and "cracker abuse". I think that, by going out of your way to be accomodating, you are simply making allowances that are unnecessary, and that allow people to invent "emotional responses" out of whole cloth.

The reason people get upset with the desecration of the Eucharist is because it is disrespectful. It threatens the status of the religion. It is not because they have an actual emotional relationship with communion wafers that is in any way comparable to a bond between a human and a pet.

It really is a different thing altogether. There is no need for us to "make nice" with religions by abscribing to them emotional relationships that do not exist.

Posted by: genesgalore | June 5, 2009 9:45 PM

oh good grief jerome haltom. those canines in your mouth weren't created to shred garbonzo beans. that said, whether you like it or not, all life in all of it's forms is as valid as the next. it just that those that do, can. but alas, when it comes to the can: that which we "choose" "can" become the norm.........i think it's called natural selection.

Posted by: genesgalore | June 5, 2009 9:58 PM

overall, no human will ever have the patience of a kitty cat.

Posted by: Alyson Miers | June 5, 2009 10:05 PM

Ah, yes, and now the hijackings begin for railing against farms and labs. Of course, little Tiger Lily's death was no different from the slaughtering of livestock or the killing and study of lab animals. Except for how Tiger Lily wasn't being used for research, or food, and she wasn't even in anyone's way, she was just there where some cat-hating sociopath could see her. And she died in a needlessly painful way, too. But, you know, all that aside, it's totally the same thing.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 5, 2009 10:13 PM

It's not clear to me what's "irrational" about responding to changes in one's physical and social environment.

Posted by: Anri | June 5, 2009 10:22 PM

Jerome Sez:
"Since you don't seem to understand it, their perfectly natural grief and outrage is equivilent to the perfectly natural grief and outrage expressed by the nutjobs who worship crackers.

I am on your side in this. I think the cracker thing is silly. I think burning cats pretty much sucks. But I'm not going to pretend that from the point of the view of the person being offended there is any difference."

No, it isn't equivalent, Jerome. As has been noted by an atheist author (Hitchens or Dawkins, I don't recall), one of the major counts against religion is that is separates sin from suffering. To an atheist, 'sin' is mainly about causing undue suffering to something that can experience it. Hence the fact that the greater capacity for suffering something has (or appears to have), the more of a reaction we are likely to have against it being made to suffer.

Crackers cannot suffer.
Kittens can suffer.

If you feel empathy for a kitten, one might question the depth of that feeling, or the possible hypocrisy in not feeling the same way about a chicken or cow, but it is unquestionable that you and the kitten have at least a few things in common.
If you feel empathy for a cracker, you are simply delusionaly projecting your own emotions onto something that has utterly no possibility of sharing world experience with you.

That is a vital difference, and either you're missing it, or you seem to be making a special plea for understanding in sympathy for it.

Posted by: Kemist | June 5, 2009 10:24 PM

Cheyenne Cherry also did, it seems likely to me that Cherry really IS "wrong" somehow, but I would love to understand how the neurology works that allows for this sort of cruelty to happen in those we'd consider normal.

I remember seeing a documentary once that said teenagers are significantly less sensitive/empathic than either children or adults, due to severe hormonal changes. One of the way this could be observed was the time it took them, compared with adults and children, to react to facial expressions.

I am cursed with quite high empathy - if, for example, I watch somebody undergoing a high level of stress (think thesis defence), I sometimes respond with a monster migraine (which is my own response to stress).

I think it was the main reason I did not have a happy teenagehood : they (my former childhood friends) literally were monsters to me. I could not understand how they could be so mean as to push somebody into depression, and even to suicide, and chuckle about it. My brother - also a very sensitive person- had the exact same experience with his best friend, whom suddenly started humiliating him in public without any reason that we, or he, could name.

Today, as adults, they are normal, fine people.

Posted by: R J | June 5, 2009 10:32 PM

What needs to happen is this girl needs to be made an example of and locked away for decades. She is a useless POS and is most likely non-rehabilitatable. She belongs in prison where she can't harm anyone or anything else and will probably get a taste of her own medicine. Her snide smile in the photo accompanying the article makes me want to puke. She needs to have that smile slapped off her face. If there is any justice her sentences will be consecutive and will be the maximum on every charge.

Posted by: Michael Kingsford Gray | June 5, 2009 10:35 PM

This amoral monster is an ideal candidate to become the next Pope.

Posted by: Crudely Wrott | June 5, 2009 10:46 PM

@182:

Let's be clear, Azkyroth. Burning cats does not "pretty much suck."

It fully sucks. The whole thing. It deep throats.

Call a spade a spade. Call a scalded cat a scalded cat. Call a creature dying in fear and pain a creature dying in fear and pain.

Posted by: SquidBrandon | June 5, 2009 10:54 PM

Crudely Wrott:

Psssst.

Azkyroth @182 was quoting Jerome's post @176.

Posted by: kantalope | June 5, 2009 10:56 PM

How come only philosophy---I want action. People in New York call your congressman, call the governor, call someone, anyone everyone...anyone the tosses a cat into an oven and turns it on needs to spend a long long time in jail. 2 years is just so insufficient.

As for her being a child? 17? Are you kidding me? If you have not figured out moral implications of tossing kittens into an oven by 17 another year or two is making no difference. She forfeited any call mercy at around 70 degrees.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 5, 2009 11:01 PM

What needs to happen is this girl needs to be made an example of and locked away for decades. She is a useless POS and is most likely non-rehabilitatable.

For pete's sake! She's seventeen. She needs help, obviously, but locker her up and throw away the key? What kind of person are you?

Her snide smile in the photo accompanying the article makes me want to puke. She needs to have that smile slapped off her face.

I seriously doubt that the photo was taken after this incident, but... yeah. I certainly hope she's not smiling now.

Posted by: atomjack | June 5, 2009 11:09 PM

Didn't read all the way through to find a post like what I have to say: I do NOT condone the behavior shown by the Cheyenne Cherry girl. However, for those of you that worry about what the kitten felt, it was o a lot shorter duration than you might think- the combustion byproducts probably asphyxiated the kitten before it even got into scratching. Small consolation, but the suffering had to have been of short duration. Still, NO excuse. Nasty, nasty kid.

Posted by: ron | June 5, 2009 11:14 PM

guess what, animals that arent pets are able to suffer too. yet nobody cares about them at all. during the summer of michael vick becoming history's greatest monster, 1000s of cattle died from heat stroke. they also "baked alive" while standing shoulder to shoulder in a mire of their own shit while being forced to eat crap their stomachs werent evolved to digest.

so i always get a kick when someone says, "how can anyone do that to an animal?" when they do it all the time by proxy.

Posted by: bastion of sass | June 5, 2009 11:16 PM

Great, just what I needed to read, another story of unbelievably vile animal cruelty.

All week, the story of a young pit-bull puppy, who was doused with gasoline, and set on fire on a Baltimore street has been in the news. This sounds like a very sweet dog. Even after being severely burned, she was still wagging her tail when brought to the vet for treatment. Unfortunately, she eventually had to euthanized when her kidneys began to fail.

On top of that, our 10 year old pet bunny hasn't eaten for several days, is barely moving, and probably hasn't long to live. So, that's making me very sad. This was one of my kid's pets. He's away on a trip, and I know he's going to be heartbroken to return home to find the bunny's hutch empty.

But, enough!

Here's a link to a rockin' bird video that a friend sent me to cheer me up a bit (and no Mormon ads like the video @169). The bird's got quite a variety of moves--so don't give up after the first few seconds--and has better rhythm than most of the guy's I've ever danced with!

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 5, 2009 11:19 PM

I would not wish the slow, excruciating death this kitten experienced on any sentient creature. Head-to-body size ratio be damned.

One reason I find it a particularly awful thing to do to a kitten is that most companion animals are bred and raised to trust the humans among them. That poor kitten probably tried to play or lick her hand.

Posted by: mas528 | June 5, 2009 11:21 PM

Ron,
Peta doesn't save animals, and it never has.

It kills them, plain and simple.

how it kills them, I don't know, but I suspect that the people in peta are exactly the same as this Cheyenne Cherry.

Posted by: Inky | June 5, 2009 11:24 PM

THAT IS DISGUSTING. Unforgiveable.

Look, she may be seventeen, but she knew that it was wrong. Seven year olds would know it's wrong. Do you know of any seven year olds that would pop a kitten in an oven and then walk away while it's crying?

I'm not saying life term jail sentence, but a good public cyberstoning is okay by me.

Yes, I'm also against farm animal cruelty. I do eat meat occasionally. I do squish insects and very small spiders (the bigger ones I usually opt for catch-and-release).

There are many situations of ethical grey areas: a vegan's point of view of eating honey versus everyone else, for example.

But this? There is no grey area.

I wouldn't trust her with kids, either.
As a matter of fact, I'd watch out when she does start having them.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 5, 2009 11:27 PM

Luna:

so, going by the standards of our society, 17 is plenty old to know that burning any sentient creature alive in a fucking oven is wrong. if fact, we'd expect our 7 year olds to (by and large) know that this was wrong and why.
unless this woman suffers from extensive physical brain damage and massive developmental delays, she was most assuredly old enough to make a rational decision about roasting people's pets alive.

Well, yes. I think that's pretty clear. What's your point? I wasn't suggesting that she be cut loose with no consequences. I said she needs help. She's broken. That kind of behavior is profoundly sociopathic. She may not be rehabilitatable, but what's the good in trying to "make an example of her" without first trying to help her get better merely compounds the tragedy - and for the sake of what? Vengence?

(So I think we agree, but I was compelled to reply because you seemed to be responding to something I didn't say.)

Posted by: Terry Small | June 5, 2009 11:32 PM

I can't even read this thread, so many of you disgust me.

To all of you going, "it's only a cat, who cares", Fuck you. Fuck you till you rot, you inhuman filth.

Posted by: luna1580 | June 5, 2009 11:38 PM

Kseniya-

you're right, i was having an emotional response to post 142, most certainly not made by you, where the poster argued not only for assessing her true mental state and trying to rehabilitate her, but specifically that society needed to do so "because she is still a child."

it was totally wrong of me to read similar sentiment into your post when you weren't saying the same. you have my apologies, even when we're upset we shouldn't assume an implied agreement between posters who have superficially similar sentiments. again, sorry.

Posted by: luna1580 | June 5, 2009 11:47 PM

and for the record, i do think she is entitled to a real mental/emotional evaluation and then any care she may require.

the thing that really sucks is that in the states even insurance companies and hospitals that use sliding pay-scales for their services consider therapy/mental health programs "a non-emergency service" and don't cover it. and i doubt this woman -and many, many more who really need care- has thousands and thousands of dollars for intensive or in-patient care, and that is a tragedy for all of the US.

so i really doubt that even if she needs help she will get it. also, if she were to really be a genuine sociopath, not suffering from other mental health issues, isn't it considered an untreatable condition?

Posted by: Libbie | June 5, 2009 11:50 PM

As some of you know, I'm a zookeeper. Just today I was hearing pounding on my exhibit windows and wondering why the hell people have so little disregard for animals that they think it's okay to irritate an animal with loud noises to get a reaction out of it. Even that makes me wonder how people can be so unfeeling and so disconnected from their own natural empathy.

This, though. This is beyond sick.

This girl needs help. She's got to have severe psychological problems if she can do something like this to another living thing, especially one so helpless and harmless.

Posted by: rrt | June 5, 2009 11:58 PM

Citizen Z:

Well...maybe not companions, but octopuses and cuttlefish can be more interactive than you'd expect. I mean to have a cuttle one day, when I'm ready. Analog, though. There can be only one digital. :)

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | June 6, 2009 12:02 AM

The thread is much too long to read all the way through, so this is posted after just a few comments.

Let me start by noting that Cheyenne did say that she and her friend left the kitten to cook to death because they couldn't stand to hear it cry. She did empathize. Indeed, she sympathized. She just didn't rescue the animal. A sociopath is not a person who doesn't empathize with others, a sociopath is somebody who empathizes and takes pleasure in the pain of others.

The fact that Cheyenne did not take pleasure in the pain being experienced by the kitten tells me she is no sociopath. What she is is young and foolish. The young and the foolish do stupid things. This vandalizing of a friend's apartment, and the killing of that person's kitten, was an act of a young and foolish person.

What those two young people did was plain stupid. Not evil, not pathological, just stupid. The sort of stupid young people do, because they're young. Because they get so caught up in the moment, in the emotion of the moment, they give no thought to the consequences of what they're doing. In other words, they were being childish.

Their age when they pulled this atrocity also tells me they are not sociopaths. The sociopathic -and psychopathic- personality begins to manifest itself much earlier. Incidents of animal abuse most often occur when the child is 12 or 13 years of age. Sometimes older, but not much older. Cheyenne's age is listed as 17. That is old to start abusing animals.

Cheyenne is neither pathological or evil, only a young woman who did something horrible because she wanted to get back at a friend she had a grudge against. Because she was irresponsible and angry a small animal died in a horrid way. The children will have to live with what they did for the rest of their lives, but I doubt me very much there will be any repeats of what happened.

To demonize is a very easy thing to do. To understand, correct the miscreant, then forgive is hard. Cheyenne did wrong and needs to be punished; then forgiven, for only then can she go on and become the woman she could be.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 12:06 AM

so seriously einsteins, what don't you get about the FACT the we are in the midst of, at least, the "sixth" GREAT KNOWN EXTINCTION??? oh, that right, dinosaurs didn't "learn" to fly cus they didn't screw up the homeland.

I'm assuming this was posted on the wrong blog (not just the wrong thread), but still...WTF??

What does this even mean?

And for those stupid fucks that want to equate this with research/food animals...well, you know.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 12:17 AM

Let me start by noting that Cheyenne did say that she and her friend left the kitten to cook to death because they couldn't stand to hear it cry. She did empathize. Indeed, she sympathized. She just didn't rescue the animal. A sociopath is not a person who doesn't empathize with others, a sociopath is somebody who empathizes and takes pleasure in the pain of others.

Bull-fucking-shit.

Another hallmark of Antisocial PD is a charming, charismatic demeanor (remember the BTK killer? EVERYBODY loved this guy). This sociopath got fingered - it would be out of character for her to do anything but insist that she couldn't stand to hear that kitten die, hoping to weasel her way out of the repercussions by painting herself as "young and stupid."

She could've turned the heat off. She could've taken the kitten out of the oven. She didn't. And is there even any actual proof that she didn't stay and listen, other than her account?

We don't know anything about this girl's past. We don't know if her parents just looked the other way while she decapitated squirrels or set the neighbor's "lost" pets on fire. I, too, would be shocked if a girl with no prior history of animal abuse suddenly decided to bake a kitten to death - so I doubt that this was the first offense.

Posted by: Dan S. | June 6, 2009 12:23 AM

"Let me start by noting that Cheyenne did say that she and her friend left the kitten to cook to death because they couldn't stand to hear it cry"

Obviously, one way or another there is something deeply wrong with this person.

Posted by: blue | June 6, 2009 12:32 AM

"A kitten is a small thing in the world…but it seems to me that how we treat the small and helpless is a measure of how we see ourselves."

Huh. Yet you are pro-abortion. funny, that...

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 12:34 AM

Jesus fucking Christ. How many different pet causes is this thread be hijacked for?

I guess it was a matter of time before the anti-abortion crowd rolled on in.

Posted by: Hairhead | June 6, 2009 12:40 AM

Excuse me, #266, it's not the "anti-abortion" crowd, it's the "forced-childbirth" crowd. The latter is the far more accurate appellation.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 12:42 AM

Huh. Yet you are pro-abortion. funny, that...

Actually, what's funny is that you think you are clever.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 6, 2009 12:57 AM

Luna: Apology accepted, of course, but it really wasn't necessary. I wasn't offended at all. I just wanted to be sure you knew what I was saying. We do agree. Thanks.

Alan Kellogg:

Let me start by noting that Cheyenne did say that she and her friend left the kitten to cook to death because they couldn't stand to hear it cry. She did empathize. Indeed, she sympathized.

I'm sorry, that's not correct. She didn't want to have to listen to the cat making noise. She hated cats. No empathy has been displayed -- just pathologically self-centered behavior.

a sociopath is somebody who empathizes and takes pleasure in the pain of others.

Again, that's simply not accurate. Lack of empathy and lack of remorse are hallmarks of ASPD.

The fact that Cheyenne did not take pleasure in the pain being experienced by the kitten tells me she is no sociopath. What she is is young and foolish. The young and the foolish do stupid things. This vandalizing of a friend's apartment, and the killing of that person's kitten, was an act of a young and foolish person. What those two young people did was plain stupid. Not evil, not pathological, just stupid.

Ack. No, no, that's just wrong. If was just the vandalism, I might agree to some extent, but the cavalier killing of the pet, coupled with the complete lack of remorse, tells a different story. She brushed the incident off as a joke.

Posted by: Onotheo | June 6, 2009 12:58 AM

I used to do funerals for my cats.

(T_T)

Posted by: NoGurus | June 6, 2009 1:12 AM

Sorry, PZ, I can't go for your easy play for the heartstrings. What do you expect people to say? Kittens should be burned?
How about a save the people campaign? It's terrible to harm innocent creatures, but give me and endless parade of people drawn, quartered, shot and murdered and you have a hit show like CSI or Masterpiece Theatre.
We shrug our shoulders at atrocities committed on people, people starving, people killing each other. But show me a whale caught in a fishing line, and, how cruel.
We don't feel sorry for starving people, we feel sorry for starving -- kittens.
Who causes these terrible events to happen to the poor innocent creatures? Well of course it's the evil people. Suppose that kitten got struck by lightning or got burned accidentally in a house fire. Doesn't pull on the heartstrings as much does it? But when a person does it, then we love it. We can talk about it on a thread with 250 responses. We can talk about how cruel it is, and diabolical. More evidence of evil people.
Help a person folks. Help your neighbor's kids who don't have a father. Help that angry kid that you usually avoid. Help the homeless people with a nickel, or help them find a place to live. Show some kindness to a stranger. Maybe that stranger will remember that kindness the next time she decides to burn a kitten. Save the people and the kittens will be fine. Save the people.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 6, 2009 1:19 AM

We shrug our shoulders at atrocities committed on people, people starving, people killing each other.

We?

Speak for yourself.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 6, 2009 1:21 AM

To Kellogg #256

Thank you for your words against the demonization of this admittedly unpleasant person. I also would incline to the view that her actions were mainly the product of thoughtlessness and inexperience (which is imho the cause of many children's and juveniles' cruelty). But we shouldn't ignore the failure of civilizatory inhibition and the tendency to sadism - I assume that the killing of the kitten was more aimed at the proprietor than at the animal itself. Anyway, the term pathological seems to apply pretty well. The fact that many juveniles engage in similar (although mostly not so dramatic) patterns of behaviour doesn't mean that we can reduce Cheyenne's little autodafé to "foolishness of the youth". It rather means that we have a deep problem with the psychic constitution of the masses, specially with the Jackass/Punk'd/Viva la Bam-generation. Those who start yelling about slapping the smile of her face are part of the problem and not of its solution.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 1:26 AM

@ 276 - Are caring about the homeless and thinking it's sick to burn a kitten alive mutually exclusive? 'Cause that's news to me.

When I was a teen, I volunteered at an equine rescue. One Saturday we were out selling root beer floats in front of a grocery store to raise money for horse feed, and some jackass came up and told us that it was stupid to bother feeding old abandoned horses when there were children starving to death in Africa. That's a pretty fucking awful say to a bunch of young people who are trying to help abandoned animals, especially when your sorry ass isn't out working for any cause on a nice Saturday.

Years later, I still remember that. Thanks. Thanks for reminding me of that asshole.

Also: thanks for trolling your pet cause into this thread. Take a fucking number.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | June 6, 2009 1:36 AM

specially with the Jackass/Punk'd/Viva la Bam-generation.

no. fuck off. "the youth these days" is a fucking cop-out, and has been since there have been old people complaining about the horrible horrible youth.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 6, 2009 1:39 AM

I'd like to point out that "drawing attention to a psychological disorder that may be behind the disturbing behavior" is not "demonizing". It's more compassionate than simply writing the behavior off as "foolishness". The behavior and the attitudes that accompany it are worrisome. True foolishness would be to turn a blind eye to that.

Alan does raise a valid point, that 17 is pretty old to start sadistic behaviors like that, but as someone else pointed out, we don't know her history. I'm not going to try to diagnose her from a distance, and I'm sure she'll be getting a psych eval, which is entirely appropriate under the circumstances. There's more at stake than an incinerated kitty here. There's Cheyenne's future, which frankly is far more important than the life of the kitty, as well as the possible dangers she might present to the people and animals she encounters on her way to adulthood and beyond. Better safe than sorry. The "boys will be boys" approach is a lose-lose in this case.

Posted by: Ryan | June 6, 2009 1:50 AM

I grew up with many cats so I never understood how people can treat them like this. Growing up I even had some of my own killed by neighborhood kids but no one ever did anything about it or even seemed to care (I hear that's how serial killers get started).

What I don't understand about this article though is this part:

Pentangelo said the kitten was burned so badly a necropsy had to be performed to determine its sex.

Why are they trying to determine the sex of the kitten? I mean the person owned a cat. There's a cat in the oven. And someone confessed to killing it. Is determining the sex really that important?

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 1:56 AM

Richard Hendricks-

you appear to have missed my comments that recognizing "cuteness" is most likely an evolutionary hangover from our biological need to protect our own human infants.

this is separate from our drive to domesticate pet/companion/work animals. but when an animal presents these "cute" facial features we are more likely to love it and encourage it to breed, thusly making "cuteness" a feature of some pet animals that we have artificially selected for.

Posted by: Blake | June 6, 2009 2:02 AM

Actually Luna, I have read ALL of posts (before posting myself), and a large number of them made the experience fucking damn near insufferable.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 6, 2009 2:03 AM

@Jadehawk #284

I was afraid of this misinterpretation (English isn't my first language). It's not really about the state of the youth, but of western civilization generally. You can see it more easily in the younger ones, because they yet don't have learned all the necessary, but also repressive inhibitions of adulthood.

The real danger does not lie in the occasional pranksters and delincuents, but in the sadist, disconnected, non-empathic tendencies of the many, which make them able to routinelly shrug their shoulders at the suffering of their next. The brutalized and pornographic media aim at our infantile urges and hinder us to become autonomous, self-responsible subjects. This doesn't just apply to MTV etc., but you can see it there in a more pure form. And no, I'm not a social conservative.

The three shows I mentioned are not simply the reason for the antisocial behaviour of a Cheyenne Cherry, but there is a cultural reciprocity I find hard to deny. All three of them are prank shows with strong elements of pain and humiliation. If it was just the sick idea of some TV producers, I wouldn't really mind. What matters here is the gigantic success, the acceptance of games that turn your life into a gladiator arena. Some people don't feel alive but when they feel or inflict pain. Many young people reincarnate the daily struggle of everybody against everybody on a direct level.

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 2:04 AM

Kseniya-

so maybe blake has some valid points, but that doesn't diminish the fact that most of his/her (yes i've known women named blake) points have already been addressed here and it seems that the bulk of "his" comment was about calling-out all the commentaries here as being baseless whiners. if you want to accuse a pool of commenters as a whole you ought to read all their comments first.....

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 2:09 AM

and blake, i do see that you claim to have read all comments, i was typing while you posted that, so cool, think this is a block o' whiners if you want. i support free thought.

Posted by: Kseniya | June 6, 2009 2:15 AM

Ok, unGeDuLdig, that makes more sense. You're talking about a culture of violence. I confess that although I fit into your demographic, most of that stuff is irrelevant to me personally, because I never watch any of those shows (or movies) you've mentioned. As a result I may, in my own mind, be underestimating their cumulative cultural impact.

I might argue that "pornographic media" cannot, by definition, be aimed at our "infantile urges," but I'll let it pass. Perhaps the phrase you seek is "prurient interests." ;-)

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 2:20 AM

"are a chelonian enthusiast"

"am a" but we all typo!

Posted by: luna1580 | June 6, 2009 2:22 AM

Ichthyic-

your link doesn't work for me.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 2:30 AM

Blake wrote:

Wow, I never would've guessed that at a place like this, such a huge number of whinging, irrationally emotional shameless crybabies would come out of the woodwork over such a thing.

and later:

I have read ALL of posts (before posting myself), and a large number of them made the experience fucking damn near insufferable.

So tell me Blake, how should one react to this story?
Oh wait, you did say something about that:

Your disproportionately large measure of concern should not lie with a single very dead kitten. It should lie with this girl, who by all accounts is displaying classic characteristics of psychopathic behavior. She needs serious psychological help right now, before she potentially causes harm to something more self-aware.

Which, if you did indeed read ALL the posts, you would see was addressed repeatedly.
What, pray tell, was it that you found "fucking damn near insufferable?"

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 6, 2009 2:32 AM

@Kseniya

After looking it up, I kinda like "prurient" better. "Pornographic" is also not quite the word I was looking for. It goes rather in the direction of "standartized sexualization" or "competitive eroticism". But I'm getting off topic.

Posted by: Dahan | June 6, 2009 2:35 AM

One of my two cats is sleeping against my leg right now, as is his wont when I'm up to late on the laptop. My other one is snuggled against my wife upstairs, as is her wont when I'm not up there (otherwise she likes to sleep on my feet).

I'm made so very sad that someone would commit such an evil act. It is evil you know. There's no other term that fits better. The title of this post is well worded, This is about a lack of empathy.

Over the years, I've found my skeptical brothers and sisters to be more empathetic on average than our theistic counterparts. I don't have any verifiable proof of this, nor do I have an answer as to why this should be so. It is just what I have observed.

I hope that the companion of this animal can recover and will not have to live with life-long trauma induced complications. I also hope that the criminals involved receive help and are able to adjust to our societal norms.

Truly a sad event.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 2:37 AM

Katie Joy, #260

You do have such a need to be right.

Especially when she's right.

Posted by: Jambe | June 6, 2009 2:43 AM

Let the punishment fit the crime.

This.

I'm curious as to how many people who are taken aback at the thought of baking a kitten to death are paradoxically fine with, say, a crawfish boil. I daresay if the punishment were to fit the crime of Red Lobster patrons that'd take a mighty big pot (or there'd be one helluva line).

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 2:45 AM

Never trust a small child with weapons, because the child can not understand the harm the weapon can do.

A (sane) 17 year old can.

Posted by: Noadi | June 6, 2009 2:48 AM

*cuddles her two kitties*

I've said before I live on a farm, my family does raise some animals for meat. However something my parents constantly drove into me and my brother is that you treat all living things with respect even those you plan to eat. I feel a little bad when I slaughter my chickens or pig, I've raised them since they were babies. I've never lost my sense of empathy for those animals and if I ever do I'll become a vegetarian out of sheer horror.

Senseless cruelty and killing simply for the sake of doing so sickens and infuriates me. To harm the pet of another person, that they care about and love, to me is almost equivalent to harming their child because of the emotional damage it does. These girls clearly are not normal psychologically, I don't know in what way but I hope they get the treatment they need and not simply punished (though they clearly need some of that too).

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | June 6, 2009 2:50 AM

Nominal Egg, #312

Nice of you to enable her.

Posted by: kantalope | June 6, 2009 2:54 AM

So, because there are other outrageous things occurring, I can't be outraged by someone that puts a cat in an oven?

And maybe this 'person' put a cat in an oven because they were immature. That does not excuse the behavior. The break in and incineration took place several weeks before the confession when it was still a joke. This 'person' is not going to feel bad...ever.

And then Blake gives them cover...disgusting

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 3:05 AM

Nominal Egg, #312

Nice of you to enable her.

Thanks! I try to be nice.
Just out of curiosity, where do you think she's wrong?
If you had a point, I missed it.

Posted by: unGeDuLdig | June 6, 2009 3:16 AM

@Jadehawk #303

The general humanizing effect of civilization is undeniable and I'm not in the least argueing for a more "natural" way of cohabitation. But with the increased knowledge and technology, there is no doubt that the outbreaks of barbarism in midst of civilized societies can exceed easily the atrocities of the dark ages. Torquemada simply had no gas chambers. But what I'm aiming at is a bit more difficult to describe. There is the sublimed survival of barbaric elements in every civilization, a certain retrograde effect that makes the revival of fundamentalism, racism, etc. possible. The process of civilization itself carries with it the ambiguity of bigger freedoms and bigger control at the same time. Such phenomena as fascism do not really spread the strongest in "backward" environments, but in cultures where the modernizing process has managed to dissolve the traditional identities. The big cities, which grew since the middle ages with the promise of personal and entrepeneural freedom, tend nowadays to produce all sorts of deeply damaged personalities. And I'm still not at the core of the problem: It's not about the serial killers and gangsters, who at the end of the day, are not the standard citizen. What's worrysome is the individually milder, but collectively cumulative sociopacy, the general lack of empathy, the public's wish for severe punishments, closed borders, strong leadership, and so on. This tendency (it's not total) enables gangsters, manic preachers, waterboarders and other barbaric elements. Just compare the strong reactions to the death of a fucking kitten with the global shoulder shrugging at the atrocities imposed on human beings. It's easy to cry for a sweet cat meowing in pain (and I wouldn't want to denounce it, melikes cats). The troublesome looking wetbacks chased by vigilantes at the Mexican border, well, whatcha gonna do...

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | June 6, 2009 3:21 AM

The biggest mistake I see people making is insisting that ordinary people are incapable of committing really foul deeds. Under the right circumstances we are all capable of committing some really foul deeds. Evil is not foreign to our nature; evil is part of our nature, and to deny that fact makes it easier to do evil, not harder.

Then you have the claim that 17 year olds are mature adults. To quote an earlier commenter, "Bull fucking shit." Parents of 17 year olds, even of 20 year olds, can tell you of just how not mature their child is. Of how stubborn, thoughtless, inconsiderate, immature their child is. Young adults are noted for doing things that are foolish and childish. That's how young adults are, and all your protests shan't change that.

In contrast you have the story of a man who was left to rot in his van for weeks, as cop after meter maid left parking ticket after parking ticket. The author, Eric notes that we show more concern about the animals in our care than we do about the people who need help just as much. People who can't get that help because we refuse to admit that sometimes we are not able to care for ourselves.

Call me contradictory. I believe in God, I don't believe in evil. We do things that are evil, but I don't see people who do those things as being evil. Sometimes the perp can't be saved, sometimes he can. Sometimes the perp needs to die before he does more evil in the future. Sometimes the perp presents no future danger, and can even be forgiven. Learning which prevails can be hard, and requires a lot of hard thought. This is one situation for which there are no easy answers, no simple conclusions. What Tiger Lily suffered is horrific, let's not belittle her terror by applying facile labels to her tormentors.

Posted by: James | June 6, 2009 3:31 AM

I'm sure I'm just echoing previous comments but there are too many to read through.

PETA was an organization with good intentions taken too far.

They are now a fringe group of ghouls and psychos that destroy the credibility of those actually committed to animal welfare.

These girls committed a monstrous offense and should be punished as such. Unfortunately with our lax treatment of both young people and animal abusers I don't see anything happening.

Posted by: astrounit | June 6, 2009 3:39 AM

This act is beyond denouncement in mere words.

I'm shaking with such outrage that I can barely think any up that satisfactorily describes what I think of the sort of monstrosity capable of doing something like that.

Just for the "fun" of it.

All one might hope is that the monster, Cheyenne Cherry, that self-infatuated ASSHOLE so full of herself - will one day suffer - while she is still alive - as much as that innocent and vulnerable little kitten did in that oven.

Cheyenne Cherry, consider what you were too heartless to realize as you left that apartment "As the temperature climbed...desperately scratching at the oven door...before even that became an exercise in unendurable pain.

Unfortunately, this will not happen. Human "civilization" overwhelmingly still views the welfare of "animals" as completely distinct from those of humans. (And PETA CAN SUCK MY NOSE).

But she WILL verily suffer the agony associated with a "natural death", as will we all, and in that we may all find a proper accounting. We may hope her conscience goes bananas for MONTHS leading up to her finale...hopefully, her "very natural" demise will be accompanied by a particularly excruciating condition, wherein she is forced by the vagaries of the human mind to visualize the plight of that kitten over and over and over and over again in excruciating detail.

She may even learn something about how unforgiveably ROTTEN it was to subject an innocent creature to such suffering "just for fun", just in order to "play a joke"...because, um, anyway, she "hates cats"...but she'll have very little opportunity at that late stage to do anything about helping to alleviate the cruelty she has inflicted on one by, say, embarking on a crusade in the service of vulnerable animals.

And PETA CAN STILL SUCK MY NOSE.

(ASPCA: GOOD; PETA: A BAD JOKE.)

The rest of us may expire under considerably more peaceful circumstances anticipating this eventuality.

Little Tiger Lilly suffers not at all now, the horror is over...but I trust that the mind of Cheyenne Cherry, if there is any iota of shame and sorrow in it ANYWHERE, will experience plenty of suffering ahead...

Conscience is the device that permits people to obtain the very best of that which they deserve...while they remain alive.

Cheyenne is still young at 17...PLENTY of opportunity to relive the agony. Over and over and over and over again.

Jerome Halton, #176: "I think burning cats pretty much sucks."

Nice to know, "pretty much", where you stand, you worthless, unfeeling, flaming knucklehead.

And now I must retire to sob my fucking heart out.

Posted by: Cactus Wren | June 6, 2009 3:56 AM

God DAMN you, Myers.

What was the point of posting this?

I have pets. I love my pets. I shall probably not be able to sleep tonight after reading this.

WHAT WAS YOUR POINT? Do you really believe that anyone needed to be INFORMED that allegedly human beings are capable of horrifying deeds?

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 4:19 AM

Astrounit,
Wishing mental torment on those you detest isn't any better than wishing physical pain on them. Thank the FSM that wishing doesn't make things come true (ha, stick "The Secret" in your ear Oprah) 'cause a bunch of you are making me sick to my stomach as the original story. Okay, I understand the need to vent at times. But if half of you are half as serious about how you feel towards those you consider contemptible (as I do this girl) then you need to re-read the title of this post and see how it applies to yourselves. Seriously.

Yes, I understand that this was a foul act. And that it pretty much demonstrates that the girl is abnormal, broken, mentally deficient, etc. And that makes me sad. But she too is a person and to describe her as sub-human and deserving of physical or mental torture ... bah, you're applying the same (non-)thought processes as did Tiller's murderer. Don't go down that road. Please! At least recognize that you're fantasizing and venting and give indications that you aren't truly serious.

Posted by: Angel Kaida | June 6, 2009 4:33 AM

Muffin,
I'm kind of with you... It seems like in many cases, what's acceptable, what's moral, what's right in a civilized society, what doesn't make us monsters... is the least satisfying possible thing. Because even if we really are right, we can't use our moral anger to wreak a cruel vengeance, because that would seem to justify the honestly deluded doing the same. Suppose that's why people like Rorschach from Watchmen so much? A moral monster. Heh.

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 4:45 AM

Katie Joy @ 333 (apparently only half-evil),

Don't infantilize young adults; the average 17-year-old is perfectly capable of empathy. Children far younger can be diagnosed with aggressive/violent disorders (Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder).

And you know that this girl is average, how? There are large variations in individuals, especially in that age range, so saying that the average 17-yr-old is capable of empathy says nothing in particular about what this girl, in particular, is capable of. Sort'a by definition, she isn't normal.

Don't even try to lecture me about ODD or CD -- I'll bet I have a much closer familiarity with it than you. But given the crappy state of health care, especially mental health care, in this country do you think it possible that the girl suffers from untreated mental illness? Might that not mitigate some of the moral accountability?

So, is this girl (a) a monster that deserves to be locked up and have the key thrown away (b) physical torture (c) mental torment (d) to be thown in a fiery pit of doom in hell to burn forever (e) be removed from proper society and given treatment until such time that she is shown to be no longer a danger to others and their pets.

Those choosing anything but (e) need to go read the post's title again and then go look in the mirror.

Posted by: davem | June 6, 2009 4:57 AM

I hate cats. It's because they kill birds, for no reason, and I love birds. They have no empathy for birds, as they torture them slowly, pulling a wing off here, a tail feather there. leaving them to die a horrible death. But cat lovers love their sociopath cats.

I went to #49's link, and watched the first cat-torturing video. If I'd come into that bathroom at that time, I'd cheerfully have beaten the living shit out of that boy, 14 years old or not.

But if it had been a girl doing the torturing, I'd not have touched her physically.

Weird, this empathy business.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 5:12 AM

And you know that this girl is average, how? There are large variations in individuals, especially in that age range, so saying that the average 17-yr-old is capable of empathy says nothing in particular about what this girl, in particular, is capable of. Sort'a by definition, she isn't normal.

Which is pretty much exactly what I said, right before the text you chose to quote. "ABNORMAL," capital lettering, any of that ring a bell? I was arguing that (a) this isn't normal behavior for a teenager, and (b) unless she's mentally disabled, she knew what the outcome of putting a cat in an oven and turning it on would be for the cat. If (b) somehow isn't true, that just provides all the more evidence that (a) certainly is.

I have been arguing that this girl is most likely mentally ill pretty much from the beginning. Did you only read every other word of my post? Are you mistaking my post for someone else's?

And out of the options given, I'll go with (E) - although in practice, I wouldn't be surprised if (E) ended up being a lot like (A). If it protects the populace and their companion animals from being tortured to death, so be it.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 5:19 AM

also, if she were to really be a genuine sociopath, not suffering from other mental health issues, isn't it considered an untreatable condition?

Activated lead capsules work. In theory, anyway.

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 5:36 AM

Katey,
I guess I wasn't clueing in on your use of "mentally disabled" (a more polite term than what was used when I was her age: "retarded") as distinguished from "mentally ill" (or as you put it: ABNORMAL). To me it was reading as if you were positing a third class: morally culpable evil do-ers and labelling those ABNORMAL.

In the former the individual isn't culpable due to the inability to understand the consequences. I would argue that in the majority of such cases of individual personal "evil" acts, that persons not in the first class are, essentially by definition, in the second: mentally ill.

This is to separate those cases from larger barbaric acts (9/11, Iraq war, etc) which are calculated acts of more than a single individual -- and thus not mental illness per se.

Posted by: cyan | June 6, 2009 5:37 AM

Don't panic @327,

A person who wishes mental pain to someone else,
one who wishes physical pain to someone else,
one who writes he feels the first,
one who writes he feels the second,

is doing something equal to actually doing the act of torture?

Seriously?

Then whatever means society takes to protect its members from future harm from a person who has actually committed an act of torture, we should take those same measures against those who have THOUGHT that another deserves mental or physical pain?

There would hardly be anyone left in society unincarcerated or under strict psychiatric care and most if not all of tax money would be going for those prophylactic treatments.

Or conversely, you must be implying that if we don't legally take action against people who have thoughts as these on occasion, that we should not legally take action against people who actually physically torture someone else on occasion?

It just seems logical that those are your inferences from stating that a person who has an occasional wish for violence is "just as broken" as one who actually commits violence.

Needless to say, I disagree with you: I think that there is a big difference, and that society must treat them differently.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 5:53 AM

@ 347 - I honestly don't know where else to go with this. If you seriously believe that it is within the boundaries of normal teenage behavior to torture a small animal to death and feel no remorse afterward, then I suppose we're at an impasse (and that, according to your standards, the pattern of animal abuse and torture often exhibited by serial killers as children is "normal").

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 5:58 AM

Wishing mental torment on those you detest isn't any better blah blah blah blah

Those who would be shown compassion must show it to others.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 6:04 AM

Katie Joy,
there is more to the definition of antisocial personality disorder(sociopathy) then barbecuing a cat,and I would argue that a teenager can be able to do something stupid like that easily without fitting that definition.
It might be an indicator of future ASPD,however.Im not saying the girl might not be fucked in the head,just to not be too quick with the judgements.

And anyone who doubts that teenagers/young adults can do unbelievable stupid/cruel/immature things,is invited to spend a Saturday night in Emergency with me.

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 6:10 AM

Cyan,
That's some strawman you're trying to stuff in my mouth. I didn't say that society shouldn't treat acts and thoughts differently. Try reading for comprehension.

Okay, "just as broken" was a bit of hyperbole, but "broken" never the less. Honestly. I'm not saying that the thought police should be locking up those that vent a bit. But as I wrote in 336

At least recognize that you're fantasizing and venting and give indications that you aren't truly serious.

Because if those who are talking about physical torture or mental torment are serious, they're not showing much more empathy (one might say a "heartbreaking absence of empathy") than the girl in question. I was talking about how one should view those making such statements, not about legal culpability.

Your thoughts are your own. Play up all your little vengeance fantasies in your head to your hearts content. Put them into play by expressing them in public and you become contemptible, put them into action and you become vile.

I thought we hashed this all out in the Tiller thread: Operation Rescue is contemptible with their mealy-mouth statement about how "we sorry (but we're really not, and everyone knows it) that he was killed, but he deserved a horrible fate because we deemed his actions unacceptable".
I don't accept such crap from OR and I'd have hoped to see better from those posting here.

At least a statement to the effect that "my visceral reactions is... but I recognize that it would be better to remove this person from society and treat their illness."

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 6:20 AM

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 5:51 AM

[Citation needed]

Azkyroth, I know you to be reasonbly sensible and perhaps you're just being a bit snarky here, but go ahead and read those links I put in 331. If those don't satisfy you then do a bit of research on your own.

It's not saying that they don't understand the consequences when looked at in a calm, rational state of mind. It's that they're not in that state of mind. Poor impulse control coupled up with not actually thinking about consequences. Their thought processes aren't "If A then B, Oh, we'll I don't care about B so what the hell". It's "A", just "A".
And then "C" and "Q" ... and "Z".

Posted by: Mishcakes | June 6, 2009 6:32 AM

I apologize as I haven't the time now to read through the 300+ posts to see if something similar has been said.

After reading through the first few, however, a theme along the lines of "how could this person do such a cruel thing to a helpless animal" has developed, based on several poster's relationships with their feline pets.

I honestly, truly honestly, cannot see how a person that is so moved to tears over the torture and death of a sentient creature can feel justified in ordering a hamburger in the next breath.

It's beyond which organization one supports/condemns (PETA being the example from what I've read), it's simply just an issue of respecting a living creature's right for a life free of suffering.

Pet animals suffer equally to farm animals. It's as simple as that. Meat apologists, similar to the religious apologists we all so eagerly jump to ridicule, will justify their consumption habits one way or another. However if there were a factory farm full of young puppies or kittens raised in deplorable conditions for the sole purpose of eating their flesh, I doubt that the public, including the chicken sandwich-eating kitten lovers posting here, would allow the farm to continue.

It's species-ism, as Peter Signer coined it.

So please, if you're so moved to tears over a report of a single innocent creature's demise, think of your eating habits and the needless suffering and death that that promotes, unreported.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 6:36 AM

I obviously cannot say that this girl has (or, technically, "will" have) APD.

Yes,thats my point.
Your feelings are irrelevant.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 6:43 AM

I honestly, truly honestly, cannot see how a person that is so moved to tears over the torture and death of a sentient creature can feel justified in ordering a hamburger in the next breath.

I'm guessing that if the girl was starving and the cat was killed for food, there would be a very different reaction from the general population. Hell, even if there was another food source, I'm willing to bet there would be a different reaction than what is exhibited here. Maybe people would feel it wrong to eat cat because of their relationship to humans, but you would not see the same level of outrage that is shown here.

There is a moral distinction between killing based on the motivation, to pretend otherwise is to try and create an equivalence where there is none.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 6:49 AM

Yep, and so are yours... and probably also those of everyone else here.

Posted by: dab | June 6, 2009 6:52 AM

mishcakes @ #362

I share your confusion over how people cannot discern the connection between the different 'uses' of animals in society, and your distaste for the tired and invariably impotent arguments meat-eaters use, but stopped at this:

"Pet animals suffer equally to farm animals. It's as simple as that."

I presume that you mean that farm animals are equally capable of suffering (and more often do), not that keeping pets is morally equivalent to growing and killing animals for the sake of food or materials?

Either way, I suspect that your post will be pounced upon.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 6:55 AM

Then why try to play doctor and diagnose the girl with some disorder? Will having a condition to blame it on make the act any more or less justified? What will it do for you to label this girl with APD?

Nothing more than offer a possible explanation, or at least part of one (note: explanation =/= justification).

As for what it does for me: well, it supports my belief that purposefully torturing and killing baby animals and then thinking back on it without so much as a pang of discomfort is not actually a normal part of growing up - which a considerable number of people here actually seem to think it is.

That's why I'm "playing doctor." Tell me, why are you playing mommy?

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 7:00 AM

I dont want to come across as grumpy,but people are way too quick with their judgements of others,and fall for the temptation to put people into drawers,or base decisions on "feelings",its easier that way.But not good practice.And I dont like it.

Is there a drawer for "Tortures/Kills Helpless Animals with No Remorse," and if so, is it too "judgmental" to put her there? Would that be a "feeling" drawer, or is what she ACTUALLY fucking DID objective enough for you?

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 7:06 AM

well, it supports my belief that purposefully torturing and killing baby animals and then thinking back on it without so much as a pang of discomfort is not actually a normal part of growing up - which a considerable number of people here actually seem to think it is.

Please dont misrepresent what people say here,it was a decent discussion sofar,keep it like that.

Either a normal, mentally-healthy person could have done this or not. You think they definitely could have - what was your word... "easily"? Please tell me where the misrepresentation is.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 7:11 AM

Oops,Kel has hit a nerve..:-)

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 7:15 AM

I have never claimed that I could determine that she was mentally ill from the information provided. In fact, I explicitly stated otherwise:

"I obviously cannot say that this girl has (or, technically, "will" have) APD. This is one snapshot, albeit a pretty powerful one, of this girl's life and behavior. I do, however, feel that it IS likely that she is mentally ill, and that the behaviors she has exhibited do not fall within the range of normal teenage behavior."

If it helps you see where I'm coming from, I think EVERYONE who tortures a small animal to death with no provocation and then feels no guilt or discomfort over it is LIKELY mentally ill. Why? Because the torture, the killing, and the lack of remorse cover and underscore so many different diagnostic criteria. "Is likely" does not mean "is definitely," so I'm not sure why you're responding to it as though it does.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 7:20 AM

If it helps you see where I'm coming from, I think EVERYONE who tortures a small animal to death with no provocation and then feels no guilt or discomfort over it is LIKELY mentally ill. Why? Because the torture, the killing, and the lack of remorse cover and underscore so many different diagnostic criteria.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 7:25 AM

And I pointed out that feelings are not a good tool to judge whether someone is mentally ill,especially if you dont have enough information about that person.

Then I suppose you'd agree with me if I replaced "feel" with the synonym "consider"?

Posted by: cyan | June 6, 2009 7:27 AM

A few people have commented that they do not see why PZ posted this item.

I'm assuming that it is because of the recent PETA action post.

PETA is an example of the one extreme end and a person such as cherry is at the other extreme end. By considering both extremes instead of just one, we can better clarify what personal actions might be the best we can take. (Clearly, its neither of these two extremes.)

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 7:31 AM

Your definition sounds tautological.

Just typing out what she's done is virtually the same thing as listing half the criteria for APD... that's kind of my point.

Posted by: Katie Joy | June 6, 2009 7:36 AM

Seriously,are you dense or something? Is this a language problem? Which part of "normal part of growing up" is so difficult to understand?

Look, either it's healthy/normal/easy for normal people to do or it isn't. I'm actually not completely surprised that you respond to me telling you that you can't have it both ways by making personal attacks and not actually clarifying anything.

"Normal teenagers can easily do X, but X is not a normal teenage behavior" makes NO FUCKING SENSE. And you call me dense... wow.

Posted by: Rorschach | June 6, 2009 7:44 AM

"Normal teenagers can easily do X, but X is not a normal teenage behavior" makes NO FUCKING SENSE. And you call me dense... wow.

Ok,I try again then,although I dont have much hope you will get it:

A normal part of growing up is : falling off your bike and hurting your knee,playing sports,going camping,hitting your head on the couch table,having a crush on the neighbor boy/girl etc. Killing animals is not a normal part of growing up,but is something that is entirely possible for a child/teenager to do.

Nite.

Posted by: cyan | June 6, 2009 8:05 AM

Rorschach,

At the point at which the child/teenager actually does the killing, and after, then s/he is no longer within the norm.

All of us has the capability of doing an act like this, but the majority do not, hence it is not normal to do it. The norm of teenagers as a subset of people do not do this.

But what is the point of the semantics about the degree of the variation from the norm.

The point is whether the degree of deviation is such a threat to society that the person's freedom to act again should be limited.

Posted by: Citizen Z | June 6, 2009 8:38 AM

#288: Why are they trying to determine the sex of the kitten? I mean the person owned a cat. There's a cat in the oven. And someone confessed to killing it. Is determining the sex really that important?

I would guess it's part of the process of collecting forensic evidence.

Posted by: Lotharloo | June 6, 2009 9:47 AM

I find this more shocking:

Spc. James Barker, one of the soldiers involved, told investigators that the soldiers were drinking whiskey, playing cards and hitting golf balls when Green brought up the idea of going to the house near the checkpoint where they were stationed to rape the girl. Barker described Green as persistent. ... They killed the girl's father, mother and younger sister before raping and killing her and burning her body.

Posted by: Joy | June 6, 2009 10:06 AM

How horrifying!

Posted by: jane hay | June 6, 2009 10:27 AM

It's not surprising at all. Cruelty to animals as a child is a prime indicator of a sociopathic personality. These people are genetically incapable of empathy, toward animals or people. They have no "conscience", they will only regret getting caught. You have to watch them carefully if you have them in your life. They never really "reform".

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | June 6, 2009 10:32 AM

I honestly, truly honestly, cannot see how a person that is so moved to tears over the torture and death of a sentient creature can feel justified in ordering a hamburger in the next breath

Hamburgers are tasty and a cute, cuddly little animal's pain isn't.

If cats were tastier than they are cute and cuddly, things would probably be different. Tomatoes are kind of cute and cuddly, come to think of it, and potatoes are downright personable...

The universe I'm born into requires that we eat to live. So I don't torture myself about it because it's pointless to do so. Attempting to make eating things "moral" is silly; you wind up backing yourself into a position where the only clearly "moral" thing to do is kill yourself. (Which won't inhibit bacteria from eating you)

Posted by: S H | June 6, 2009 10:46 AM

This is why I don't eat meat (even though I know rationally that there's no truly rational reason for not doing so.) I just can't imagine killing anything that even remotely reminds me of myself. The thought of it make me sick to my stomach.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 10:48 AM

I'm confused as to the reasoning behind the "pecking party" aimed at Katie Joy.
All she has been saying is that this monster needs some serious psychiatric help, and some of you are responding with "Bullshit, kids will be kids!" (Some of it, though, has just been wanking over semantics)
It's as though you think that High School Seniors are incapable of taking personal responsibility. They're just teenagers, after all.

Do you really think Cheyenne Cherry is a normal teenager?
Really? Is this "normal" behavior for your kids, or something?

And to those others of you that think this is exactly the same as eating a cheeseburger, get help. Seriously.

Posted by: Alex | June 6, 2009 10:55 AM

How is it sentience determined? My first thought is that it would be hard to determine a difference between the "sentience" of a cat and the "sentience" of a mosquito.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 10:58 AM

And to those others of you that think this is exactly the same as eating a cheeseburger, get help. Seriously.

Most people are completely unaware of the pain and suffering entailed in the production of a cheese burger. Most people are not unaware of the pain and suffering entailed in roasting a kitten alive. So immediately the act involving the kitten appears far worse. In addition, the pain and suffering of being roasted alive is probably an order of intensity higher than farm animals generally face (although the kitten would presumably die within a matter of minutes). In addition, the non-consumption of any particular cheese burger is likely to have no impact on the pain and suffering in the world. So not equivalent but certainly analogous.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 11:02 AM

Salamander,

False equivalence.
Analogy FAIL.

Posted by: Hannah | June 6, 2009 11:04 AM

I absolutely hate reading about such atrocious acts. I have two cats of my own; Moogle was rescued from the streets and I was there for the birth of her three kittens, Twisp we still have, but Spork was knocked down on the nearby road last year and Tigger went to a good home.

I understand in an intellectual way that there are people out there who act like this, but emotionally, I tend to forget, so it hits hard when I read about it. What that girl did was truly disgusting and I'd place money on the bet that it's not the first time she has tortured an animal, and wont be the last.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 11:05 AM

'Tis Himself

This is not the first time that accusations have been flung around on the blog, and threats issued, with serious consequences (at least in the comments). There was the issue involving a gay Canadian student alleging discrimination and another involving the wife of an idiot who threatened PZ - the wife ended up losing her job and a university academic was defamed.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 11:11 AM

Nominal Egg,

There is no moral equivalence.

They are certainly analogous.

This red herring in which any analogy is immediately assumed to involve such an equivalence originates in the work of Jeane Kirkpatrick as a method of trying to prevent criticism of foreign policy and state decisions.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 11:12 AM

Killing for food != killing for fun. Lets frame this in a different environment. By this logic, it is equivalent to raze a forest for housing as it is to raze a forest just to see what it is like for it to burn.

Suffering is suffering, but morality comes more from intent of actions as opposed to the consequences of them. If you accidentally run over a child, it is morally different from deliberately running over a child - even if the consequences for the child are exactly the same: suffering and death for the young person. To call moral equivalence is to completely misrepresent what morality is and why we have such a system. And for what?

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 11:17 AM

Kel, who is alleging a moral equivalence?

Nominal Egg, is engaging with a straw man.

Posted by: Max | June 6, 2009 11:20 AM

Would people stop slagging on PZ for being an alleged hypocrite?

We are omnivores, and we evolved that way, and I say with no qualms that it is OK to eat animals. Most of the animals we eat are so dependent on us after years of artificial selection that they aren't even close to their wild counterparts anymore. But, that doesn't mean it's OK to abuse animals that we eat for food; right up until they're slaughtered, they can lead a pretty OK life. This isn't always the reality. Big meat in the States, Ontario and Alberta, and the UK can be disgusting. In theory, though, it's OK to eat animals.

Same thing for animal research. While a great deal of animal research is completely unnecessary and superfluous, and an even greater deal is done with an unnecessary amount of cruelty, in theory, we need to do animal research. It can be humanely, or, at least, as humanely as possible. For every crackpot vivisecting monkeys without anesthetic, there's a legit lab that has or will lead to breakthroughs in research regarding a number of terrible diseases. My father in live survived cancer, in part, because of animal research.

Sometimes, we need to use animals, and this should always be done humanely, and with a maximum of respect and gratitude (i.e. the idealized Native American way).

Ergo, eating a Big Mac or doing evo-devo on chicken eggs is not the same as throwing a kitten in an oven. People who say it is are usually just philosophy punks playing the devil's advocate.

For those interested in vegetarianism, avoid PETA. Sign up for Care2 alerts, donate to IFAW, read the works of Peter Singer. PETA are sexist, violent, and opportunistic.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 11:25 AM

This red herring in which any analogy is immediately assumed to involve such an equivalence blah blah blah blah blah

Red Herring? Red Herring?
I humbly submit:

I honestly, truly honestly, cannot see how a person that is so moved to tears over the torture and death of a sentient creature can feel justified in ordering a hamburger in the next breath.

Anyone that cannot "honestly, truly honestly" see the difference should seek professional help.
Honestly.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 6, 2009 11:30 AM

We can reason.

Posted by: DavidCOG | June 6, 2009 11:35 AM

As a Brit, I was puzzled when I first saw the apoplexy that is produced in most Americans when PETA are mentioned. I've seen the same claims over and over again by Americans - "PETA want to kill your pets", "PETA kill puppies instead of finding them new homes", etc.

It's bullshit. Simply not true.

It seems that PETA is another source of American mass psychosis - just like guns and Jesus. It's a shame that PZ has fallen for it as well.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | June 6, 2009 11:41 AM

DavidCOG, shelters in this country run by PETA have a very bad and well deserved reputation. They do not care for the animals under their care like they should, adopt out a small handful, and dispose of the rest. PETA may be different in your country, but in this case the Yanks do know what is going on in our neighborhood. And it isn't pretty.

Posted by: Notagod | June 6, 2009 11:43 AM

When I was younger some "good" mormon kids poured gasoline on the back half of a cat, set it on fire and let it go. They told the story and expressed how fun it was to watch the burning cat run around. I didn't believe them until they told me where I could see the cat, which somehow survived. I wonder if this type of cruel behavior is common among mormons because a few months ago an old guy from Idaho, that always oozed and dripped christianity when he talked, told me that when he was a kid he would often go around town to catch all the cats he could find and put them in a big potato sack, then carry/drag them to a barn. He would take the sack full of cats to the top floor of the barn, take the cats out, hold them upside down and drop them, supposedly to see if they would land on their feet. Even at a mature age, dripping religion, the old guy still thinks it was funny and seems proud of it. I told him he was a bad person and haven't talked to him since.

When mormons are confronted with similar events they will state that not all mormons are like that. But they claim that their god is perfect and that its plan is perfect, that the moronics have the only true religion and that they are better because of it. The problem with the mormon claim of a perfect plan is, that plan must then show perfection. One error or one bad mormon is all it takes to show that the perfection claim is false and thus the mormon religion and god idea are also false. Abuse of animals for sport and amusement is definitely a defect.

Posted by: Skipbidder | June 6, 2009 11:45 AM

Cheyenne Cherry is nae true human.

@236 bastion of sass gave us a lovely dancing bird video.
I prefer this particular thread hijack to any of the others.
Here's another dancing bird.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkSxRRxvQ8E&NR=1

Posted by: Bob Carroll | June 6, 2009 11:58 AM

Mostly I want to thank Cuttlefish (#13) for the haiku. But additionally, PETA is a deceptive anti-animal group, whose main reason for existence is in raising money and otherwise aggrandizing itself. They use coercive tactics (perhaps even terroristic) although terrorism is a word best saved for more serious malfeasance.
Bob

Posted by: Steven Dunlap | June 6, 2009 12:02 PM

@Katie Joy # 361

Thank you for posting a passage from the DSM-IV. Unfortunately, the comments qualifying that we (as amateurs) can not make diagnoses from sketchy information and diagnostic criteria alone somehow failed to transmit to some readers.

For an interesting read on this issue, I suggest The mask of sanity by Hervey Cleckley a psychiatrist who studied and wrote about psychopaths/sociopaths extensively during his career. The introduction in which he explains why he wrote the book both as a textbook for psychiatry students as as guide to the disorder that ordinary college educated people could understand is worth summarizing here. He wrote his book to be as accessible as possible to a wider audience and placed it in the public domain because he came to the conclusion that psychopaths present a problem to society that neither the psychiatric profession nor the mental health institutions could "solve." Because psychopaths only admit to their "condition" when it suits them - usually to escape punishment - and they do not wish to change we can not even obtain anywhere near an objective count of how many such individuals we have running around loose. The idea behind his book is not so much to enable us to make a diagnosis along the same lines as a trained and experienced professional but to enable us to recognize individuals who very likely are psychopaths and empower us to take steps to protect ourselves, our families and our communities from the psychopath. Not all psychopaths are serial killers (but I suppose it helps to be one). Psychopaths are excellent liars. Far better than pathological liars who continuously confabulate, a psychopath - like an honest person - simply expects to be believed. They typically insinuate themselves into the lives of others and use them as they please. The simplest way to deal with a psychopath is evasion and avoidance. Keep them out of your life. Do not lend them money. Do not let one sleep on your couch. If you find that one of you co-workers fits one of the case studies in this book then minimize contact as much as possible (but don't go around telling others "so-and-so is a psychopath - I read it in a book").

As for Ms. Cherry, hopefully the publicity surrounding her actions will alert potential victims, who can take precautions (or just simply not believe a word she says).

As far as "treatment" is concerned, Cleckley explains how there isn't one. At least not one that we can verify. We can not observe what takes place inside another person's head: we can only observe behavior. A psychopath can modify his/her behavior as needed for evading punishment/consequences. What we face then is a practical matter of public safety. The question of sanity or lack thereof is not as important as what to do to protect ourselves from such individuals who behave as Cherry did.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 12:06 PM

Kel, does each instance not entail unnecessary suffering?

Consider a machine that crushes nuts. Most of the time, this nut-crushing machine will crush nuts and none is harmed. But consider the following scenario from two different perspectives: a man falls on the machine when there isn't a way for the machine to be shut off, and when there is a way for the machine to be shut off. In the first scenario, people are powerless to help the man and he is crushed. In the second, any preventative power means unnecessary suffering if that man is unduly crushed.

Just how far should we take this notion to eliminate unnecessary suffering? Should we kill all cheetahs so as to they never slowly and painfully kill another gazelle? Should we do the same for lions so as to eliminate the unnecessary suffering of zebras?

Hell, why stop there? what about all the unnecessary suffering we cause animals by razing the wilderness in order to give us shelter and provide us with the resources for food? have we not caused countless suffering with the mass terraforming done since the beginning of the agricultural revolution?

This is the problem I see with the suffering argument, even if we were vegetarians, the problem is that we cause plenty of undue suffering by purely existing, and our capacity as a moral creature working on suffering means that we have the foresight to eliminate suffering in nature. We could to a lot to eliminate the suffering seen in nature through the power we have developed as a species.

But to tie this into the suffering on the dinner table. Yes, we could all be vegetarians as opposed to meat eaters. It would mean less suffering on account of the animals. But why can't we treat animals humanely at the same time? Kangaroos for example must be killed with a headshot in order for it to be served on the dinner table. Is not a quick death preferable to a long-drawn out death like the creatures would get in nature?

Recently I watched an Attenborough documentary - The Trails Of Life. In there I saw possibly the most disturbing thing I had ever witnessed; a group of chimpanzees hunting for monkey. Here they were, a highly-intelligent, organised social creature hunting a group of monkeys. The men chased the monkeys, using strategies to lure the monkeys into a trap. While the females followed on the forest floor - with the infants clutching onto their mothers. When the hunt was over and they finally caught one, the chimpanzees brutally killed this monkey. The howls of pain were echoing through the forest as the chimpanzees yelled in glee and triumph. Then and there the males ripped the monkey apart and threw bits of the carcass down for the rest of the troop to enjoy...

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 12:12 PM

Nominal Egg,

Until you acknowledge that the suffering as a result of factory farms is immoral and unnecessary I cannot take you seriously. You have yet to even attempt to make a relevant counterargument.

You have not even acknowledged that you misunderstood the person you mistakenly, or errantly, quoted. I cannot abide you obfuscation.

Like the person from the UK suggested, this tendency in the US to completely absolve oneself of any responsibility for such suffering appears to be pathological. Much like the derangement exhibited in regards to gun control and reproductive rights.

Posted by: Gra | June 6, 2009 12:19 PM

I think we humans have a tendency to compartmentalize our thoughts and actions. Hence a scientist who can go to church on Sunday, a girl who can put a kitten in an oven but leave the place so she doesn't have to hear its screams, and most definitely a human who can decry the cruelty to a kitten but eat a plate of chicken wings.

I would suggest that the chicken wings were the cause of more cruelty than the kitten in the oven. The argument that we're evolved to be omnivores is bullshit. We are rational creatures that can make choices and are not driven by our instincts alone. Straight male humans are also evolved to boff every hot woman we see but we bring our faculty of reason to bear on our emotions and make a decision not to commit rape on a daily basis. There are many other examples of how our modern values oppose darwinian imperatives.

If we eat the chicken wings we are not the one causing the animal to suffer - someone is doing it for us so we don't have to observe it. But again we can bring our faculty of reason to bear on the situation and understand that it *is* going on even if can't see hear or smell it and hence are not affected emotionally by it.

So shut up about the cat if you're having a barbecue tonight.

Posted by: SC, OM | June 6, 2009 12:30 PM

I couldn't find the horrifying selection from Sclosser's Fast-Food Nation I was looking for online, but I did find this:

http://www.cspinet.org/EatingGreen/pdf/arguments6.pdf

I eat meat (birds, seafood,...um, bacon) rarely, and pretty much entirely at restaurants, but I'm still contributing to this suffering. I'm going to try to stop altogether, and also to try to make sure my dairy products are from local, humane operations.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 12:33 PM

Kel, thank you for the reasonable response.

I will not respond in great detail but it is clear that inherent to the natural world is a great deal of suffering. This is one of the primary arguments against the classical conception of God.

Descartes went so far as to assert, whilst engaged in desperate theodicy, that animals were merely biological automatons (the suffering of humans was explained away by an appeal to freewill...). However, factory farms and mass production techniques produce billions of animals who suffer a great deal completely unnecessarily. It is not too much to ask for an elimination of these techniques and I believe there is indeed a moral imperative to eliminate these practices. I am not opposed to the consumption of meat from animals which have been humanely slaughtered (i.e. not in most modern slaughter houses) and who can satisfy basic needs (e.g. mothers are not separated from their calves). I would also not want to go to the extremes you highlighted although I am in fact sympathetic to such reasoning (for instance the work of David Benatar comes to some highly unusual conclusions but is not entirely unreasonable and appears perfectly logical - http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-Existence/dp/0199296421 -). The basic underlying premise of my thought is that it is better to reduce unnecessary suffering and that we do not need to eat meat produced in such facilities.

Posted by: Salamander | June 6, 2009 12:47 PM

Firstly, do you think it is less moral to kill a cat for pleasure than to slowly kill a cat if one was going to eat it afterwards? There would be more suffering with the latter choice than there would be with the former choice, but it would be hard to argue that killing for food is in any way less moral that killing for pleasure.

It depends whether it is necessary to eat the cat. If it is then perhaps it can be justified. If not there is no great difference beyond the fact that one person is doing it for purely sadistic reasons and the other person to satisfy some, as yet, unspecified hunger. Does the person who destroys the cat choose to kill it so slowly because clearly the initial act by the sadist is intentional. If not both acts are sadistic but there is some utility to the second person's sadism and hence the second is more immoral. Basically it is dependent on whether or not the utility of the second person's act is merely incidental to the act of sadism.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 12:55 PM

One more thing. No matter which side of the vegetarian debate we sit on, surely it could be agreed that we should be looking to treat other animals and especially the sentient ones as humanely as possible. To even consider meat-eaters in the same group as animal abusers seems like nothing more than a means of using an abhorred act to condemn a different behaviour. And that makes anyone who does it no better than PETA.

Posted by: SC, OM | June 6, 2009 1:10 PM

Secondly, there are billions of people who are starving around the world - those who have barely enough food to survive. Surely the net suffering of our own species outweighs the net suffering of our livestock - after all, we have a higher capacity to suffer.

And people feeding themselves directly from plants, as Knockgoats pointed out repeatedly on the earlier thread, both requires far less energy and creates far less (none, if done right) environmental degradation.* The fact that there are starving and malnourished people is no argument for meat consumption (especially our own).

One more thing. No matter which side of the vegetarian debate we sit on, surely it could be agreed that we should be looking to treat other animals and especially the sentient ones as humanely as possible.

And you're looking to do this through purchasing the meat produced via a system that doesn't treat them humanely? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

As I noted last night on the other thread, this isn't - or shouldn't be, at least for the moment - a vegetarian debate. Salamander made note of this as well. It's a discussion of the existing system of meat production and the suffering it entails.

To even consider meat-eaters in the same group as animal abusers seems like nothing more than a means of using an abhorred act to condemn a different behaviour. And that makes anyone who does it no better than PETA.

I really don't see how anyone can read about the lives of animals on factory farms and not see how participating in this system is contributing to their suffering. I simply don't.

*Yes, I also oppose industrial agriculture.

Posted by: Max | June 6, 2009 1:16 PM

Salamander, where did I use the naturalistic fallacy?

Naturalistic fallacy is the fallacy that states that no matter how comprehensively one can show that something is true, it never follows that it ought to be true, yes?

So are you saying that, in saying we are omnivores, and therefore it is true that we eat meat, I am employing the N.F. in saying that ergo its OK to eat meat? What?!

OK, lions are carnivores. Therefore, it is OK for lions to eat gazelles. Oh, shit! NATURALISTIC FALLACY!

Whatever

Posted by: Badger3k | June 6, 2009 1:17 PM

Considering PETA's penchant for sexism and sensationalism, expect to see ads where they compare the kitten to a naked woman in an oven, or maybe even go Godwin. PETA is not quite as sick as these sad fekkers, but their actions, and their support, both implicit and explicit, of animal "rights" terrorists put them in similar territory.

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 1:23 PM

And you're looking to do this through purchasing the meat produced via a system that doesn't treat them humanely? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Or we can look towards taking small steps at a time that work towards eliminating animal suffering, buying free-range eggs as opposed to buying eggs from caged animals, getting the government to pass regulation so that animals have to be treated to a particular minimum standard, etc. Like I said, Kangaroos have to be killed with a headshot in order to sell the meat. Does this mean I can eat a roo steak tomorrow without being considered an animal abuser?

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 1:34 PM

And you're looking to do this through purchasing the meat produced via a system that doesn't treat them humanely?

THEY AREN'T HUMANS!
Any appeals to "treat them humanely" are attempts to appease our own delicate sensibilities, not theirs.
Personally, I would prefer if they died with a minimum of fear and pain (yes, I do have empathy), but comparing Cheyenne Cherry with everyone that enjoys a steak every now and then is just wrong (on so many levels).

Posted by: SC, OM | June 6, 2009 1:40 PM

And maybe we should shut down all factories because they are polluting our atmosphere, after all, a lot of it is unnecessary. And stop cars running and planes flying, oil is immoral and bad for the environment.

Fucking ridiculous. A lot of it is fucking unnecessary, and our consumption patterns based on an absurd notion of "growth" that are destroying the planet and poisoning people and other animals in the present and future are morally questionable and we should change them. But what we're talking about here, now, is a specific industry - a system of food production that is not only an energy drain and environmental disaster but causes suffering on a massive scale. There are other ways we can produce and consume food, and changes are urgently required.

Or

Therre's no "or" here. These aren't mutually exclusive.

we can look towards taking small steps at a time that work towards eliminating animal suffering, buying free-range eggs as opposed to buying eggs from caged animals, getting the government to pass regulation so that animals have to be treated to a particular minimum standard, etc.

Of course. But in the meantime by all means we should continue to eat the animals that have suffered in this system and mock people who draw attention to this suffering, even though we have alternatives. Because we want to.

Fuck it. I knew I shouldn't be commenting on a weekend - I just get annoyed. I'm outta here.

[By the way, I've recommended Vandana Shiva's works in the past, and Soil Not Oil seems particularly relevant here.]

Posted by: SC, OM | June 6, 2009 1:57 PM

Completely agree there, but that wasn't my argument.

I'm not following at all, but I really don't care at this point.

THEY AREN'T HUMANS!

Is English not your first language? Do you know what "humane" means? Ever heard of the Humane Society?

Any appeals to "treat them humanely" are attempts to appease our own delicate sensibilities, not theirs.

WTF? If you believe this, then you should have no problem with what was done to the kitten. Have you read what I linked to above? A kitten can suffer but not a cow or a pig?

Personally, I would prefer if they died with a minimum of fear and pain (yes, I do have empathy),

I've seen little evidence of it.

but comparing Cheyenne Cherry with everyone that enjoys a steak every now and then is just wrong (on so many levels).

The point, which you continue to miss, is that it seems hypocritical to condemn suffering inflicted on an animal while ignoring the huge amount of suffering - their lives are miserable - caused by the meat industry which any of us who eat its products promote.

buying free-range eggs as opposed to buying eggs from caged animals

Well, you might wat to read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma about what "free range" often means in practice, but I find it curious that you are willing to change your consumption patterns in the case of eggs but not meat.

OK, now I'm really going.

Posted by: Nominal Egg | June 6, 2009 2:05 PM

SC, OM, I have far too much respect for you to argue with you about this.
I'll just accept my own inability to articulate my opinions with the appropriate eloquence, and go away.

Can we get back to creotard bashing soon, PZ?

Posted by: Kel | June 6, 2009 2:19 PM

Of course. But in the meantime by all means we should continue to eat the animals that have suffered in this system and mock people who draw attention to this suffering, even though we have alternatives. Because we want to.

But when push comes to shove, here's what I really think. Call someone immoral for doing a particular practice and they'll resent you for doing so. If the sentiment is that eating meat is the equivalent to being a Nazi, then those echoing the sentiment are fucked in the head (looking at you PETA) and it's just going to put people offside. And honestly, this whole argument just makes me think of this:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=sponsor

Posted by: Callie | June 6, 2009 2:26 PM

That sick disgusting excuse for a human being who tossed a defenseless kitten into an oven has the heart of a serial killer. People like that need to be punished the same way they have willfully caused harm. How would she like to be tossed into an oven and roasted to death?

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 6, 2009 2:52 PM

Furthermore, the livestock we eat now live in relative comfort. - Kel

That is true of those which have the opportunity to exercise their natural behaviours. These are of course species-specific, but in all cases would include freedom of movement, absence of crowding, something close to their natural diet and means of getting that diet (e.g. pigs need to root), and for breeding female mammals, appropriate conditions to bear and nurse their young. The vast majority of farmed poultry and pigs, and many cattle, do not have this opportunity. Really, there's no excuse for not knowing this, and then pontificating about how good they have it.

Posted by: Carlie | June 6, 2009 3:07 PM

I really don't have anything new to add to what's being said, just throwing in my opinion on it.

People eat meat. Domesticated animals have been bred to need people. This is ok.

However, factory farms are incredibly immoral.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't eat meat at all, but that meat should be produced more humanely. That doesn't mean it's not better for everyone to cut down on how much meat they eat, because it is.

Cruelty to animals is in a completely different ballpark, and trying to force the issues of factory farming on the back of a scorched dead kitten is its own kind of immoral.

That girl has a problem. I don't know if it's a diagnosable disorder, but at the least she doesn't understand how to live in society or have any empathy.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | June 6, 2009 3:15 PM

J-Ball #479

If God hadn't meant for man to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat.

Do you usually give bumper sticker responses to an involved, complicated, multifaceted question?

Posted by: uncle frogy | June 6, 2009 3:24 PM

that it was an appalling act including the vandalism of the apartment but death and torture for her are no different.
For someone to act like that shows how poorly they have been treated already to "think" that was just a prank. Nor do we know what was the previous relationship between them was.
How can a we jump to judgment with so little information?

She is not a melodrama villain who we can cheer and laugh when the hero destroys them in the most violent manner these are real live people not unlike ourselves.

reason and skepticism?

Posted by: MikeG | June 6, 2009 3:32 PM

Something like this:
http://www.eatwild.com/products/florida.html
For the grass-fed, hopefully well-treated cattle.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | June 6, 2009 3:42 PM

Mike, you can start here

Posted by: MikeG | June 6, 2009 3:50 PM

Perfect, Jadehawk. Thanks.

Posted by: dreikin | June 6, 2009 3:56 PM

@MikeG:

Greener Choices Eco-Labels Center (Info on the usefulness of many labels)
URL: greenerchoices.org/eco-labels/
Seafood Watch (Site showing what seafood is best to eat)
URL: www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx

Also check out the socimages website where I got those from, and which has other useful posts like:
"What does 'organic' look like?"
URL: contexts.org/socimages/2009/03/10/what-does-organic-look-like/
"Who owns organic brands?"
URL: contexts.org/socimages/2009/03/18/who-owns-organic-brands/
"Interactive map of US factory farms"
URL: contexts.org/socimages/2009/04/10/interactive-map-of-us-factory-farms/

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 6, 2009 4:18 PM

Bring back flogging! Ten lashes in the public square should make her think twice about doing it again. - monado@483,

Such vengeful stupidity is almost as depressing as the original act of cruelty. I'd bet a large amount this girl was beaten regularly as a child - what better way to teach someone that inflicting physical agony on weaker creatures is the way to show your strength? Certainly she should be punished, unless she is shown to be incapable of understanding the consequences of what she did, which seems unlikely, but by some degree of deprivation of liberty; and this should be accompanied by attempted rehabilitation.

Posted by: Don't Panic | June 6, 2009 4:36 PM

Thank you Knockgoats for your injection of calm rationality. That was what I was getting at -- this desire for cruel vengeance is just, ah, can I say it, "beastly". Though the one I responded to (with the desire for someone to be horribly burned, but alive in agony) was much worse than a mere flogging. Now some will say that the desire for a flogging is credible, while the burned alive desire was simply venting. But I don't see that in Sami@293 -- I really do think they meant it. And I found that a heartbreaking absence of empathy.

Posted by: Azkyroth | June 6, 2009 4:46 PM

It's not saying that they don't understand the consequences when looked at in a calm, rational state of mind. It's that they're not in that state of mind. Poor impulse control coupled up with not actually thinking about consequences.

Find me a single 17 year old anywhere on the planet who is not suffering from a delusional disorder, can get themselves dressed, and is unaware that putting a kitten in an oven and turning it on will kill it slowly and horribly.

Posted by: SC, OM | June 6, 2009 4:49 PM

Not to overwhelm anyone with information, but several potentially useful links are compiled here:

http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Resources2.html

Posted by: lance | June 6, 2009 5:24 PM

This was such a senseless act. Why waste a perfect specimen for animal testing? That feline could have been tortured for months.

Posted by: Ichthyic | June 6, 2009 6:04 PM

Why is it "moral" to eat something less "organized" than oneself?

of course, that doesn't even commonly apply.

coelenterates are "simpler" than fish, but they do, in fact, eat them.

bacteria eat YOU too, albeit a bit on the slow side usually.

Posted by: Ichthyic | June 6, 2009 6:23 PM

Wish people would get as irate about the massive abortions of human beings

wish people would stop hijacking this thread with irrelevant bullshit.

Posted by: jsoutofbiblepgs | June 6, 2009 6:44 PM

I wish you hadn't posted this. I was already in a fragile emotional state when I read this, and then I laid down and cried for an hour, and I don't think I have recovered yet (1 day later.)

Posted by: Notagod | June 6, 2009 7:17 PM

The christian god idea is the greatest abortionist of them all and christians worship it. I wish christians would apply their misconceptions consistently at least. Susan probably doesn't give a second thought to her abortion of human eggs.

Posted by: Stanton | June 6, 2009 7:27 PM

No one thinks eating meat is equivilent to being a Nazi, just that both are immoral.

Posted by: Wolfhound | June 6, 2009 7:30 PM

Ah, Susan the Pro-forced-maternity fuckhead arrived as if on cue to spout her idiocy, just as I had asked about in post #475. Goodness, these wingnuts are so predictable.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 6, 2009 7:36 PM

Insane. Certifiably insane. Howling mad, just like Dennis Markuze. Dangerous madwoman. Should have got some professional help long ago, if such help exists – comment 261 suggests it does.

However much I laughed at comment 293, it is part of a problem (...though not the same problem), not of any solution.

===========================================================

Of course, I've pulled the legs off my share of bugs of various kinds.

"Of course"???

How long did it take you to figure out they're alive?

Did you sometimes walk along a hedge and half-consciously rip off leaves just so your hands had something to do? Keeps shocking me.

Of course, yesterday I had to yank the head off a blackbird.

?

And these are just guinea pigs, generally considered a much lower form of animal than felines.

Fuck "lower" and the horse it rode in on. Being rodents, the guinea pigs are more closely related to us than the cats and carnivorans in general are.

It wasn't in the name of science this time, so that makes it wrong, eh? In your lab you shamelessly sever spinal cords of fish just to see what happens. How is this any different than putting a cat in an oven?

Hey, look, an argument from ignorance!

Two fairly big differences:

• PZ does it under anesthesia. He uses a rather crude anesthetic as far as I understand, one that is probably not painless to administer, but still.
• We already know what happens: the zebrafish survive the procedure, and the spinal cord heals. That's the very reason for doing it: not "to see what happens", but how it happens.

I'm not sure h