The Unlearning Of Empathy
We have a friend who has 27 cats and a special account at the fish market and the sand market and that’s who my daughter wants to be when she grows up. She wants to start something called a ‘cat farm’ which I’ve told her is not a thing, and also not desirable. She will adopt any cat she sees and now she’s adopted a pregnant cat who has had kittens in our neighborhood. So now I have four (more) cats. At least they stay next door, with the chickens.
Yesterday one of these kittens — little Lyro, AKA Scoundrel — had some sort of eye infection and my daughter started bawling and yelling at the chickens for pecking him (they didn’t). To me, this is another annoyance, but for her, it’s very emotional. She really feels for the kitten. She has a deep sense of empathy. Children are born this way but, as adults, we’re educated out of it.
This morning I chased the little bastard around to apply eye drops and then refreshed the cats’ water. Every time I turn a tap I think about Gaza, where the taps have been turned off, on purpose. I think of that sniveling Keir Starmer saying ‘’Israel’ has the right to defend herself’ by cutting off food and water to an entire human population. Something we wouldn’t even do to street cats. What a world we live in.
