Cats

First, let me state clearly that I don't hate cats. To the discredit of accepted either/or wisdom, I like them as much as I like dogs. I'm not keen on owning either, primarily because I really, really dislike pet hair all over the house. But there's no dislike for the animals themselves.

There's this commercial. It makes us laugh every time we see it, which is fairly regularly. It starts out showing sad pictures of various lonely cats with the voice over question, "Could you kill this cat?" If cats made puppy-dog faces, these cats would. Then it quotes some statistic about the number of stray cats killed in some given amount of time. Then it says--and I quote, "Killing doesn't reduce the population. Spaying or neutering does." And it ends with some information about getting your cat "fixed."

Now, don't get me wrong. If you can't deal with kittens or don't want to, the responsible thing to do is to spay or neuter your pet. But seriously--killing doesn't reduce the population??? Even if there are 25,000 stray cats and only one is killed, hasn't the population been reduced to 24,999? Or is that an increase in cat math? I'm fairly certain that killing anything reduces the population of that species by at least one--and while spaying or neutering may very well reduce the future population of said species, it does not reduce the current population one whit.

It's just a great advertisement. The announcer is so serious and sad and so obviously working hard to create a massive guilt trip for the unsuspecting viewer--but it all falls to pieces with "killing doesn't reduce the population."


Please excuse my off-beat sense of humor.