admittedly complex topic..

There IS intelligence amidst the affluenza suffering narcissists of my environs! (lately)
Really, Thanks for yan counter-example -just now- to brute homo-sap ignorance and cruelty
-- which lately I am seeing much-too much of.

See ... was just in a lengthy phone confab with 'John' in San Diego area.
He rescues cats abandoned amidst the now epidemic of foreclosed houses and McMansions.
Yes, some.. just leave the animals behind; some, even: locked inside. Sans food/sans Anything.
Alzheimers? utter Me-Me-Me indifference to former-PETS?? And in the case at hand: a 2-strikes ex-con ...
who actively put motor oil in food left by others for the now 'strays'.
[Small Cosmic Humour comeuppance: that churl was subsequently ousted from his nearby digs, too.]

He, I (and hopefully other callers on the network, next) are trying to find a 'forever home' for the topic-cat, Mr. No Name -- with pellet gun wounds from aforementioned beast-man.
He has spent $$ and many weeks nursing back to almost-health this affectionate/grateful animal -- but he + wife have several others vying for his limited space, etc.

Yeah.. it may seem like shoveling shit against-the-tide, as I too imagined these matters. Once.
But I also have a yellow cat inhabiting garage indefinitely. Her fear is palpable, even towards me, though she momentarily relents to be briefly touched -- at food time.
This is her normal/quite-sane response to a bi-ped after All That Experience of certain ones. In time.. she will be able to trust again.
(In opinion/experience of person who trapped her, way-out in barren territory -- as she seeks regularly to find her own yellow tabby:
actually cat-napped by a disturbed nearby tenant! For pure spite. [Too long a digression, that.])

She 'places' the ones found, but not Hers -- surprisingly often, 7/10: with the people who answered her posted flyers re her own missing tabby.
Once they have seen what the animal went through and how it has responded to kindness
-- they make room; most end up as indoor or in/outdoor cats, but part of their family.

I'm hooked in this counter-game, I see by now. There are NO Red- Blue-state cats; they are guileless while being also independent creatures.
I deem each small victory -- a particular One: over the Murican tribes We Have Created of feral teens, so disconnected from Life that various of them have:

put a cat in an oven,
put a cat in a washing machine,
poured/lit some solvent over a kitten in a transporter (left briefly outside by a door.)
[That one thrives today, sans tail, multiple skin grafts -- done gratis by a local surgeon. I've seen the before/after pics on her wall.]

..Beats cursing the ugly darkness which has descended over the Affluenza-victims,
rotting their any-sense of connection to a creature other than Me-Me-Me.
Aside: as others report, it seems that the common-denominator of those most involved in these 'projects' is:
Most are 'poor-in-$$', yet they willingly spend, one rescue at a time.

Hmmm, all of us refugees from that Group -W Bench, after all?


Carrion