Every time we have a holiday I can't help but think of the animals in the shelters. Millions of dogs and cats, the product of overpopulation, live in cages for months before adoption or euthanasia. During that time they sit, walk, jump and sleep on cold hard floors. Most of them are never walked out of the cage or given a pet or kind word by other than the overworked staff members. If one begins to bark, or whine, or cry others join in until the entire shelter is a cacophony of unbearable noise; a sound that would make the local asylum seem calm in comparison.
In a country that sits around a table and shovels mounds of food into it's collective gullet and talks about family and love and how grateful and fortunate and smart we all are, it's savage and completely inhuman that we allow this to take place because we won't teach responsibility or hold each other responsible.
The animals that we don't neuter or spay continue to breed and create new life that continues this chain of pitiful creatures doomed to be locked up and then killed. And we continue to sit around tables filled with food and congratulate ourselves on what a fine species we are.
This is what I think about when I sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with my family.
