A Pug Loves Me

I have always had a problem with animal abuse ever since my earliest days. I remember being young and naive and thinking there was no suffering in the world. Sometime in grade school I remember being shocked in disbelief at the first time they taught us about the Holocaust (using visual slides). I thought: “this can’t be true, how could this happen?” Well, that was my first lesson in “brace yourself kiddo, it’s going to be a bumpy ride”. One day, we had library day in school and when the teacher said we could go pick out our book, the other girls were running to pick out “Are you there God? it’s me, Margaret”. But I took a book called “The Silver Fox”. I had noticed and liked it because of the cover. I showed a beautiful dark blue fox with silver highlights. When I started reading it though I was horrified to learn that in the story the fox was trapped in a fur trap for the whole duration of the book. I thought: “how could this be allowed? why would animals be tortured like this just for a fur coat?” I also didn’t understand why other people didn’t feel the same outrage as I did.

The way I envision the movie about my life is: there’s a frail, little, old lady who walks slowly up to an ATM machine at night. There are a few young ne’er-do-wells hanging out there. She is standing near them and she starts looking in her purse. They think she is looking for her wallet. But she pulls out a semi-automatic pistol and raises it towards the group. She starts blasting away. One of them is mortally wounded. The rest scatter away. Then the movie flashes back to the recreation of my writings. The thug she shot is, of course, someone who abused an animal and she tracked him down and killed him.

Animals were put on this earth as fourth class citizens, with no rights, no respect, and no expectations of living a long happy pain free life. Most peoples’ view is that we shouldn’t worry about animals because people are suffering and we should take care of them first. Does that sound like an attainable goal? I have a suggestion, how about we all adapt the mind frame: “no people OR animals should ever be abused.”

My second dog was a pug that my husband bought from a pet store when he was carousing on Second Avenue in the city. My choice wasn’t to buy but to adopt. But he didn’t know better. We had agreed that we wouldn’t be acquiring another pet with our current dog, Petey, because we thought he wouldn’t welcome them. But one morning, while I was still asleep in bed, Andy came home and woke me up. He opened his leather jacket to show me something and then took out and dropped a small, bundle of furry enthusiasm onto the bed. He came over to me excitedly, non stop energy, wagging his little stump of a tail. I was at once floored that he did it and also secretly relieved. From then on, this little creature became my shadow, worshiping the ground I walk on – literally – he would watch where my feet were going from under tables and chairs. His eyes would follow my every move. The reason was that I showered him with the love and care that he needed. He knew that I had loved him unconditionally and he was confident in the fact he would never feel hurt from me. He lived to the ripe old age for a purebred dog, of 15. Then a tumor paralyzed his back legs and I had to do the unthinkable. His ashes are in my bedroom on my nightstand. He was my second angel on earth, too good for this world. His name was Rocky.

I wrote on a petition from ARS to stop bullfighting: “It is very discouraging to see that the country of Spain still refuses to join other civilized nations by their refusal to see, recognize and take necessary prohibitive measures against such a cruel, barbaric and revolting so-called “sport”.” I posted this link on Facebook. It received three Likes and they were from my sister, Oscar who always likes and comments on everything I post, and Beth who just started for the same reason. The animal posts that I make don’t get very much attention. Even the known animal loving friends that I have don’t comment. It is something to feel shame about. When I first started my new Facebook profile as an animal rights activist, I changed my name, my image (dyed and cut my hair) and deleted my old profile.

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Many things plunge me into a depression when it pertains to animals. I instinctively blocked from my mind many truths because of the sadness. It didn’t fully dawn on me that dogs are dependent on their owners to be, among other things, properly house trained. When I was young I used to think “as long as I am taking care of my dog well, that’s all that matters”. But one day the dreadful realization hit me that it does indeed matter because there are dogs out there who, unlike mine, do not have owners that care – some of these owners are fat, stupid, lazy thugs who live in the projects, and they got their pit bulls for their image because they want to look tough. When their dog wants to go to the bathroom, they are ignored because these thugs do not know or care about the signs a dog does to let you know they want to go out. Instead of properly housebreaking them, the useless lumps of human skin just lie around and wait until the dog goes on the floor. Then they beat them, thinking that the dog will learn. That is not the message the dog is getting though – instead of “you can’t go in the house”, it is being interpreted as “you can’t go”, anywhere, ever – period.” I have seen this with my neighbor. Grace’s old boyfriend used to do that to their little dog. The dog developed such a complex that every time she would see him coming she would automatically pee on the bed, and that would anger him so he would in response, yell at the dog and so on and so forth. This vicious cycle occurs in households so often. These poor dogs all over the country are just sitting there in their empty apartments, having to go so bad but trying to hold it in because they know they will get beat if they go in the house.

These poor dogs do not understand why they’re suddenly being hit for relieving themselves. They must be shown how to go properly, and that is not an easy process. It requires weeks of constant dedication on the part of the owners. Newspaper training is the best and most effective method. The puppy must be confined to an area with newspapers only. Eventually the papers are decreased until there’s only one left. If the puppy goes outside of the perimeter of the newspaper it must be gently reprimanded at the spot where it goes. The next step is to start taking it out on walks. It is ideal to go out first thing in the morning before they relieve themselves. That requires jumping out of bed in pajamas and running out. Also the soiled paper must be taken out and placed on the ground. The puppy should be placed on it. At first it will not understand, but after a few days it will start going outside and then it must be immediately rewarded. Throughout this process there must be someone home at all times to observe the puppy’s behavior. Every time it goes on the paper it should be rewarded. This is a fool proof method which takes time and patience. But some people cannot or refuse to do it the right way because they are either too stupid or lazy or they work full time. You cannot work while housebreaking a dog.

Another horrible realization hit me when we acquired our new pigeon, Peep. She was found by Roseanne and Maria. She was a fledgling like Boyd was. In her case, Ted was the one that did the primary care and feeding of her, so she imprinted on him. So the way Boyd was with me is the way Peep was with Ted. I realized this when we took over care of Peep. When I go to feed her, she aggressively bites my hand the way that Whitey used to. This made me realize that Whitey was in the same position. He was raised by someone else. I was told he was raised by someone and then given to a pet store. So Whitey and the millions of other pigeons who are born in captivity are torn away from their “parents”. Boyd was one of the lucky ones. He was able to bond with the person who weaned him for the rest of his life.

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Being an animal lover in this world is very lonely and frustrating. You are constantly ridiculed and belittled. You are in the minority and when you speak up in company you are looked at as a weirdo. For some people this is not a problem. But for those, like me, who already have a raging, low self esteem problem, it presents a very interesting paradoxical dilemma. Normally you wouldn’t speak up, but your passion for the well being of animals and your refusal to sit back and let them suffer forces you into action. I am often the “go-to” animal sympathizer in my group. A typical example was at the comedy show last night. A comedian was waxing on in an anti-animal riff (which happens quite often in the comedy show) and when he referred to animal lovers as “white women”, all of my friends, who were already laughing, leaned over and looked at me, with looks of “yeah, that’s you !” Ha ha ha. Ha ha haaaaaaaa.

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When I think of the millions of small animals: hamsters, turtles, goldfish, birds, etc., that don’t qualify as “normal pets” – but rather temporary, disposable sources of amusement, most of the time for children who don’t yet fully understand the value of life – it hurts me deeply. These animals were never afforded a chance to live a happy life, having been born to suffer. Neglected, they live in cramped, overcrowded cages, most of the time without food or water. Without proper terrain, water levels, perch placement, and other housing necessities. They suffer in silence, their cries only heard by me. If I could, I would abolish all of these animals from the face of the earth.

8/2/14 – Linda was over to tend to my broken ankle. I showed her something on my phone that I posted on a Youtube video of someone beating their dog. After she read it, she exclaimed: “did you hear that someone threw their pit bull out of their car on the highway?” Andy who was sitting nearby, heard it. I had whispered my thing to her because I didn’t want him to hear. She said the dog was rescued and being treated. But the damage was already done. I asked if they caught the person who did it. She said she didn’t know. Andy said: “I hope they do”. In the twilight of my husband’s life, I want to protect and shield him from the horrors of this world as much as possible. I prefer for him not to have any more reasons to be depressed. And as for me, I had a dream that night that I was there when that incident occurred and I chased after the perpetrator with my car, dialing 911 while doing so. The cops were able to cut him off and they were arresting him. I tried to run up on him and started calling him all sorts of superlatives: “You think you’re so tough? How tough are you now, punk? I hope you go to jail and get raped repeatedly and beaten to within an inch of your life.” The cops were trying to hold me back but I didn’t care. It was a nice dream of retributory closure. But then I woke up and realized that the evil still stalked the earth.

8/6/14 – My cat is sleeping with me. He is happy and content. He knows not of financial problems or a messy house. Why can’t everyone see things from their perspective?

9/21/14 – Andy keeps hearing about animal abuse cases in the news. It’s enough that it depresses and angers me, he doesn’t need that right now – or ever – he is just as sensitive as I am, perhaps even more so. It hurts me to know that it hurts him to know that they hurt. I try to shield him from these things. Unbeknownst to him, I take his phone and I block his Facebook from things. Because when he sees something in his newsfeed he turns and looks at me with that childlike, helpless look of disbelief and I can’t stand it, knowing there’s nothing I can do to make it better. It kills me inside.

My husband and I are avid football watchers. I look forward to Sunday and enjoy watching the games. The teams I am most interested in are Cowboys, Giants and Jets, in that order. The Jets have acquired Michael Vick on their team. I must now watch the game and try to suppress my feelings about it – only because my husband is watching it. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t watch any more Jets games. And I know it bothers him too but none of us want to verbally acknowledge it. In his condition, I don’t know how much of it he remembers and I don’t want to take the chance of reminding him of another thing that will further add to his depression. Animal abuse has now affected my favorite Sunday pastime.

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My favorite animal rights quotes are: “A person is only as strong as their weakest link. ‘people ask me: “why do you concern yourself with animal suffering when there are so many people that suffer? I reply with: I’m working at the root’. Until one has regard for the welfare of the lesser beings they cannot fully value another human being. That’s why serial killers start by abusing animals.”

Abraham Lincoln: “I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”

Leonardo Davinci: “The day will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”

Albert Schweitzer: until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.

Tom Regan: “To be for animals is not to be against humanity. To require others to treat animals justly, as their rights require, is not to ask for anything more nor less in their case than in the case of any human to whom just treatment is due. The animal rights movement is a part of, not opposed to, the human rights movement. Attempts to dismiss it as anti human are mere rhetoric.”

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I am looking at my parakeet, Diane and thinking “I am not looking forward to the day when I will be staring at the tiny, fragile, remains of a previously vivacious, frenetic, boisterous, larger than life creature.”

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I wonder where they go on these frigid days.

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It really makes me sad that no one else knows or cares that you have to take the food cup and blow out the empty hulls so that the regular seeds are exposed. How many parakeets are sitting in their cage right now with a cup full of hulls that the owner thinks are actual seeds and the bird is starving? Or that ridiculous insert of bars above the cage floor that doesn’t allow the bird to forage on the bottom of the cage. Birds are natural scavengers and enjoy picking things up off the ground. Not to mention if their cups of food are empty, they see food below the bars and are unable to get to it. What kind of torture it must be.

It bothers me when cleaning my litter boxes that everyone isn’t as meticulous as I am about scooping up the tiny pieces that fall through the spaces of the scooper. I sit there and painstakingly pick them up with the corner of the scooper little by little until my back starts killing me because I’m crouching for a very long time. I think it is necessary to do this because cats can smell it and it makes them not want to use it the box. Also, the convention is that you must have one extra litter box than the amount of cats you have because cats like to roam and they like to go in different places. How many people are doing that?

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One of my birds is being bullied by the rest. I can’t take him out of the cage right now because I have to find him a partner so I can separate them and place them together in another cage. But in the meantime I’m sitting here next to the cage reading and holding a pool cue stick and whenever one of the other birds comes and chases him away I use the pool stick to chase them away. I’m just disciplining my birds. How many people care enough to do this? Or even realize this is even occurring in their cage. The amazing thing is this little bird, with a brain the size of a caper, knows that I’m protecting him.

These birds are amazingly similar to us. I just watched Diane get all jealous of Andy. Refresher: Diane is male, Andy is female and I’m unsure of Cam’s gender (refer to my “Things that only I know” document for color of budgies’ ceres). Now ordinarily, Diane will step out on Andy with Cam or Linda and even Joey and vice versa. Andy doesn’t care. But this time Diane was on a lower perch and Andy was on the top sitting across from Cam. Andy suddenly started serenading Cam. Immediately, as soon as it started, Diane jumped right up on the top perch next to Andy. She almost knocked over someone in her way – I don’t remember who! She then went after Cam but Cam vigorously fought back but Diane did not give up. She kept trying to chase Cam away. Unbelievable.

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Why are these little creatures allowed to be sold to the highest bidder in horrible pet stores? When some ordinary schmo can walk in and buy parakeets, turtles, hamsters, and other “disposable” pets just for the purposes of entertaining their children and then when the children get bored of these disposable pets they are ignored and either die of neglect or are deliberately killed. Why is this modern form of slavery legal?

2/28/15 – I logged on to my e-mail to check for any responses from the job ads I answered. I saw an e-mail from PETA and although I usually ignore them, this one had a subject line that I couldn’t ignore (editorial note: It is insanely difficult to ignore all of them but this one was even more troubling). It was about how in China they beat and kill dogs to make leather. My insides were now rumbling. I had planned on watching a few YouTube videos and go to bed. But now I cannot do anything enjoyable. All I can do is suffer by repeating the words that I read over and over in my head and trying not to imagine the torture and suffering they endured. I wonder why God has made me one of the sensitive animal lovers, especially one without any means of helping them in any way. All I can do is sit idly by and watch and die inside little by little.

3/1/15 – I need to take a Xanax in order to cope, but I it is too late in the day to take one or else I’ll sleep all day tomorrow. For what purpose? All I can do is wonder how these atrocities can be tolerated and how empty, shallow and self-absorbed people must be to not allow themselves to be inconvenienced by these matters. You animal haters don’t know how lucky you are to not stay awake all night, tormented by horrible thoughts. How nice it must be to not have any cares and to go about your day to day life with nary a thought of others’ abuse.

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Never mind my Lord – don’t help me – I want to suffer like they do.

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If there will be anything that will ultimately make me give in, it will be this. I don’t know how much longer I can tolerate the horrors of animal abuse. I am sure each and every incident I hear about takes a day from my life.

6/16/15. Whenever I think of specific incidents I ask myself “God, why?” I don’t know why I ask – I’ll never get an answer.

6/17/15. There was justice, little one. Rest in peace now. (random animal abuse story)

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Lying in bed right now unable to sleep. I recently saw on Facebook a post from an organization that was asking for donations to help put a stop to an event called the Yulin dog meat festival. That wasn’t a typo. This horror has recently come into my awareness. It showed a picture of two helpless innocent dogs in a cage with blood on their snouts. The look on their faces will haunt me for the rest of my life. I cannot believe these things are happening. It is truly Hell on earth. I don’t know how to get this off my mind right now so that I can sleep. I know I need to sleep. But how can I turn over in a warm comfortable bed while those little angels are going through this at the same time? How can I? How can anyone? I feel I have failed them. I have done absolutely nothing to help them. I don’t understand how this doesn’t eat at anyone else’s sanity causing them to want to physically travel to this place and stop it. It doesn’t seem difficult- it just takes a few people to go stand in the way of the evil perpetrators and refuse to allow them to proceed. There are supposedly organizations like the one I mentioned that are trying to stop it. But why don’t they just do that? I should have tried to contact the motorcycle gang on Long Island who fights for animal rights and asked them to go with me. But I didn’t. I don’t have the money to travel. I have a husband I must care for. I have a cat I can’t abandon. These are the mental entanglements that are torturing me right now. Maybe writing them here will give me an iota of relief. Maybe this was God’s way of answering my prayers to help me not be preoccupied and let me sleep. How can this not outrage everyone? How can everyone not want to take a plane ride over there, wherever the fuck that Hell is, and start shooting people? Here come the chest pains. And I am on two antidepressants and an anti-anxiety medication.

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A new summer – a new fly. Looks just like the old fly.

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So the savages at the Yulin dog meat festival won out this year. Praying that next year the angels from this year will help to stop it.

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I had posted a petition on Facebook and I don’t think anyone signed it. What is the problem? What is the holdup? Is it that Facebook is not a forum for political activism? Well then what is? Why not sign? A lot of these people post pictures and gush about their dogs. I have serious questions about being able to love your own dog yet allow others to be tortured to death. These two mindsets are incongruent.

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Sunday, June 28th, 2015. A day of Hell. Where thousands of dogs – humans’ best and most loyal companions were reduced to nothing more than groceries – transported in filthy, cramped crates to a place where they were put out of their misery by being beaten, boiled and eaten. Do you hear their screams? Do you feel the terror they felt? I may be on the other side of the world, but I do. How is this anything other than Hell on earth? How are these savages who commit these atrocities allowed to roam the earth? Allowed to shop, live in houses, marry and have lives: this is a travesty of the senses. How on earth are these activists who went there to try and help able to restrain themselves from descending upon these cretins and employing primal attacks and screams upon them? If I was there I would definitely be either dead or in jail.

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Yet another night I go home in stunned silence, trying to make sense of it all. After sitting in a social situation with supposed friends, after hearing that one of them was an accomplice to a dog killing, I’m trying to reconcile this dreadful new development. What was I supposed to do? What am I supposed to think? I pretended not hear but I did hear. Do I ask the usual question of why? Are we outnumbered? We, the good people, the decent people, are we destined to suffer and accept these situations?

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I’m so tired of being ridiculed for my love of animals.

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We are all animals so essentially what we are doing is eating our own kind, just a different species. Why is this ok? Why are humans more entitled to live a life free of pain? Why aren’t cows entitled? Because some of our species are lazy minded, selfish and sociopathic. Most humans would rather feed their self- centered egos with something that tastes good because they have no mature sense of impulse control. Well, keep it up because you won’t live very long – if disease doesn’t end you, karma will. Did anyone see the Twilight Zone episode, The Box? By the same rule, for every animal we kill, the “human” to our “cow” kills one of us. As we mindlessly procreate, we are being “population controlled.”

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Random comments by me on social media:

So, [person’s name], what kind of life are you “choosing” to live? Once victims are involved, it ceases to be a choice. Which beliefs of ours don’t you agree with? Our belief to never inflict pain, suffering or death on another living, breathing ANIMAL just like ourselves? I think that’s a good belief to have, don’t you? Oh that’s right, misdirected pride is preventing you from confronting your guilt.

Vegans are brave individuals who find themselves in situations which they must make tough sacrifices. It takes a lot of inner faith and resolve to stand up in the face of adversity and fight for justice. Think back to the days when those who stood up and insisted the earth was not flat. Or the first pioneers of the women’s rights movement or the first abolitionists who risked their lives to free the slaves? The people here mocking vegans wouldn’t have the guts to speak up for the weak and innocent – they would rather hide in the crowds like the cowards they are.

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The letter that was on here was too polite. A letter like that would be effective if the intended recipient was a sane, rational, compassionate individual. It is clear that the makers of Canada goose materials are not those people, there have been countless protests against Canada Goose, there have been petitions, there have been letter campaigns, and other types of attempts to bring attention to the horror and cruelty that is inflicted on innocent beings by Canada Goose. And yet, the fact that it is still partaking in these actions is just proof the management of Canada Goose has no intentions to stop their evil actions. Therefore a polite letter would be ineffective. Would a polite letter have dissuaded Joseph Goebbels? or Hitler? Just like those monsters, the people at Canada Goose care only about their own selfish agendas. They care about profit above humanity. Monsters have no conscience, they go about their daily routines unaffected by their misdeeds, with an air of smugness about it.

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I’m sorry my cat, that I can’t make you happier.

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My Birds:
I currently have 19 birds and counting: (2 canaries have 4 eggs) never bought any of my birds – not one. It all started when Grace took three parakeets in from her next door neighbor/super. (I told her I don’t want birds but she doesn’t listen. They were appropriately named Grace, Linda and Diane. She used to say that Grace is the odd one out, always by herself. I used to tell her that three birds is an uneven number and she needs to get to another one. So she put the feelers out among her family. As a result, for her upcoming birthday, her son, Joey bought her one bird for her birthday and her boyfriend bought her two. That would have been an even number except one of the ones her boyfriend bought died during transport. The remaining two were named Joey and Cam. She now has five Birds. Eventually she got tired of them and since I had no birds at the time, I told her to give me the couple of the five. I still had my old cages lying around so I placed back in rotation the one that was a three level one made by Andy. In it I placed the couple, which was Diane and Linda. Linda had a problem with her feet and eventually she died, much to Diane’s dismay. It was heartbreaking – they were so in love. I wanted Grace to give me another bird but I have to plan this better. I decided I would get a big cage first and let her give me all of them at once but for now I told her to give me another bird. It came down to the two green ones, one of them being Grace and the other Cam. So she gave me Cam because she said that Joey protects Grace, so we figured they should be together as couple. When I put Cam in with Diane, Diane was excited to see Cam and he was trying to show her all of the spots like where the food is, etcetera. It was adorable.

Since I was going to have an aviary, I wanted to give more birds homes so I planned on going to a shelter to adopt one. I had felt bad that I stuck Diane with Cam, I didn’t want to be a matchmaker because out in the wild birds choose their own mates, so I thought, what if they really don’t like each other? So the first bird I wanted to get was a female parakeet to give Diane more options. I went on Craigslist and found a female that was available. Linda, Grace and I all hopped into the car and drove to Portland to pick up the new Linda. A nice, middle-aged couple were giving her away because her partner had died and they said she was lonely and quiet ever since. So I placed Linda in the living room in her own cage, so she can get acclimated while I was waiting for the aviary to get delivered. But now I had an uneven number of birds again so I had to get another one and I wanted another female. So this time Grace and I drove to Stoney Springs and I got Andy. So now I had the duplex cage with Diane and Cam, I had Linda in the living room and in the back room I had Andy in the cage she came in hanging from the ceiling. And my friend, Grace had finally relinquished Joey and Grace to me and they were in another cage.

The aviary cage eventually arrived and Grace came down and helped me put it together. I was so excited to put all six birds in it. As soon as I did, Diane made a beeline for Andy. They became a loving, enduring couple. Diane was very much in love with Andy. They became the dominant couple of the aviary ecosystem – they bossed everyone else around. Linda pretty much kept to herself and hung around near her toy that I moved in with her. At some point I decided to find out for sure what the sexes of the birds were. I knew for sure that Diane and Grace were males. I plucked their feathers and sent them out to a lab for testing. The results confirmed that Joey was female, Linda was male and Andy was female. The test for Cam was inconclusive due to the poor quality of the feather. But I am pretty sure that Cam is a female.

It continued this way until the tragedy. My human Andy was in the hospital – one of his many stays. I had gone to see him one night and afterwards I went to the diner to have some dinner. Upon returning home, I noticed to my horror Andy had escaped out of the Aviary through a space that I thought wasn’t big enough. I frantically looked for her throughout the house (this is written in one of my other writings.) Eventually I found her and I placed her back in the aviary. But she was already stricken – I don’t know if Garfield had gotten to her, but slowly after that day she developed a feather loss condition and constantly bit herself. She eventually died a few months later. I did everything in my power to prevent it because I knew how much in love she and Diane were and I knew Diane would be devastated to lose another partner. So now I am left with Diane, Cam, Joey, Grace and Linda. It continued like that for a while but Diane didn’t seem interested in either Cam or Joey, the other two females.

There was a death knell in the Aviary after that, every time I looked at it I fell into a mini depression. The loss of Andy was too much to bear. And now this was a second partner that Diane has loved and lost. After a while, I decided to try again to find a mate for Diane. This time, human Linda and I took a six-hour trip to Seattle to adopt a white female parakeet named Popcorn, which I promptly named Maria. A short time later, I traveled to Stoney Springs with Linda and Grace and we got two more females named Kathy and Rosa. But Diane didn’t seem interested at first, but eventually Linda settled on Maria and they became a couple. Then started a pattern that would become a tragedy of riches: every female that Diane and Linda got together with become pregnant. The first was Maria, she became sick one night and I didn’t know what was wrong so I brought her to the Animal Medical Center. They said it would cost $1,000 to do X-rays and then operation. We were in agreement that she was most likely egg bound. I made a decision that I would regret to this day – I left her there to be euthanized. I will never forgive myself for not doing everything I could to save her and bring her back to Linda. The same soon happened again with Rosa.

After Maria was gone, Linda began to go after Rosa but Rosa was already coupled up with Diane. Eventually Rosa became egg bound and died in the cage. Now Diane hooked up with Kathy and eventually Kathy became egg bound but this time I was determined to save her at any cost. I made an appointment and traveled to a vet on Jones Island. They were able to manually get the egg out and only charged me $500. As we drove, I would look down at her on the passenger seat and even though she was sore and swollen from the procedure, I felt a sense from her that she knew what had occurred and I was so happy. They had given me some post surgical medication that I had to administer myself: one was an antibiotic and another, a painkiller. The next day I tried to give her the antibiotic which was by syringe, and even though they had instructed me at the vet on how to do it, I inadvertently pressed the nozzle too hard and the medicine shot into her mouth too fast. She started choking and after a few agonizing minutes she died in my arms. I don’t know if this would have happened anyway, if she would have eventually recovered because she seemed weak on the bottom of the cage, but nonetheless I will always blame myself. Kathy was the last female partner choice for Diane. Now she and Linda are stuck with Cam and Joey. Slowly but surely though, luckily, they did pair off: Diane with Joey and Linda with Cam! Fast forward to the beginning of a new chapter in my life: the second big health scare.

Around summer of 2018, human Linda’s husband started acquiring birds from a friend who was breeding them. His object was to acquire a friendly bird. But the ones he was getting weren’t friendly. So I started taking them from him and he would get more in the hopes of getting a friendly one. First, there were three canaries, two white zebra finches and four society finches. Since Society finches are sexually dimorphic, I couldn’t separate them. I was planning on observing their behavior in order to sex them and then separate the males from the females so they don’t reproduce. But I felt bad for them and put in nests so they can sleep more comfortably at night. That was a mistake because one day there were three eggs in the nest. Shortly after I started acquiring these birds I noticed that my breathing was getting worse, it was starting to feel like when I was working with the evil bastard. I immediately started looking for possibilities of mold somewhere around the house. I didn’t find any. Then I realized that the only difference in my life at that time was the arrival of the new birds. I did some research online and discovered that finches and canaries differ from the other birds that I had. I’ve always had cockatiels and parakeets my whole life, however, I had finches only briefly when I was living with my parents. It turns out finches and canaries have smoother feathers than the other birds and they produce a protein that is an allergen and affects people with asthma.

During that time I was not on any asthma medication, I had my asthma pretty much under control. But my breathing was getting so bad that I had to seek medical attention right away. One day it got so bad that I had an asthma attack at work. I was still working for David then and when I was wheezing at my desk and couldn’t talk, the girls alerted him and he came rushing out of his office with this look of strained concern on his face, which I now find to be weird considering how things turned out between us.

Things continued this way, I was having very frequent asthma attacks and the scary thing was that the albuterol pump was not as effective as it used to be. I finally saw my pulmonologist and he prescribed the maintenance pump, Advair. I was anxiously awaiting this, but to my consternation, it did not provide the relief I needed. I was now very concerned, why weren’t the medications that I had always been taking working anymore? I was in a state of fear and depression, and the physical symptoms were compounded by an ethical dilemma for me: I had gotten into an argument with my sister one day because she asked me: “so when am I giving up the birds?” I said I wasn’t going to and explained that these are my birds and I made a commitment to them. She replied as most conditioned humans would, whose mind’s eye is not opened: “but you need to think about your health!”. She kept insisting and while trying to reason with me, used the example: “what if I was allergic to something – wouldn’t you tell me to get rid of it?” I replied “you see, that’s the problem, you said allergic to “something”, my birds aren’t something- they are my children! If a mother was allergic to her baby, would she “get rid of it?” No, she would work with doctors to find a cure and a solution. And that is what I am planning to do. Now I do realize that in the end, it would not make any sense for me to pass away from an illness because others depend on me and they would suffer, so in order to save myself, if I see that nothing is working, then I will resort to finding the best homes for my finches and canaries. But until then I will not give up on them.

I have since discovered I have a type of asthma called eosinophilic asthma and that is why my medication is not working that well. I am currently waiting on approval from my insurance company for a medication that is administered by injection. This is now my last hope, but my doctor assures me that it will help me.

Female canary w/bald spot died 2/19/18

I acquired Peep for good when Ted died on 7/1/18

9/4/18: waiting for McDonald’s order of hash browns, calmly observing scene of people milling about, placing/taking/waiting for their poison.

7/6/19: I now usher in a whole new era of WTF? in regards to the animal rights arena. For the past two years or so, I have been involved in animal activism. The way it started was, Linda and I were at Easy Street one night to see Rager perform, and Leslie was there. She came over with a friend and introduced us. Her name was Arlene. The way we were situated was, Linda and I were sitting at the bar with me on the left and she on the right. Leslie was standing in front of Linda and Arlene was standing in front of me. At first, we were chatting about normal things and then somehow the conversation turned to animals. Leslie turned towards Arlene and with her hands pointing like a “here she is” motion. I asked Arlene, are you an animal lover? And she replied as are you kidding? So I offered to become friends on Facebook. I warned her (at the time not realizing how unnecessary this was), like I warn most people who I befriend that I post a lot of animal rights stuff and it may be offensive. She replied “oh no, that’s what I post all the time – if you go to my page, that’s mostly what you’ll see, with the exception of the recent ones which are Mets related because I was at the Mets game and I’m a huge fan. I asked her where she worked and she said at a law firm. I asked are you a legal secretary? She replied that she is a lawyer! I was a little taken aback due to how young and pretty she was. And I was also kind of wondering: “what is she doing hanging around with Leslie because Leslie isn’t really an animal person. But it turns out they were childhood friends. Anyway, as the night progressed, while waiting for the band to start, our food arrived that me Linda and I ordered. I told Arlene that I was a vegetarian and offered her some of my food, when she proceeded to tell me that she doesn’t eat that because it’s cruel. The dish I had ordered, I believe was a pasta with cream sauce of some kind, like a penne a la vodka. Arlene explained, while reaching into my plate and picking pieces up and tossing them around, that “this is cruel”, and “this is cruel”, and “it’s all cruel”. Linda was getting annoyed with her but she didn’t say anything. I, in the meantime, was wondering what Arlene was talking about – how could a vegetarian dish be cruel? There’s no meat in it! That was the first time I started researching veganism, and to my horror, Arlene was correct – the dairy industry is even more cruel than the meat industry! So from that moment on, I started transitioning to veganism. It took a while, because as one might imagine, it’s very difficult to avoid such a large swath of food from the whole food spectrum. And as with the first time that I tried to become a vegetarian 10 years ago – while I was working at the evil bastard’s, and I lost so much weight that I had to resume eating meat – I was afraid that I would start losing weight, but it never happened. So, slowly but surely, and with a few bumps along the road, I eventually succeeded.

One day I asked Arlene how I could become more involved in the animal rights movement. She asked me: “so, you want to get involved? There’s a lot of activism going on, Diane.” Then she proceeded to invite me to private Facebook groups that protested different issues. I think the first protest I attended was one against the carriage horses. I was supposed to go to a restaurant in the park where there was a top organizer from the Carriage Horse company being honored. I was so nervous traveling there, I didn’t know what to expect. When I arrived, after looking for the site for a while and getting lost, I saw around twenty people surrounded around the entrance of the restaurant. It was a high society kind of function in which they were honoring this guy and everyone was arriving via limos and walking to the entrance escorted by security to keep us away from them. The protesters were chanting things, and I wasn’t sure what they were saying, whether it was off the cuff remarks or practiced slogans. So I stayed quiet in the beginning. But it’s so weird because I started to get angry. And that anger prompted confidence in me and I started to yell things out! The man himself came out of the restaurant to smoke a cigarette. As he stood there, a few people started talking to him directly, and he was ignoring them. One of them said: “is that your response? Just a smirk like an asshole!?”

Eventually, the protest ended and the group, led by Arlene, wanted to take a group picture. As everyone was gathering their signs, (at that point I don’t remember if I had made my sign yet), I said thank you to Arlene for organizing this protest, and a guy near her, made a joke, he said something sarcastic like “yeah, we hate you, Arlene”. I didn’t take it as a joke and was looking at him funny. I got the impression that he didn’t like me. From then on, I saw him at various functions, his name is Kevin, he’s gay and wears all black with tattoos. I sent him a friend request shortly after that and he didn’t accept it. I waited a few months and then I deleted it.

Since then, I have attended various protests, ranging from the carriage horses, to pigeons used as entertainment at shows by supposed “artists”, fur at Canada Goose and in front of Paragon Sports which is a big supplier of Canada Goose products, and recently they started protesting at the owner of Paragon and I friended many animal rights people. I was naïve in the beginning, for example I had received an e-mail from PETA informing me of a “protest in my area”, which was the Canada Goose store. It was the first time I would attend that one for CG, and as I was walking from the train I started hearing loud yelling and drum beating. As I approached I saw that it was the protesters – they had megaphones and drums! They were so loud, I loved it – it was unlike the protests I had attended so far. But when I got home, I made a stupid post on Facebook – I posted that “PETA doesn’t mess around when they organize a protest” and proceeded to describe the above scenario with the noise and the drums. At the next protest I went to for carriage horses, one of the guys there asked me “why did you say it was a PETA protest?” I explained it was because I had received an e-mail from them letting me know, and he kind of looked up in the air, slightly nodding. It was then I realized what an idiot I was, I incorrectly assumed that PETA was in charge but I now know that they only alert their supporters where there are protests happening in the area. I was so mortified, but hope that a lot of people didn’t notice that post.

Through the past two years, I settled nicely into a groove and I became a respected member of the resistance. (or so I thought) Out of all my experiences in animal rights, my crowning achievement so far is, I would say, my testimony that I made at City Hall! I still can’t believe I did it. It all started a few months ago out of the blue. Suddenly one of the council members introduced a bill that would ban the sale of fur! This was extraordinary, no one saw it coming. The fur industry has been losing business for a while now with more and more people realizing the cruelty and not wearing fur and designers are stopping use of it, but there are still a lot of manufacturers around. So there was going to be a hearing scheduled at City Hall. I planned on going but the problem was that it was a workday, on a Wednesday. I have never taken off from work to attend a protest before, but this one I deemed too important to pass up. So I planned on taking the day off and attending. There was going to be a rally in front of City Hall from 11 o’clock and then the hearing would begin at 1:00 PM. There was even a surprise celebrity guest who ended up being Tim Gunn from project runway! The event invite on Facebook said that you can testify if you wanted. On a lark, I decided to write something just in case.

When I arrived that morning there were a lot of people there already so I stayed towards the back. I worried that I would not be called to testify if I was all the way in the back but through time, people would move around and I inched my way closer and closer to the front. But unbeknownst to me, they had already taken in a bunch of people. They said that they might take in more people later on as people emptied the chambers. So even though I was so upset, and a few times I contemplated leaving, I waited around. On the other side of the entrance were the people from the fur industry and it was very awkward because most of them were Greeks! That’s right – it is my people who are mostly the furriers! I knew this from my last job. One of the attorneys was Greek and he’s the one that used to work where I work now. Anyway he said his parents used to be furriers. And now at my current job, which consists mostly of Greek employees, one of the assistants said her parents were also furriers. So that day, even though I had to stand near the edge of the entrance, I was trying to hide my face from the other side because I was afraid someone would recognize me and consider me a traitor! Because Greeks are like that, they’re very elitist. So, at around 4 pm it started getting late. I was wearing high heels and my feet were killing me and I sat on the edge of the concrete gate to rest my feet but then my back would hurt so I would stand back up and back and forth and so on. At one point I took my shoes off and I was embarrassed because I had not gotten a pedicure. The atmosphere outside was now more subdued. There were a bunch of activists that were sitting near me, listening to the hearing streaming online on speaker.

As I was sitting there, I heard someone come and say “Ok, we’re taking five more people!” It was like a dream, it didn’t register at first. But I had to act quickly A girl who had been standing near me the whole time and knew I was waiting pointed down at me and said: “oh I think she’s waiting”. With that, I jumped up and yelled “YES ME”! In my haste to go, I almost abandoned my purse which was still laying on the ground, I had to go back and get it quickly before they changed their mind on me. So I squeezed by the police barriers behind another woman who was calling her friends to come. So three of them squeezed by and now all five of us were being led down the cobblestone path to City Hall! I had never been. One of the ladies remarked that she felt like we were going to see the wizard! As we were walking, the rest of the protesters outside the gate were yelling “go get them!” It was so surreal, I felt like maybe this was a mistake, what did I get myself into? I immediately had thoughts of regret. But I had my speech in my purse and I continued on. We were led to the main floor where we found seats up in front. I sat next to the same lady I was walking with. By that point the hearing had been going on for four hours already but they still had a lot of people left to testify. The place was filled to capacity with people on the animal rights side and people from the fur industry. I felt a surge of confidence and I entered my name on the card to be picked to testify. So that was it, there was no turning back at that point.

Another four hours later, they finally called me and I got up off my seat and started walking towards the table. The panel table consisted of five seats. There were four other people next to me sitting because it was four or five at a time. The way they did it was first they called a panel of pro-bill people (us) and then anti-bill people (furriers). Some of the testimony was very emotional, people were yelling and crying on both sides. The people who worked for the fur industry were using the reason that there would be massive job losses in order to sway the committee. So as I sat down in my chair, I noticed the person that was also called and sat directly on my right, was none other than — Kevin ! It was the typical DIANE thing, out of all the people to sit next to me that day it had to be him! I had not seen him for a long time, he had not been attending protests a lot. But he did post something on Facebook the night before, writing “as I prepare my speech for tomorrow I just wanted to point out a couple of things…” I did not know if he recognized me, or even knew me at all. But it certainly added to my already panicked sense. I tried to put that aside and when the person before me finished testifying, I had to reach over to the button on my microphone to turn it on and I don’t know how I didn’t collapse on the table from shaking so hard.

But somehow God spoke through me and I got through my testimony and people applauded including Kevin! To this day they have a video on the website for City Hall of the whole hearing including my testimony, but at the time of this writing I have not watched it, I am too scared. My sister watched it and said I was very, very good. We are planning to edit it and section out my portion only, so I can post it on Facebook, but her computer is not updated enough to do so – it is an eight hour long video. So now, we are waiting to see if this bill passes and if it does, fur will no longer be sold in stores or on runways. A lot of rappers will be very upset!

__________________________________

I have not made any good friends because, although they may be animal lovers, they are still people and I have always had a problem making friends with people. Even Arlene herself is not as close a friend as I had hoped she’d become. In the beginning, before Linda and I deleted our Facebook accounts, we were both her friends. Linda used to snoop on Arlene’s page and read her fights that she would get into with people over veganism. She would tell me that Arlene is one of those “angry vegans” who would confront and argue with people. And she’s right. Whereas Linda said that she would never be swayed by Arlene’s aggressive tactics and become a vegan, as far as people like Arlene were concerned, I always chose to agree with the message rather than the messenger, and I tried to convince Linda of that. After that, I submitted Linda to a few vegan Facebook groups and she encountered “nice, friendly vegans”, and she decided to give it a shot. As expected – it didn’t last too long – Linda is now under the mentorship of Elyse who turned her onto the Keto diet. Elyse herself briefly dabbled into veganism in her eternal quest to lose weight as I write about in my document about her.

There is one person who I came to admire through this whole thing. His name is Paulie. He is one of the organizers. I first noticed him posting things and during the big “Official Animal Rights Protest”, which occurs annually during the Labor Day weekend, when I went for the first time. I was lost and, mistakenly thinking that I knew Paulie better than I did because he is high up on the echelon, I sent him a private message. He directed me the right way. That was our first communication. Afterwards, I realized that I did not in fact know him personally. I started to see him at the Canada Goose protests. I was very intimidated by him. At one point, after a protest, he was standing against the wall and a bunch of people were talking to him. I somehow ended up right next to him. I mustered up the courage to say something to him. He has a tattoo of a mouse on his neck and I asked about the reason for it, thinking that maybe he had a mouse, and since I do, that would be something we had in common. But he explained that when he was younger, kids would call him mouse because of his appearance. So that was pretty much it.

The next contact we had wasn’t really contact, so much as an acknowledgment in my mind. It was during one of the protests against the Jewish ritual of Koporos, in which the Hasidic community in get together annually and swing chickens over their heads for “good luck” and then slaughter them in the streets. There was a meeting point and I showed up a little late, and the group had moved on to the protest site. But Paulie and a few others stayed behind to meet with late arrivals like me and direct them. But some people chose to stand there and protest. So, I stood on the corner holding up my sign towards the oncoming traffic. The Hasidic people are known to have lots of children. In fact, it is one theory amongst people, much like it is with the minority community, that they do it on purpose so they can receive welfare benefits. Even my old evil bastard boss used to describe them to his brother as “the women raise children and the men don’t work but when you ask them what they do, they always say: ‘I’m learning”, which means they are studying the Torah. So, that day, while I was standing there holding up my sign, I was surrounded by a bunch of little kids, mostly boys, dressed in black and white suits, who were bombarding me with belligerent questions, as they were doing to other protesters. It was then that I noticed Paulie, and he was sitting on a fence on the corner, looking at me. He had a kind of small smile on his face which I chose to interpret as approval for me. From that moment on I started to develop a slight crush on him.

I think the next contact with Paulie was when he posted something on Facebook one day and I deigned to respond. A lot of people also responded to his post, but he decided to respond to mine! He wrote: “I couldn’t agree with this more….” I felt so privileged! I decided to piggyback on this by sending him a private message. I will copy and paste the message because it was a point of contention with Linda. After sending it, I regretted it and wondered if I turned him off because it was too personal. I expressed to her that I was afraid he now thinks I am stalking him. She said I shouldn’t have done it and yes, he thinks that and I should leave him alone and not comment on anything anymore. So here is the message I sent:

“Hey sweetie; I wanted to respond to your post but didn’t want my personal stuff out there. I wanted to agree with you and you are so correct in saying that sometimes by simply “existing” it is a big way of helping. Society is very demanding and not amenable to animals. So by being the “head of my household”, which consists of a sick husband, a rescued unwanted older cat and 19 rescued birds, I am the glue that keeps all of these entities alive and happy. We are lucky that we live in an apartment that was acquired 28 years ago, because now no one would ever rent to us in this anti animal and social services-averse real estate market. And add to that, the multiple health issues I have which make caring for my household extremely difficult. And having a full time job which I hate but is necessary in order to allow me to be able to do as much as I can (I like to think of it as stealing from the rich and giving to the poor). So I just wanted you to know that if you don’t see me as much, I am doing as much as my situation allows me. I push myself to the limit to help animals always whether it’s publicly or behind the scenes. I spend entire days just signing petitions and writing letters, I try to influence people in my social circle, I donate as much as I can, and I comment in defense of animals on various websites. I am just so grateful that you exist to lead us so efficiently! Thank you, Paulie.”

And he responded in a not so offended way, to the effect of good for you for what you’re doing and we shouldn’t judge.

Then me again: “Thank you for responding – I know you’re real busy. I know what you mean about people who get involved in the cause for alternative motives – another one I want to add is those who like to protest for the sake of protesting- I know a guy who attended a few of the Canada Goose protests and one day I messaged that I couldn’t come that day cause I too, had a hangover from the night before and he responded with “a good cure for a hangover is to eat a cheeseburger!” 🤦🏻♀️ The mind boggles with the disconnect. Anyway, thank you again and I look forward to seeing you again! 😘”

He replied again in a polite manner.

So after this exchange, I was understandably so nervous for the next time I would see him. The next time was at one of the Paragon protests. That would be the second one, we meet at the meeting spot and walk to the target’s house which is a few blocks away. So I took a cab that day because I didn’t want to be late. I posted in the group, that my cab GPS says I should be there in ten minutes, because there are only a certain number of people who go to certain events and then they have to wait for you so you must let them know if you’re on your way. When I pulled up and started walking towards the group, I was so nervous, thank God for Klonopin. But when he saw me, he gave me a hug and kiss and said; “you made it”. Then he proceeded to give his briefing which he talks to us as we’re gathered around. Now, I’ve heard these before from him and they’re usually the same old thing: “let’s be effective, we have to set an example, blah, blah, blah.” But this time, I noticed he added some new points into the repertoire – he was saying things like “we’re all different”, and he was mentioning the different “colors we’re wearing”. As he was speaking, his eyes kept darting towards me, to the point, where I was becoming uncomfortable because I do not want anyone else noticing. I know he has a girlfriend and I do not want the reputation among this group of people that I am a homewrecker. And for the first time, during one of these briefings, he mentioned his girlfriend – and by name! So now I know he still likes me – he is very self-aware now. Linda still disagrees, she says the reason he mentioned his girlfriend is because he wants me to know. But I say that he is trying to include me into his personal life, like I did by sending him that message. After all, I mentioned I was married first. And, my theory of why he kept repeating “we’re all different” was because he is trying to prepare the group of activists for me. Because he probably went to my profile and checked it out and saw that my husband, who has a lot of posts public, is a republican! He was probably shocked at that, and he probably saw one of the many arguments that my sweetie has gotten into online with people where he used language that may be misconstrued (or construed) as racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc.!! Now, he is probably trying to come to terms with this and he decided that he won’t hold it against me – because he sees how I am, and I am a true animal lover. So, he is trying to prepare everyone with this for me.

This is how things were until recently. Paulie and I had a mutually respectful relationship. But now it may be ruined because there is a new dynamic happening in the animal rights movement. I have been noticing it little by little. But let me preface it by saying one more thing about Paulie. One day after the Paragon Sports protest, I was walking to the train station with him and two other girls and a guy. We were talking about the success of the protest and one girl said “I think people want to do the right thing” or something to that effect, and he said something surprising! He said “I don’t think most people want to do the right thing”. The girl asked “you don’t think so?” But he didn’t elaborate, and to this day, I wonder what he meant by that. I was planning on asking him if and when we were ever alone.

So, here’s what is going on now. It all started towards the beginning of when I started friending animal people on Facebook. One particular girl sent me a request, and since they are animal people I usually accept random requests – if it was a regular person who I don’t know I wouldn’t accept it. So, after I accepted this girl, she started sending me private messages. First they were mild, but then she started sending me graphic pictures of dogs and cats being abused. They were from the dog and cat meat industry in China and South Korea, of which I was already aware. But with these pictures, she would write in the messages in capital letters all these curse words, like: LET THIS BE EMBLAZONED IN YOUR IDIOTIC BRAINS YOU FUCKEN ASSHOLE VEGANS” and “MOTHER FUCKEN EVIL VEGANS I HOPE YOU DIE SLOWLY YOUR DAY IS COMING” and variations of that sort! The pictures were ghastly. It was obvious this girl was not sending messages to me only, she was befriending vegans and sending these messages privately. But why, I wondered? Why does this girl hate vegans so much? It’s obvious that she loves dogs and cats but so do vegans, they are against these atrocities, like she is. So I just chalked it up to another nut on the Internet and eventually unfriended her because it was becoming akin to harassment. As time went on, I posted here and there about the dog and cat meat industry, (from this point forward I will use the abbreviation for it, “DCMT”, for dog cat meat trade.) I never really got many responses to my posts, most of them were petitions and I wanted people to sign them. But again, I attributed this to my posts in general not getting many likes or comments. I don’t think I am a popular person, period. Eventually, I started to get angry about this, because how could people not be as outraged as I was about this situation with DCMT. I mean it’s like a living nightmare. Then I started to notice that my vegan friends also did not post about the DCMT. One day I was talking to Linda about this and about that girl that I had deleted and Linda said I shouldn’t have deleted her because she’s right. Linda said vegans only post about cows, chickens and pigs and that if they were real animal lovers, they should be posting about dogs and cats. So I agreed with her and I sent a friend request to that girl but she never accepted me again. Anyway, from then on I started to resent vegans a little bit. But since no one was saying anything about it, I kept it to myself. To be fair, they do post about dogs and cats in relation to breeding and dogfighting, individual cases of abuse, and things like that. But the issue of the DCMT is never addressed. Throughout the world though, there are others who fight against it like the Humane Society, other organizations, celebrities, and other individuals. Fast forward to this month, which was the annual month of June of the Yulin festival in China where they torture and kill thousands of dogs to make dog meat. Let me repeat that, they torture the dogs before killing them, which makes this even more atrocious than other animal abuse issues.

Backtracking a little, the first time I heard about the DCMT was around ten years ago, when I received something in the mail, it was a brochure, I think from the Animal Legal Defense Fund to which I used to donate. In it, it quoted a woman in South Korea who had come across a man who was torturing a dog. He was pulling it apart by the legs and arms, slowly dislocating its joints. She said to him “why are you doing that to that dog? Why don’t you just kill it?” He replied: “because the torture makes the meat taste better!” When I read this, I thought it was a joke, or fake. This can’t be real. It’s just can’t. Nevertheless, the brochure was suggesting ways to help, windows which was to distribute these pamphlets in the train stations and other areas where people congregate. So I dutifully did that. Me being a shy person, it was difficult for me, but I brought brochures with me in my purse and when I was in the subway right before I got up to leave, I would take one out and leave it on the chair.

So now, on Facebook I am starting to realize that this issue is being ignored by vegans and I am becoming incensed. So now that it’s June, the Yulin festival was about to start and people from all over the world we’re talking about it and reporting it. One of my vegan protesting friends, this guy named Adam, who is involved in everything and always comments on my posts, posted something about Yulin festival. A girl responded to his post with what I have come to notice is the typical response of vegans towards the DCMT, “yes this is sad, but it’s also sad the way animals are treated in factory farms but nobody says anything about that.“ Another one of the girls that I would say is the closest to a friend that I made, Monica, responded to her post, lambasting her. I will copy and paste:

The girl: “This is very sad for me but I just find most of the world’s so hypocritical. They signed petition after petition regarding this old school cultural Festival but that small section of the Chinese that still do this. However, they allow the same atrocities to occur to farm animals. Because you’re not cute and fluffy like a dog. I get really ticked off when everyone gets all upset about this Festival, and don’t care about what happens in good ole America daily on farm.”

Monica: “like we can’t or shouldn’t speak out for the atrocities that are YULIN – dogs and cats deliberately TORTURED for the so- called enhancement of taste or potency ??
By the way, dogs are also farmed. Farmed, bred and snatched off streets at every opportunity. Vegan Foodies, not Activists, are usually the ones that make it sound like dogs, and cats, should take a back seat. They should stfu.

Me: “Hi Monica; I couldn’t agree with you more on this. I often wonder why my vegan friends don’t post about this issue. When confronted, they compare it to factory farming as if that is a good justification. Where animals on factory farms suffer greatly their whole lives, the workers who slaughter them are not purposely prolonging their death by such evil, twisted methods as blowtorching, tying them down and slowly chopping off body parts, electrocution, and boiling alive because they think the meat will taste better. If we are animal lovers, we should be advocating for all animals equally, not choosing which ones are more worthy of help. And PETA, arguably the biggest, pre-eminent, vegan animal rights organization, also does nothing for the dog and cat meat industry either, which is very sad because their involvement would go such a long way in ending it.”

Me, to the original girl: “Are you justifying the Asian dog and cat meat trade because of tradition? Some of us care passionately for both issues.”

Monica: “I’m so sick of their shit –
speaking out about the DCMT does not mean we’ve abandoned or don’t care about any others – on the contrary – we’re out on the front lines protesting on any given day unlike those expert critics.”

Then another animal rights activist named Jeanine chimed in. She is pretty high up in the ARA movement. She is also sick and tired of the silence from vegans. So now with more people speaking up against this, it gave me the courage to speak out. On another post, I wrote: “Me: [posting about Yulin], My vegan friends: 🙈”. It got a lot of Likes.

I don’t like the person I’ve become ever since I became aware of this weird dynamic within the AR movement- I am attacking strangers on Facebook, I went on this girl’s wall who had all her posts public and I started responding to some of them and calling her out on her lack of posts about the DCMT. Then I messaged Jeanine, and told her what I was doing and dutifully she came and started posting to her as well. But then Jeanine messaged me privately that she stopped because she had a lot of mutual friends with this girl and she didn’t know it was a stranger, she thought it was a friend of mine. So I felt embarrassed, and I felt like a bully. I see people doing that all the time, but I never did that and I felt bad about it. But this doesn’t change the fact that what this girl and others stand for is wrong. Like Monica said, it’s baffling. To make matters worse, around two weeks ago, while I was waiting for my physical therapy appointment, I was scrolling through Facebook and I noticed amongst all of the petitions regarding DCMT – and there are so many – there was one petition that was addressed to PETA. I was very surprised, I wondered why are they asking PETA to help with this, don’t they already do that? Then it dawned on me that in all the years, of all the campaigns that PETA was involved with, none of them involved the DCMT. This infuriated me and it just confirmed what we forgot all along, PETA is mostly a vegan organization so their message would be the same as what vegans post about the DCMT. Well, this isn’t going to sit well with me, I started going on various posts that PETA made about other things and I would type in the comments “PETA: why are you ignoring the DCMT?”, I also made a post about Yulin, where I wrote: “fuck PETA for refusing to do anything about it because it’s a shame because if they did, it would help a great deal.

I do not know where all this is going to lead, but I wanted to tie it all in with Paulie because he is one of the few activists who I believe has concern for animals across the board. after I made that post about Yulin, Where I said fuck PETA, Paulie had posted something for a protest against Sea World, which is another big topic that PETA fights against. They had a text campaign that you could get involved in. So Paulie made it a point to mention “thanks to PETA for putting up these signs everywhere….”. Now I wonder where he stands in this whole issue, he is one of those vegans who doesn’t post much about DCMT but he at least did attend a protest along with Jeanine at the Chinese consulate. So basically, I wonder if that’s what he meant back when we were walking to the train that day when he said that most animal rights people don’t want to help. And if so, how will he respond now to me? Because I’ve made my position very clear: I’ve posted on various people’s posts as well as in my own against PETA. I have a statement prepared for the chance I ever encounter someone in person, when I will say: “I’m a bigger animal lover than you’ll ever be: ‘I hate you? I’ll still support your charity, you’re a republican? I’ll still save your dog, I’m a vegan? I’ll still fight for the cats and dogs in China!”

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In an almost too common scenario, I was sitting with Kathy in her kitchen and I was talking about how torn I am inside and it’s very lonely being an animal lover. I mentioned that nobody understands and how I have no one to talk to about it. She seemed nervous, and knowing Kathy, it was the type of fidgeting she does when she’s about to tell someone something confrontational. She then slowly and in a deliberate fashion, started telling me, while she was nervously touching something on the table, that “well, I don’t understand why people don’t care about children,….” then her voice trailed off without finishing her train of thought. There was tension that night because Kathy was in one of her aggravated, annoyed moods, and I didn’t want this discussion to be undermined by whatever the topic was that had her annoyed. So I decided to wait for another day, to bring up to her and preferably Rosa, because I know she feels the same way, that she completely missed my point that night. She assumed that I was complaining about how people don’t care about animals and try to help them and that there are people suffering too that nobody cares about and that is what bothers her. I am beyond trying to understand that. I’ve accepted that as a part of my normal life. What I meant, if I would have had the chance to finish my thoughts, was that I don’t have anyone to talk to about my innermost feelings of despair when it comes to animals. Conversely, people who are in despair over human injustices, like in Kathy’s case, children, can speak to anyone about it and not encounter a brick wall because mostly everyone will agree with them. But all the horrors that I face every day build up inside and I need an outlet to release them. And I do not have one person who can relate to what I am feeling because hardly anyone cares about animals the way I do. There are my animal activists, but I have not become close with anyone and probably won’t, it’s hard to make friends when you’re older. It is necessary for this person to be a friend. And my personal friends are not avid animal lovers like I am, so they wouldn’t understand. She can talk to me, or any one of her friends about it. That is the difference that she failed to pick up on and I intend to bring it up again so we can discuss it.

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Unbelievable – I give them a brilliant piece to use in their group, and they totally ignore it. This group has to approve comments before they are posted and mine was not approved. This is what I sent in:

“I am a new member and haven’t yet gotten the courage to attend a cube demonstration. Instead I would like to share some of my ideas that may go over well during outreach. One talking point I would make is to explain how eating meat can be considered an addiction, so along that vein, telling a meat eater to go vegan is akin to telling an alcoholic not to have a drink; Just like any other addiction, the mere thought of abstinence, whether it’s from alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and eating certain destructive foods, will cause the person to become depressed and scared and then you will be met with the same belligerent and defensive reaction. This is just something to keep in mind while speaking to people. In sum, people should be coached in the same way that addicts are, to abstain from meat consumption. We can say things like “it won’t be easy, but once you accept that it must be done, it becomes easier, they shouldn’t wait until they hit rock bottom, which is what eventually pushes people to make the life changing decision.

Another talking point is to tackle the all too common “But animals taste so good!” To the people who say that, I usually ask them how they think they taste. Then I suggest that by the same logic, if they themselves taste delicious, it would be acceptable for someone to eat them. And by extension that would include eating our family members, friends and acquaintances. So, in sum, taste itself is not a justification to eat animals.

A third and final (for now) is the directive that we hear far too often of “Don’t push your opinions on me!” To that I reply with “it’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. It’s a fact that cows are raped. It’s a fact that baby chickens are ground up in a machine. It’s a fact that calves are crammed in tiny enclosures designed to restrict their movements. It’s a fact that geese are force fed through a metal tube in order to enlarge their livers. It’s a fact that animals are skinned alive to make fur clothing. I could go on and on about the myriad of ways that we humans exploit and abuse animals for our own selfish desires. And not one of them is an opinion.”

And after about a week, here’s what they posted:

“Bystander: “it does seem sad, but at the same time, bacon tastes good”

Great job hitting multiple points in such a brief conversation, {person’s name} 🙌

*NOTE: there’s no cube tomorrow but, get your outreach in for the animals by joining one of the other cubes happening in [other locations] this weekend. Event links in comments. See you all soon ✊”

Since it is a video, I will try to paraphrase from memory what was said: the bystanders were a couple, and the AR person asked them, among other things, after the bystander said bacon tastes good: “So, it’s the taste? Is taste more important than life? What if you tasted good?”!

Taking my point and using it without giving me the credit.

Do I want to prove myself to them? Or should I just be focusing on the animals helping results? Or can it be both? I mean they all congratulate each other, why can’t I get the credit I deserve once in a while? I try to convince myself that even though I am not accredited, that I want my points to be used out there anyway. I don’t know what I was expecting when I decided to start ARA, I mean I should have known it would end up this way. I thought, naively it would be different, because, these people love animals, but alas, they are still people who hate me.

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A post I made on Facebook:
“Right now I’m being taken hostage by my nauseating, splitting headache. But as bad as my headache is, I can’t help thinking of the non human animals who have it so much worse; I imagine having this headache while confined in a metal cage, not being able to lay down, all day for weeks that seem like an eternity. I imagine how that would affect my pain. I imagine what it would be like to be near starvation and dehydrated, and while trying to escape, I would bite the bars, causing massive infected wounds to my mouth, some of my neighbors are put into the cages with others, and out of terror and desperation, they bite and claw at each other, so the humans remove their teeth. I see humans walking near me, but I know they’re not there to help me, instead they are preparing to take me out of the cage forcefully, dragging my half dead body across a blood soaked floor and ushering me into a machine that will take me out of my short, miserable life, for you see, I am only a few months old. That was my whole life, the reason I was born, after my mother was raped to give birth to me. I had sisters and brothers I never met because they too suffered the same fate. My mother’s role was to produce milk for humans. And after she became too weak from the repeated rapes and births, she was then entered into the meat supply, with the physical scars she took with her superseded by the emotional scars of countless babies that were abducted from her just as she was getting acquainted with them-right when her protective instincts were kicking in. As I think of this scenario which plays out around the world to billions of animals each day I can thankfully say that I accept my headache.”

By the way, I know there are humans out there that are also suffering, but I can’t do anything about that. But there is something I can do about the animals, I can refuse to eat them or their excretions.

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I’m tired of people not caring.

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There’s a meme that says: “I didn’t plan on being the angry vegan, but yet here I am”. People wonder why vegans are angry and confrontational. It’s true that most of them didn’t start out that way – in fact, I’m sure they were sweet, caring and sensitive people- and that is the paradoxical dilemma; they still are that way. You see, it’s extremely difficult to navigate in a world which consists of acts that affect you to your very core. They surround you all of the time, you cannot go anywhere without seeing or hearing the things that drive a metaphorical dagger into your heart and crush your soul. There’s only so many days when you can cower inside your own house and cry for hours on end. It is akin to an abusive relationship where one partner is manipulated to a certain way of thinking. Eventually, the effects of the mental anguish will take their toll and manifest themselves into a physical release. There’s only so much you can ignore, or so many ways you can gently try to explain to your fellow aliens around you to stop rounding up humans and taking them to concentration camps to be killed for no reason at all that will benefit you.

Vegans are seen as pious, obnoxious know-it-alls, but the same as everything else with animal rights, it’s all about perspective. Vegans want to stop animal abuse, some are content with not participating in it, while others actively try to raise awareness of the problem – it is those who get the brunt end of the abuse from non vegans. Abuse and accusations of forcing their “beliefs” on everyone. But the truth is that the topic of veganism is almost next to impossible to ignore. If you take even the quietest vegan who likes to keep to themself, the specter of veganism raises itself at the dinner table multiple times each day – people see and want to know what they’re eating, which most often times leads to “the vegan discussion” which can turn aggressive towards the vegan because they’re usually outnumbered and ganged up on.

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I wanted to post something once to express my concerns over the direction this activism is heading, and all the pitfalls that I see tearing it down. This is what I wanted to post – I of course didn’t, because why should I always be attacked for voicing my reason?:

“This post is going out only to my animal rights friend list. I wanted to talk about some causes of concern I’m noticing. We’re winning some great battles but we’re not gonna win the war if we continue the way we are. The problem is we are animal lovers who look at things from humans’ perspective – we need to look at things from the animals’ point of view. Humans haven’t the foggiest idea how to preserve their own species. The only thing they care about is their own little comfort zones.

‘People are by nature, petty, jealous and catty, especially women. They can’t, or refuse to see the bigger picture. Animal activists who treat their fellow human beings poorly are doing a disservice to the animals – true activism arises out of a sense of compassion and that compassion should extend to human animals. From here on I will refer to animals as “NHA”. The irony is that if NHAs were suddenly able to walk and talk, they would exhibit individual personalities and these very same animal activists would discriminate and treat them in the same catty, dismissive manner they treat one another based on their dislike of their personalities. For example, If a cat has a shy and strange demeanor, it will be embraced by an animal advocate, however if a human being exhibits the same traits, they will be shunned by the animal advocate. By all means, they can be as angry with the general human population as they like, but they shouldn’t react the same to their fellow animal defenders because It makes me wonder what their true agenda is; is animal activism just an outlet for their rage? The understanding needs to be that NHAs are equal to us. Therefore, not only should they be treated like us, but we should be treated like them. Another instance is, I am not a “Like” whore by any means – in fact if it weren’t for my animal activism I wouldn’t even have a Facebook account – but by liking my posts, people think that it is an endorsement of the person – it is not – it should be for the promotion of the animal posts to people’s NON VEGAN friends. In my personal life, I am always talking up animal rights to my friends and when I began my animal rights activism, I was very excited, because I thought finally I would be amongst like minded individuals who would show me support – I was very wrong – Instead of support, I have experienced hostility and cattiness. So my friends are probably like “oh you see – there’s no camaraderie amongst animal people.” We need to be better than this. This needs to not exist in our cause in order for us to be successful.

‘The world thinks we’re part of a bigger agenda, and that agenda isn’t going anywhere, so neither are we. I was speaking to this civilian at the OAR march and he was giving me the “but people come first“ routine, and usually I am unflappable when it comes to this and other arguments, but to what this particular man was saying, I didn’t have an answer. He was implying that we need to address the human suffering first in order to be taken seriously and that we are using animal rights as a ruse on the way towards a bigger goal.

‘We need to break down the divisive barriers within our community and abandon any and all exclusionary and discriminatory methods. Our love for animals needs to come without conditions; for example: I don’t like you? I’ll still support your charity. You’re a republican? I’ll still save your dog. I’m a vegan? I’ll still fight for the dogs and cats in China. Our concern needs to go back to being about THE ANIMALS.”

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Back to the regular instances of animal abuse.

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Can they see my inner tears?

10/5/19. I’ve abandoned them. A man came to my house and methodically removed each one of my cages that contained my babies. I can’t imagine what they were thinking, both at the point when they were going out the door of the building and then during the transport. Being in the back of a van, with a stranger. He only wasn’t a stranger to three of them because that was from where they came.

Then the next day I drove to a woman’s house with Rosa and her father 60 miles away and left my Peep there. During the drive, I took her out of the cage and held her on my lap. When we arrived and were in the woman’s living room, four of us were surrounding her cage which was on the coffee table in our midst. She was sitting on the floor of the cage with a content attitude- eyes half closed, burying her head into her neck. It’s most likely because she could see me. When Rosa’s father started to get antsy, and we got up to leave, I took her out of the cage and held her close to my face- breathing be damned- and was kissing her head and telling her I love her. Everyone left me alone. After she was placed back in her cage, and we walked away, into the foyer, we were still in her sights, that’s when she started pacing back and forth in the side of the cage that was facing us. As I walked out of the house, I was telling her to be nice to Kathleen and that Kathleen would take good care of her.

How do you justify something like that? What kind of a mother am I? It is inexcusable what I did, I caused abandonment issues to my baby, having her wonder why I left her. I will never forget this – it will be ingrained in my head until the day I die. I just upset Grace because I verbalized to her that I don’t understand the difference between the birds not having me now due to the circumstances and me having kept them and dying and they will be without me anyway. I told Andy that the only people who need me are him and Scooby, if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have given the birds away. I might as well have let them have me for more time. I was looking forward to Peep sleeping with me in the bed every night, moving around my head area, gently pecking my face lovingly, like Boyd used to do. Now it will never happen in this life.

10/12/19 – one week away from me, Peep’s new owner called me after me not calling her. She described the environment where Peep is. She has now let her out to fly around the house. She has a very large house. There are many rooms through which Peep can fly and hang out in. So as we were talking, Kathleen told me that she was in a particular room that Peep had never gone into before. Peep came and landed on her shoulder. I guess they were sitting and at one point she asked if I wanted to talk to Peep and I said yes. Kathleen replied that she doesn’t know what Peep will say back. So she put the phone up to Peep’s ear and I started saying loudly: hi Peep how are you? I miss you my baby, I didn’t abandon you, I left you with a kind new owner who will take care of you and I was crying. Kathleen said that suddenly she climbed down from her shoulder and went to her knee and sat on her knee. Kathleen remarked that she didn’t know what to make of that, and neither do I. I believe that Peep knew who the voice was and it did affect her. But I also believe that Peep knew that Kathleen was speaking to me on the phone and that’s why she entered that room for the first time ever and landed on Kathleen’s shoulder.

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Why did this happen my Lord? I know you mean well for me so this somehow is one of your mysterious ways. I trust you. I feel broken and hollow though.

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Got Diane and other two birds: May, 2014

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The shadows from the trees outside my window are trying to tell me something. I don’t know what it is. I am thinking it’s my birds on the branches making them swing in the wind.

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The evolution of being vegan is very problematic. You start out with a certain life, with certain friends. Everything is wonderful. Until you start learning how your food is made. It shocks, disturbs and eventually overtakes you. You have no other alternative but to stop eating animals. So, you dutifully start to inform the people in your social circles about what you discovered, knowing that, for sure, they will also abstain from eating animals. But after what seems like an eternity of telling people, showing them articles, graphic pictures and videos, posting on Facebook – it is a frustrating task to undertake – to inform, educate, raise awareness – because you try asking nicely, so as to maintain your current relationship status quo with these people. Then it suddenly smacks you in the face that these people are not stopping. Now you are in the dubious position of figuring out how to stay friends with them. I mean, how can one continue a friendship with someone like this? They have repeatedly been given all the information on the abhorrent meat and dairy industry and the only logical conclusion is that they don’t care. They do not care!! To a vegan, that is the equivalent to being friends with Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. It has now come down to a moral and ethical decision to take the side of decency over your friends that you have known most of your life. Indeed, I have heard a lot of vegans say that they are lonely and they lost all their friends.

I wrote a song that I hope will become a hit song – I believe we need one very famous song for animal rights. It is published on Youtube under my channel: RockyGraceMusic and it is entitled: “This Song”.