1. Cats
During the time when the cat was weeing in the hall (which now seems to have passed, or do I indulge optimism too far?), I went to my friend the internet and asked how do you persuade your cat to wee outside. I opened up a world of controversy. Many Americans, it appears, never let their cats outside at all. This is just the weirdest thing I have ever heard in my life. It’s helicopter parenting gone mad. Outdoor cats (i.e. cats who are let out the door without a leash) don’t live as long. Your indoor cat can be kept happy by playing with it all the time. I particularly enjoyed reading about the compromise cat cage where you let your cat out the back garden in an enclosure. Come on, tell me you don’t think this is very odd.
2. Philantrophy
I heard an American on the radio arguing for the merits of a charity gift card for Christmas. He listed the benefits as follows: 1. The charity benefits. 2. The donor feels good. 3. The recipient gets to feel like a rich person. This last one is not very convincing in this jurisdication. The culture of philantrophy so deeply ingrained in our American cousins is, alas, not present here. I think if you wanted to make an Irish man feel like a rich person, you would probably need to give him money rather than give money away on his behalf.
An American woman once looked at me in horror when I told her our cat sleeps outside and hunts mice and other small animals, like I was a criminal who didn’t deserve to have a cat.
They also have their cats de-clawed (which I find criminal) so they won’t damage the house.
Another culture clash.
Do they know Chinese people eat cats (and supposedly it tastes like rabbit)? Unless it is another urban legend… I have never been to China to check by myself.
The only justification I can see for this is to stop them from eating all the birds (please dear Ms. Waffle, bell your cat or at least keep it in at dusk, BTW). Otherwise you might as well try and make your fish happy by keeping them from drowning
Actually there are coyotes that eat cats in very large sections of the US (including many major cities – I lived in a S. Californian city with a lot of canyons, some reportedly containing coyotes). It is (supposedly) for the cats’ protection.
Having said that, my grandparents also possibly had coyotes in their woods but let their cat out in the daytime.
One thing about letting them roam especially in cities is the danger of them getting knocked down. I am a big softy so if i knocked down someone’s cat I’d be very upset. So maybe keeping them in isn’t such a bad idea. We have a dog and we keep her in – but i suppose you can take a dog out for a walk and walking a cat is just silly. I dunno!
Cats are Evil anyway! 🙂
I’m all for keeping cats indoors or at least preventing them from escaping beyond the owner’s garden – I see them as introduced predators – but then I’m an anti-feline militant. The birds and other wildlife I try to encourage to the feast I lay out for them in my garden would benefit greatly. I suppose it’s a choice between a sad cat and numerous dead/discouraged birds.
By the way (and at risk of lowering the tone somewhat) I’ve rarely felt a bigger cultural divide than when I was with a bunch of American Unitarian women in Paris (don’t ask) discussing circumcision. I’m sure they were an exception, but the number of calamities they thought would befall their sons if they didn’t have them “done” was bizarre.
Peggy, I know, isn’t declawing awful…
TM, Praxis, I understand bells do not save the birds. We will just have to hope she can fill up on mice.
Katie, you terrify me.
M, ahem, cats are fantastic. Let us hope ours is smart enough to stay away from traffic of which, in any event, there is surprisingly little where we live. Hope I am not tempting fate…