The Tuesday, October 2, New York Times has two delightfully animal friendly articles. "Golden Retriever Given Order of Protection" ( pg B6) by Thomas Kaplan, looks at a new law giving animals protection from domestic violence. And in "The Ambivalent Bond With a Ball of Fur," (pg D1) graceful writer Natalie Angier, in the wake of her cat's death, examines our relationships with animals.
Kaplan's article on orders of protection opens with:
"It was a typical scene for a divorced couple: As the police tell it, Cassandra Reynolds pulled up in the driveway of her ex-husband's home in South Windsor to pick up a few belongings.
"A dispute ensued. Her ex-husband's golden retriever approached her, so she kicked it, the police said. The dog yelped. Ms. Reynolds was arrested.
"That was on Sept. 23. The next day, a Superior Court judge ordered Ms. Reynolds, 39, to stay away from her ex-husband and his new wife. The judge also ordered her to stay at least 100 yards away from Riley, the golden retriever -- or face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.
"That confrontation, lawmakers say, is exactly what the state legislature had in mind when it passed a law last spring allowing courts to impose protective orders on behalf of pets as well as people."
The article describes pets as "the forgotten victims of domestic violence and abusive relationships."
Julie Lewin, president of the National Institute for Animal Advocacy, is quoted:
''The abuser often uses threats against the animal as a way of controlling the other partner. The pervasiveness of it, the frequency of it is so great, and yet until now, it's been out of sight, unknown by the general population.''
And we read of studies on domestic violence:
"Of more than 100 women in shelters for battered women, 54 percent said that their abusers had also abused pets. A separate study, by the same researcher, found that half of 42 incarcerated men who had had violent relationships with women admitted to hurting or killing pets."
You'll find the full article on line at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/nyregion/02pet.html
Natalie Angier's "The Ambivalent Bond With a Ball of Fur" opens with:
"A couple of weeks ago, while I was out of town on business, our cat, Cleo, died of liver failure. My husband and daughter buried her in the backyard, not far from the grave of our other cat, Manny, who had died just a few months earlier of mouth cancer.
"Cleo was almost 16 years old, she’d been sick, and her death was no surprise. Still, when I returned to a home without cats, without pets of any sort, I was startled by my grief — not so much its intensity as its specificity.
Angier describes a "sorrow of details," and gives examples such as, "I've just dumped a pile of clean laundry on the bed and I'm starting to fold it. Why aren't the cats jumping up for a quick sit? Don't they know everything is still warm?"
She writes, "Our pet is our 'best friend,' a 'member of the family,' a surrogate child for the adults, in loco parentis for the kids and the best possible pillow for whoever has first dibs."
She discusses our attachment to animals, and our ambivalence, quoting Harvard psychology professor Marc Hauser. And she writes, "Dr. Hauser traces this tension to self-defense. We use animals, and we want to feel justified in using animals. We eat their muscles for meat, flay their hides for shoes and accessories, inject them with experimental vaccines, genetically engineer them into grotesque morphologies to study human diseases. This requires a certain mental distance."
You can read the full beautiful piece on line at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/02angier.html
Either or both of the articles cited above open the door for more discussion of animals in the New York Times, via animal friendly letters to the editor. The New York Times takes letters at letters@nytimes.com
Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published.
Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
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Date: Tue Oct 2 12:38:19 2007
