Cat Mews: Info & more | Essays - Sixty Thousand Marbles
Sixty Thousand Marbles
by Bonnie Pemberton
My friends consider me a hard-core animal lover. I report all cruelties to the proper authorities, constantly preach animal rights to anyone who will listen, and maintain memberships in almost any animal welfare group that asks for funding. What my friends don't know is the one tiny flaw in my desire to help: I can't see or hear too much. If a cruelty case comes on TV, I'll scream, "Turn it off". If someone mentions a story in which an animal is suffering, I shout: "Don't tell me!"
So, you can imagine my discomfort when I signed my pet product manufacturing company up for a trade show sponsored by The Humane
Society of America. As much as I hated these events, I'd always felt my product would be beneficial to animal rescue organizations involved in adoptions, and decided to try it.
Entering the exhibit hall, I carefully averted my eyes from photos of abused animals, and signs proudly listing legal victories against cruelties I was happy to know, but unwilling to read. What I couldn't block out, however, was the shocking positioning of my booth between not one, but TWO animal crematorium companies, one of which had actually brought a machine fully assembled. I tried to ignore the visual this instantly brought to my mind. "Don't tell me!" I mentally ordered, "Turn that off!"
As a form of self-protection, I vowed to stay in my booth, limiting my exposure
to the other exhibits as much as possible.
"We put down about 60,000 animals a year," a woman says, taking a
crematorium brochure from my neighbor.
Sixty thousand. I try to imagine 60,000 marbles in a jar. I picture a sea of soulful eyes, and wagging tails that could fill a major sports stadium.
Remember the couple that brought their cat to the shelter because they were having a Super Bowl party?" a young man asks a colleague. "It was older and we had so many cats, I think we ended up putting it down."
I turn, giving the crematorium my full attention. Who operated this thing? Was their sleep restless and strained? Did they dream of soft bodies piling around their feet...up to the ceiling...out the doors?
"Don't tell me," I say to myself. "Turn it off." But this time, looking at the malevolent machine, I can't.
I find myself walking up and down aisles of the exhibit, hear fragments of stories from weary animal rescue workers, and gather brochures, which I stand in a corner and read. I meet a woman who fosters over 100 cats out of her home, in a small, rural community in Tennessee.
Our town doesn't have a shelter, so I figure, if not me, than who?" she says. "We adopted out three this month." There's pride in her words, and inside I share her victory.
I observe these fierce, underpaid, often-unappreciated brethren and suddenly realize the Animal Rights Movement is the last battle for social reform left in America. Here were its warriors. Was I really an ally, if I couldn't see the wrongs they were trying to right, or face the suffering they were trying to stop?
Can I get you to sign this petition?" a man asks, handing me a clipboard. I think of the cat whose only crime was to be at the wrong Super Bowl party, the crematorium, and 60,000 marbles.
Tell me what's happening," I say, and for the first time in my life, I keep my eyes wide open.
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