Do you feel very distressed when you see

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Aimless
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25 May 2010, 7:26 pm

an animal in trouble? This evening I was driving my son to his Scout meeting at a local church. As we went up the hill we saw a bunch of baby groundhogs running around and then we saw the mother dead by the side of the road. Every instinct tells me to do whatever I can to help these baby groundhogs. The minister of the church pulled up with his son who is in the same Scout group and he said just to let them be, which I'm sure is logical but emotionally I feel like a heel. I connect too much or anthropomorphize. My point is my desire to save over rides my common sense. Anyone else feel the same?



Skilpadde
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25 May 2010, 8:00 pm

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Do you feel very distressed when you see an animal in trouble?

oh gad yes, there is nothing that can even remotely compare.


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hale_bopp
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25 May 2010, 8:02 pm

Aimless wrote:
an animal in trouble? This evening I was driving my son to his Scout meeting at a local church. As we went up the hill we saw a bunch of baby groundhogs running around and then we saw the mother dead by the side of the road. Every instinct tells me to do whatever I can to help these baby groundhogs. The minister of the church pulled up with his son who is in the same Scout group and he said just to let them be, which I'm sure is logical but emotionally I feel like a heel. I connect too much or anthropomorphize. My point is my desire to save over rides my common sense. Anyone else feel the same?


I couldn't see baby orphaned animals and not help them. Back when I was a kid I saw a tiny kitten right next to a busy road, it looked like it came from a house which seemed to have a mother and a litter so I moved the poor wee fellow to a safer place away from the road. I couldn't have left those little groundhogs either, although I wouldn't know what to do...

This also applies to all other animals who are helpless over situations where they would be abandoned, hurt, miss treated or neglected. The SPCA is always my charity of choice.



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25 May 2010, 8:04 pm

Once I saw a cat in an apartment window that was trapped between the storm window and the regular window. I was so distressed I flagged down a police car. The people I was with pretended like they didn't know me. Anyway I carry sunflower seed in the car to give to birds so I put some there. I don't know if they're weaned or not.



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25 May 2010, 8:08 pm

hale_bopp wrote:
Aimless wrote:
an animal in trouble? This evening I was driving my son to his Scout meeting at a local church. As we went up the hill we saw a bunch of baby groundhogs running around and then we saw the mother dead by the side of the road. Every instinct tells me to do whatever I can to help these baby groundhogs. The minister of the church pulled up with his son who is in the same Scout group and he said just to let them be, which I'm sure is logical but emotionally I feel like a heel. I connect too much or anthropomorphize. My point is my desire to save over rides my common sense. Anyone else feel the same?


I couldn't see baby orphaned animals and not help them. Back when I was a kid I saw a tiny kitten right next to a busy road, it looked like it came from a house which seemed to have a mother and a litter so I moved the poor wee fellow to a safer place away from the road. I couldn't have left those little groundhogs either, although I wouldn't know what to do...

This also applies to all other animals who are helpless over situations where they would be abandoned, hurt, miss treated or neglected. The SPCA is always my charity of choice.


There was nothing I was able to do then but I know there is a woman in town who deals with this kind of thing. I'll try to find her number. But what a gut wrenching feeling.



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25 May 2010, 8:09 pm

Yes but I can't feel that way with people. I would have scouped up the groundhogs, taken then home and cared for them until they were old enough to go about on their own or take them to a wildlife rehabilitor. No animal should be allowed to die when something can be done. If no one will do something I will do it myself. I never let anyone hurt animals if I am around. I once came across some teenagers making a baby toad hop back and forth to one another but something told me they would get bored and purposely hurt it. No way was I going to let that happen and even if they wouldn't they shouldn't have been antagonising it like that. I jumped down and scouped it up and ran home with it. They chased me the whole way yelling, "Give us back our toad!" I was like "It's not your toad" but the same thing that told me they would hurt it told me to be quiet and not blow my cover. They saw my mum standing in our porch and ran away when they saw her. I set the toad free under our neighbor's pine tree so it could hide from those nasty teens. We were good friends with our neighbors and I knew they wouldn't care.

I once came across this trashy house with a bunch of cats in the window and some grubby kids with a bucket with something in it. My first thought was it was some sort of animal. It turns out the kids had two garter snakes in it. The youngest boy shows me his hand and a bite mark, "Yeah and it bite me to! I'm gonna rip him in half!" He seemed like the type of person who would do it too. The little girl, about eight or nineish also kept screaming "Cut it's head off!" I know people will do such things because I have seen them do them. I tried to talk her into giving me the snakes, so I could release them someplace safe. I talked to her about samilina, how you must wash your hands for 30 seconds, I asked her if she had a baby and told her that saminlia can turn into miningitus if an infant contracts it. Which is true. She said, "I know" to everything I told her and now I think she probably had no clue what I was saying to her. The lady started talking to me about Stella and we got into a conversation about pets. We have a calico cat who seems to have adopted us and needs a home. I asked her if she had lost a cat fitting "Patches" dicription. She said no. She had at least three cats and one supposed "mean" one who was living outside trying to come in. I reached down and petted it and it just meowed. Oh that's vicious. She said that she get's migraines and sometimes the cat litter dosen't get cleaned for days and that her cats poop and pee on her clothes. One of the female cats had a bite wound on it's neck. I asked the sex of the two cats to detirmine my guess. When a male cat "humps" the female, he will sometimes bite her neck to prevent her from escaping. She seemed kinda poor so I was attempting to get on her goodside take the snakes away and maybe help her out and lend her food for her cats. An older kid came up and asked where was the snake's head. I got really worried. As I said, I know people will do these sort of things. I went over and sure enough the little kid has the snake in his hand and it is biting him. These people sure are stupid. I tricked him into asking if I could hold it. The snake immeataly bit me. "He's tryin' to eat ya". said the kid. I could sense that the snake was tremendiously stressed. I held still until it finnaly let go. I was surprized at how little it hurt, if not at all. Most people are just whimps I guess. I knew this kid was not going to give up the snakes. And I told him everything (too bad I was out of money), so I had to take them. I knew I couldn't take both of them without causing a scene but at least I could save one. "Give me back my snake!" the kid screams. I told that his screaming, and tenseness was scaring the snake and that's why it was biting. He wouldn't listen. I then told him I would give it to his mom, which I planned to talk her into giving it to me. The kid grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go. People screaming at me makes me loose focus on what I'm supposed to do but people grabbing me makes me want to fight or run away. I have a phobia of being grabbed. I wish my parents would let me wear those beaclets with spikes on them, then people would be detured from grabbing me. Even my own parents can't grab me without me lashing out. Some pretten age kids came by and started chanting or cheering or something really loudly and making me more nervous. The father or most likely the soon to be ex boyfriend came out and said to give me back the snake. I also have a fear of strange men and this was in an area of town where a lot of sex offenders live. I didn't want to take chances. So I ran with all I had in me to run home (which wasn't very far). I heard and felt someone comming after me but I didn't turn around to look. I almost made it to my house, and I had to run carrying a snake and a small dog and prevent the snake from biting the dog at the same time. "Give my kid back his snake" I hear the lady scream. I then felt someone grab my backback. "Let me go!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. Still running. My parents come out of the house she then lets me go. "What is going on?" My mom asks. She then screams like the town to give me back "her" snake. I told screamed back at her about how I wouldn't because I thought her kids were going to kill it. She then says, "I would never let my kids hurt it!" If only I hadn't been so scared and panicked or I would have confronted her with her attempts to care for her cats. She then yells at my mom about how she's going to "call the cops" on me because the snake was "purchaced". What store sells garter snakes? I scream back, "No you didn't you took it out of the wild." She screams and screams and my mom who is one of the calmest people in the world, "Don't yell at me." The lady backs off a little but still continues to talk in a loud voice about how I took her kid's snake. She also said she wanted it unharmed. Uh, lady I took it to prevent it from being harmed by your stupid kids who your just brining it back to and you think I'm gonna harm it? My parents made me give it back to her because they didn't want any more trouble. I was going to say something like, "Here take your d@*^bed snake and shove it up your @ss!" but I was afraid she would take it litteraly. And then the lady says in the rudest way possible to stay away from her house. Like I would want to come back. As soon as I give the snake to her, it bites her and she yells, "Don't you bite me." Like you can reason with a reptile? My dad was furiously mad at me, and wouldn't talk to me for days. And poor little Stella must have gotten her claw caught in my backback when I was trying to run with her, because now it's all bloody and it hurts her to walk. That stupid lady hurt her. My mom went around and told the neighbors what happened and if they heard her yelling. Surprizingly they said no and were on my side about the whole issue. This was three years ago by the way and LONG before I got Pippin.

I do not regret either one of those events and just think of them as practice for when and if I join the ALF.


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Last edited by PunkyKat on 25 May 2010, 8:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

CockneyRebel
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25 May 2010, 8:15 pm

I feel the same way, too. I love animals. :O)


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25 May 2010, 8:18 pm

No. But I feel an urge to put it down if I do, and I do.

I get upset if I'm the cause of animal's suffering, i.e., an accident. (I don't feel anything when hunting, but that's probably because I make sure they're dead as soon as I squeeze the trigger or when I've caught my meal.)



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25 May 2010, 8:23 pm

Yes. Worked in wildlife rescue because of this. Was wonderful except when couldn't save them.


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25 May 2010, 8:30 pm

They might be old enough to survive on their own as far as finding food. They have fur and are running around. They'd be a lot easier to pick up if they were newborn. Once I lived in apartment where a feral cat had kittens in the basement where the landlord had been storing stuff tenants had left behind for years. There was an outside entrance door that was locked and the kittens were going to get too big to slip under the door crack like they had been. The landlord and I went down to try to catch 4 or 5 completely feral kittens. They tore my hands to shreds. I was actually able to smell their panic.



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25 May 2010, 8:34 pm

Yes. However, I am not able to feel the same for people. For example, I can feel and reciprocrate "love" towards my dog, however I am not able to do the same towards any other person, and it feels awkwards with my parents.

That's why I'm going to study for vet!



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25 May 2010, 9:05 pm

Definitely.I have less sentimentality towards humans.I did get distressed when my late cat tree climbed and managed to get stuck between two
forked branches,I kept constantly voicing her name to come down,however she managed to get herself unstuck and jump down without injuring herself.I was more distressed with that situation than when one of my former work collegues died in his sleep.



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25 May 2010, 9:11 pm

I often feel more distressed about animals suffering than I do about people. My two cats are rescue cats.


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25 May 2010, 9:14 pm

must stop and help turtle across the street


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25 May 2010, 9:15 pm

Absolutely. And that's the reason why I don't think I'd ever be able to be a vet. My dad says I should do it because I love animals so much. But having an animal in pain brought in and me having to operate or even euthanize it is too much for me to handle.



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25 May 2010, 9:18 pm

Aimless wrote:
Once I lived in apartment where a feral cat had kittens in the basement ...


My wife and I have a feral female that was either lost or abandoned at birth, and she is now seven years old. I am not big on keeping animals as pets, and a cat would be just about my last choice. However, I could not even think of not continuing to do my very best to care for this cat ... and she interacts much differently with me than with anyone else.


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