A Sick Ferret, Animal Rights and Serial Killers

I'm terrified right now.  Not for myself but for my ferret.  He's getting up there in age and he's having some issues that may not be fixable.  I'm extremely attached to him - more so than any other animal I've had in my life - it will kill me when he goes.  When he was at the vet's a couple of weeks ago she noticed a lump.  She wasn't sure if it was a swollen kidney, or if it was a tumour.  He has to go back for tests to find out.  He's had a couple of really bad days since then, and even I can feel swelling, but I feel it on both sides.  It's my hope it's simply a kidney infection that can be cleared up relatively easily, assuming permanent damage hasn't been done by the time we figure out what's really wrong with him.

He got pretty weak because he stopped eating, so I had to make him a mush from his kibble and spoon-feed him.  Once he started eating, though, he didn't stop for a long time.  That gives me hope for more time with him.  He's still eating, drinking, going to the bathroom and walking around, so that means he's not ready to go just yet.  However, he's become a lot more cuddly so I know he isn't feeling good.  He's never been a lap ferret, but when he's sick he becomes one for an hour or so before returning to him own bed.  It's nice to have his company like that, but I don't like the implications.

Many people do not understand my attachment to him, and it's not something I can explain to someone who has never felt it.  I've heard people rant and rave about people saying, "They're like my children."  Usually they say it's not possible, and that people who say that obviously have never had children.  Well, that's not the case.  My pets have always been like my children to some extent, and I have a daughter so I don't make the comparison ignorantly.  My ferrets are just as precious to me as my daughter, and they're a lot more vulnerable than she is.

I'm a protector by nature.  I always have been.  I'm also a fighter.  If I hadn't been I wouldn't be alive today.  Woe betide the person who tries to hurt someone or something I love.  Hell, I'd protect a total stranger as long as I felt the situation warranted it.  I don't like seeing anyone or anything picked on or bullied.  I suppose that's part of the reason I'm such a defender of animal rights.  Animals have no voice of their own, and require people like me to stand up for them.  It might be silly to some people, but I hate seeing even an insect suffer.  If they have to be killed, it has to be done quickly or I get really pissed off.  I don't even know if they feel pain, but I so strongly empathize with the possibility of their suffering that I simply can't take the chance that they do.

It has been shown time and time again that a lot of serial killers start out by hurting animals.  A person who is capable of hurting an animal eventually moves on to "bigger" things.  I don't understand why we allow animal cruelty in our world, knowing what we do about the nature of people who are cruel to them.  If we had harsher penalties for animal cruelty, along with mandatory psychiatric evaluations and counselling, we might very well be able to cut down on the number of human predators that prey on other humans.  That's what makes sense to me anyway.  A lot of people don't seem to deal in common sense, however, so it's difficult to reason with them.

The mindset of people who hurt animals usually involves someone having no respect for life, no empathy for other living creatures, and quite often someone who is passing on to animals the abuse they experience at the hands of other humans.  Animal abusers feel powerful.  It's that whole need to control others.  These same people will most likely end up abusing their life partners, and some end up at the extreme end where they kill people.  So, again I ask, why do we tolerate this behaviour?  It's not just little boys, either.  Little girls do it, too.

There are very few case studies on female serial killers.  Women are less willing to talk about their crimes than men.  Men often enjoy the attention and some have even committed the crimes specifically for the attention.  There's a competitiveness among male serial killers.  Female serial killers are a different breed of killer.  I have read several books documenting the crimes of females SKs, but I've only found one case study where there was a decent cross-section of women that were properly interviewed and studied.  Of course, most serial killers are men anyway, which leaves fewer women to pick from when doing these studies, and their reluctance to discuss it makes it even more difficult to find answers.

The few bits of information we seem to have are that the women were almost always severely abused, sexually, emotionally and physically.  They don't sleep well at night.  They tortured animals as children.  There is a great deal of anger in them, which seems obvious given their crimes, but a lot of serial crimes are done for the thrill.  Sometimes women work that way, but it seems that a vengeful mindset is more often the case.  They're pissed off at what they went through, and who could blame them for their anger?  No, I do not think they're justified in killing people because their father had inappropriate contact with them, or their mother burned them with cigarettes.  I don't mean that at all.  I'm just looking at their motivation.

The anger displayed by male serial killers usually revolves around sex.  Granted, the history of abuse is often the same.  A lot of them were dressed in girls' clothing, many of them had mothers that were prostitutes, almost all of them were horrifically abused.  In a lot of cases the first sign that there was a problem was when pets started going missing, or dead wild animals were found that had obviously been tortured.

This is getting a little deep for a blog, and will probably find its way into an article one day, so I'm not going to go into further detail here.  I'll just say I wish people would wake up to the realization that our true personalities show in how we treat those who are weaker than us.  There have been lots of expressions, including stuff written by Nietzsche, regarding judging people by how they treat prisoners or those who are weak, and it's true.  It's a real test of someone's character.  A person who will not hurt something, even when no one is looking, is truly a good person in that respect.  How we act when not being monitored says everything about who we really are.

I look at Stimpy, my little 2-pound ball of fur, and wonder every time how any person could harm such a sweet creature, but it happens all the time.  As for me, I'll just be grateful to have any time I can get with him.  I'd fight to the death to protect him, but there are some things I just can't protect him from and this is one of them.  If he's suffering and there's no cure I will let him go, no matter how painful it might be for me to do so.  Keeping him alive if there's a lot of pain and no way to help him would be selfish in the extreme, and I couldn't bear to watch him suffer.  I will continue to appreciate the times he curls up in my lap to sleep, knowing there might not be too many of those times left.