Sashay Schettler
Mr. R
English 120
12 September 2013
Fancy Feast’s New Flavor for Snakes: Tender Kitten Feast in Grilled Chicken Flavored Gravy We tend not to drive too deeply into subjects that pit our brains against our hearts, animal human relationships being one. While easy to overlook, these relationships play a big part in our day to day lives, and as I’ve learned not always in a good way. I found out firsthand, while reading Hal Herzog’s Some We love, Some We hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals, how hard it is to see a subject in a new light. I found myself torn between what I thought of as morally right and logically correct. The major argument being, is it morally ok to feed unwanted kittens to snakes?
As I write this paper, I periodically glance at the picture I have of my fluffy grey cat Henry. Henry passed away when he had to be relocated to my aunt’s ranch, our house flooded in 2009 and our new condo didn’t allow pets. Now Henry had a cozy life with the Schettlers and on the ranch. Yet my aunt claims to this day, that he died of a broken heart. I, however sweet and sentimental the thought, argue that he died because my mom accidentally let him go a couple of turns in the dryer… Henry was always a fighter; I rescued him from the woods, out of a litter of two kittens he was the only survivor. His mother and sister did not make it out of the woods, but Henry wasn’t giving up that easily. After the tragic incidents that were the start of Henry’s life, I convinced my father to let him stay in the house. I know there is controversy over how animals actually feel about us, but I can assure you, you wouldn’t have questioned our relationship. I knew he was mad at me for leaving him; every time I came to visit, he would ignore my presence for the first couple of hours. Yet once he was satisfied that he had tortured my enough he would snuggle up, just content to sit on my lap. My aunt and cousins were always astounded by his uncharacteristic action when I was around. You see I must add that he wasn’t too fond of children; my little cousins found this out the hard way.
This is not to say all cats are like this, and in fact this was the first cat I ever had that was so affectionate, that seemed to return my unconditional love. While cats claw the furniture, carpet, and your hands they also occasionally mark their territory. Compared to cats, snakes seem like a walk in the park. Herzog confirms this with his own experience, “Sam was a low-maintenance pet. He did not scratch the furniture, keep the neighbors awake, or require daily exercise. He was gentle” (5). In this quote Herzog referrers to his son’s pet boa constrictor, he plays up the most attractive qualities that we love in “pets.” Yet as appealing as these qualities are, more people prefer cats. Why is that? They are both predators, they both “eat flesh for a living” (Herzog 6).
While cats are arguable cuter than snakes, what are their eating and “hunting” habits? Do most cat owners know the damage their untamed tabbies inflict? Do they care? Herzog examines the cats of America and their diets, “Each day the cats of America chow down on a wide array of meat. The pet-food shelves of my local supermarket are piled high with six-ounce tins of cow, sheep, chicken, horse, turkey, and fish. Even dried cat foods are advertised as containing “fresh meat.” With about 94 million cats in America, the numbers add up. If each cat consumes just two ounces of meat daily, en masse, they consume nearly 12 million pounds of flesh- the equivalent of 3 million chickens- every single day” (6). Wow, 12 million pounds of flesh every single day? That’s insane, as well as all of their food choices, dried food, fresh food… etcetera. What happened to the farm cats that ate mice? Their plain diet of mice has been substituted for Fancy Feast, Gravy Lovers: Chicken Feast in Grilled chicken flavored gravy, gourmet cat food. I know this because my cousin’s cat Jackson “feasts” on such things. In addition to their large appetite, “Cats are recreational killers. It is estimated that a billion small animals a year fall victim to the hunting instincts of our pet cats” (Herzog 6). In this passage, Herzog makes it impossible to ignore the cruel instinctive behavior our feline companies inflict on our ecosystem. How horrible, you mean those cute kittens that are posing for the cover of the new 2014 calendar are cold-blooded killers?
My perspective was changing, like a sly chameleon, when Herzog presented this new information, that realistically and logically made sense yet made my heart cry out in protest! While making a case for snakes, Herzog states, “So, pet cats cause havoc. What about pet snakes? Well, first, there are a lot fewer of them. In addition, each snake consumes only a fraction of the flesh that a cat does. According to Harry Greene, a Cornell University herpetologist who studies the feeding ecology of tropical snakes, an adult boa living in a Costa Rican rain forest consumes maybe half a dozen rats a year. This means that a medium-sized pet boa constrictor needs less than five pounds of meat a year to stay in good condition” (6). Here Herzog is illustrating the contrast between the two pets and the differences between their diets, setting me up for my final argument.
The cat population seems to be at an influx with a lack of homes to go around, “About 2 million unwanted cats, many of them kittens, are euthanized in animal “shelters” in the United States each year. Presently their bodies are cremated. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make these carcasses available to snake fanciers (Herzog 6)?” So what Herzog is getting at, is if cats eat a more flesh than a snake does, kills for fun, and are already on death row in shelters, wouldn’t it make more sense if their bodies were used to feed snakes? Sickened by the valid argument that Herzog presented, all I could think about was my precious Henry, with his beautiful green eyes looking up at me as he clawed my mother’s furniture… All right, so logically I know that cats are devious creatures, it doesn’t stop them from being adorable and mostly lovable. My Henry got me through some pretty rough times, bless his little cat soul. And now some guy is telling me that feeding unwanted cats to snakes is not only logical but, because of their personalities and diets, is morally ok? I admit to seeing the logic, but I ultimately I refuse to accept the idea of feeding cats, no matter the age, no matter the circumstances.

Work Cited
Herzog, Hal. Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals. New York: Harper Perennial. 2011. Print.