“No good deed goes unpunished.”Brendan Gill, The Trouble of One House (and earlier)
As that sage Oscar Wilde would have it, sometimes “Life imitates art.” Which is to say that the quote above, taken from a novel, applies to particular situations and even more generally to how the world is going. Let me give you first an account of my own experience and then see how it applies to some societal concerns. I hope, by the way, that this parable will not be taken as an argument for neutering the indigent and homeless, who defecate in the streets and byways of our more progressive cities. I certainly don’t advocate that.
A HISTORY OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF KINDNESS
Six or seven years ago (PP = PrePandemic), in a very cold winter two feral cats came up on our porch looking thin and cold. I fixed up a bed for them in our garage with some old towels and blankets, opened up the garage window so they could get in and out with the garage doors closed, and set out a tin dish of dog food (later dry cat food). At the end of the winter, my good lady told me “Stop feeding them or you’ll have a garage full of cats and their waste.” (She didn’t use “waste,” but this is a family blog.) So, I thought, “they aren’t used to hunting any more, I’ll cut down on the food to make them gradually find their own.” Fast forward three years: I call the local animal rescue organization to help me trap 18 cats for neutering and placing in local farms that use feral cats as barn cats to take care of vermin. A kind lady is able to set four or five traps on several trips and get 16 of the pack. Two remain, who are (unfortunately) of different sexes.
My good lady again tells me, “Stop feeding them; it’s summer and they can hunt for their own food.” Again, I adapt a policy of gradual reduction in food supplies. Fast forward again, two years: there are now four cats, three females and one male. Male and female felines from other parts have come and gone. Car accidents, predators have seemed to remove kittens; one day a mother cat is marching along with three or four kittens, the next day they aren’t there. In the meantime, inflation has hit dry cat food hard: a 16 pound bag that cost $5.98 five years ago is now $12.98. I could buy a new M2 Mac Mini for what I’m paying out for cat food during a year.
Again I call for help, this time from a woman who was noted in the local paper for her work in feral cat rescue. The neighboring town has awarded her $4000 to help her trap and neuter feral cats. She’s taken a mother and four kittens and will be returning to trap the remain male and female (one of the females has disappeared.) And this time if any remain, they will not be fed!
IS MY HISTORY A PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES?
Now, my intent in telling you all about this was not to celebrate my own good treatment of animals—I’m not St. Francis—but to stir conversation about what welfare is and should be. Are we doing the right thing in how we dispense aid to the poor and helpless? If not, how should we change? Is society going to be a Darwinian survival of the fittest, or do we follow the teachings of Jesus and give all we have to the poor? How should we give so that “we train a man to fish, rather than giving him a fish for dinner?”
One thing has to be dealt with in a new way. Mental Illness, addiction and alcoholism are primary causes for homelessness. More attention should be given to treatment, not just preventing and punishing drug use. And with that thought I’ll leave it to the reader to propose how welfare might be changed: perhaps take it away from government altogether and leave it to private resources? Did that work in Victorian times?
It is always difficult to persuade humans to do the best thing for them. We have a number of shelters in town but many are still on the street corners with their home made signs asking for “help”. I don’t have the answer.
I most certainly don’t havetheanswer.
For what it’s worth, my opinion is that it’s one soul at a time.
A trust must develop between the individual and the guide who has committed itself to serving God’s child. Prayers and love in action is my best guess as to helping our neighbors up from a pit of dispare.
The chump change drop isn’t much help for obvious reasons. Where will they spend the $20 bucks?
It’s gonna take involvement.
[…] Stylist Bishops & Nuns can be Friends, but in Texas. . . – A Treasure To Be Shared Blog A Feral Cat Parable – Bob Kurland, Ph.D., at The American Catholic “Besieged”: Sanctifying the Pagan – […]
[I’m a trapper, out of necessity. We had a cat come up outside at beginning of Covid and the kids fell for Earl. They names the cat Earl so I wouldn’t want it gone as much, female cat = kittens every 4/6 months w each one larger amounts.
Back up a couple of years when I rented traps to take care of feral problem on property. I was after 2. I ended up spay and neutering over 18! Although we have a local shelter that does it 25 per that’s still a chunk or change.
I thought I had put a permanent dent in our neighborhood.
Now the spay clinic shuts down during Covid due to restrictions. Earl decides to change sexes and is now Earlene w 8 kittens.
Im panicked. Is it possible to be overrun w cats? Maybe? We bring some in hopefully to find homes for them.
When it opened I got over 24 spayed and neutered. We are pretty sure we missed 1. Feral cats are not picky in that inbreeding is high especially since my first spaying took out a few big males.
This time I did qualify for a grant after number 12 – thank you Jesus, because like everything else, price went up.
There had not be another time where our officials close stuff like during Covid and it grows to a large size.
Don, you gotta get them spayed and neutered!]
All that said, the state I’m in we know that some young have figured out they can make some money and have it good, own section 8 apartment, by having more children out of wedlock.
🤷🏻♀️ we are very pro life and we do help. It is a big strain. Some families have problems w incest and that’s all I’m going to say.
I heard a family member chewing out her own niece who was perpetually pregnant – working system.
How do you address it? I was thankful to hear a family member try to talk sense in her but I would never be ok w forced sterilization.
People with their heart in the right place are often unwise.
When you rescue cats, you MUST make sure the cats are sterilized or neutered so that they cannot reproduce. This is imperative and VITAL. If you don’t, you will unwittingly create great problems for yourself, for the cats, and other people. You will suffer anguish and anxiety because you did not bother, or were unwilling to spend the money in the first place.
The solution to the problem is that there will never be a permanent solution. We will always have homelessness as long as we have sin on earth.
I am of the view that we should help those who are struggling. Even if it is just to offer them a moment of hope. Say you pass someone and buy them a meal or a cup of coffee. I don’t think it’s our job though, to carry another human being unless that human being is a child or a minor.
As for the social and economic burden this places on the rest of society, not to mention the impact of crime- I think government deliberately releases drugs into the community in order to cause this sort of havoc in order to keep that gap between wealthy and middle class as wide as possible. Prayers is needed for such troubling times.
After Jesus fed the 5000, then walked on water to the other side of the lake in John chapter 6, the crowd followed him around the shoreline. He had given the crowd one free handout. When the crowd met up with Him, verses 26 and 27 state:
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal.”
Jesus did NOT given the “peepul” another free handout. Instead, He launched into the Bread of Life Discourse.
No free handouts. Jesus NEVER said that it is Caesar’s responsibility to have social justice programs. Look at the anointing of Jesus’ feet with 300 denarii worth of perfumed oil in John chapter 12. Verses 4 through 6 state:
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was to betray him), said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” This he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it.
That’s the cry of every single godless politician and cleric enamored with the false gospel of social justcie, the common good and peace at any price. Now what was Jesus’ response? Verse 8 tells us:
The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.
If YOU believe in social justice, then YOU give to the poor out of YOUR money, NOT out of the taxpayer’s taxes. Don’t YOU dare to suggest that the taxpayer should finance your social justice program just to assuage your conscience and validate your sanctimonious, self-righteous virtue signalling.
BTW, I have done my duty (and will continue to do my duty) in helping those less fortunate, from alcoholics needing rent at a halfway house to victims of human trafficking to helping my wife’s family members immigrate to the United States legally (putitng them up rent free in our home). And I think I do a better job than government ever could.
I pray for the destruction of this ideology of social justice, the common good and peace at any price. The Gospel is about conversion and repentance, righteouness and holiness, NOT giving the 5000 “peepul” at the Lake of Galilee another free handout of loaves and fishes.