The 🐱alyst

Living with Aloo destroyed my apathy towards animals.

Watching him, I realised he isn’t just a biological machine. He is a unique individual. He learns, plays, emotionally manipulates me for food 😛, and keeps me up at all hours of the night.

The cognitive dissonance becomes clear when I think about the times I accidentally stepped on his tail.

Those times, he meowed and scrambled away. My heart would sink and I would feel that immediate pang of guilt. Why had I felt so bad those times? Reflecting on this, I think I felt terrible for one reason: I caused a sentient being unnecessary suffering.

At first, I thought that I probably only felt guilt because I love him. But when I thought about other examples, where exactly did I feel fine with their suffering?

• Would I feel fine stepping on the tail of someone else’s cat?
• Would I feel fine stepping on the tail of a stray alley cat?
• Would I feel fine if someone else stepped on the tail of an alley cat?
• Would I feel fine if someone kicked a chicken in front of me?
• Would I feel fine slicing the throat of a cow?
• Would I feel fine paying someone to slice the throat of a cow in front of me?
• Would I feel fine paying someone to keep a cow confined, artificially inseminated for a couple of years, have her babies taken away, and then slaughtered?

Before Aloo, I would feel more and more fine as the animal became more abstract and distant from me.

But Aloo doesn’t earn money or clean up the flat. Sure, you could argue his “utility” is providing me with emotional support, but even if he didn’t, I still wouldn’t want him to be hurt. He made me realise that an animal’s value doesn’t come from what they can do for me, how cute they are, or their proximity to my flat. It comes entirely from the fact that they have a subjective experience of life, and suffering feels terrible to them.

This quote from over 200 years ago by philosopher Jeremy Bentham always resonates with me now:

“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

There is absolutely no biological or logical difference between the pain of stepping on Aloo’s tail and the pain inflicted on a farm animal. The only difference is that one instance of pain happened in my flat, and the other happened behind closed doors. I don’t want to be the cause of either of them! I want to do my best to minimise unnecessary suffering, not willingly contribute to it.

I didn’t go vegan because I suddenly loved all animals as much as I love my cat. I did it because I ran out of logical excuses to justify why their suffering was acceptable for a meal I wouldn’t even remember the next day.

Please tell me you found a flaw in this logic!

If you’ve found any gaps in this reasoning, whether it involves biological requirements, ethical contradictions, or practical realities, I’ve cataloged every objection I initially clung to along the way.