Is Butter A Color?

This blog is dedicated to the memory of our much loved Butterscotch, also known as Sailor Bob, the hermaphrodite cat 

I hate the news. I hate to sound old, but I remember when the news WAS the news. It's archaic now, what with the internet and 24-hour news channels and 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon. I find the news to be either full of sad stuff or full of much too happy stuff, and I can't stand either. How do I keep from being current affairs deficient? I really don't. And I really don't care. I don't want to talk about politics. I don't want to talk about religion. I really don't want to talk about world affairs. But....several times a week, I admit I do indulge in a little news crash course, otherwise known as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Yes, these are my newscasters and I won't get my news anywhere else but from them. I find them to be most accurate and downright hilarious, which is how news should be delivered anyway. 

Unfortunately, the other day the news (not MY news, the bad news) was on and I was too far from the remote to turn the channel. There was a piece about an American soldier somewhere in the Middle East who had adopted a dog that was in their camp and apparently went through all kinds of hoops to bring him back home to the US. They showed a picture of the dog and I have to admit, I was confused. The dog was completely normal. It looked like any picture of any dog anywhere. It wasn't until they actually showed the picture and I WAS disappointed that I realized in my mind I had been expecting the dog to look enormously different from any dog I'd seen before. I thought the dog would LOOK foreign.

I hate to think that I'm racist against animals. Some of my best pets are animals. Plus, I know all about animal racists, like the people who refuse to consider a black cat because it's bad luck or the stories about pit bulls and rottweilers immediately getting put to sleep in shelters because no one will ever adopt them due to the breeds. This is NOT me. I've adopted all kinds of animals from all kinds of shelters. Old or young. Ugly or pretty. Hell, I even adopted a hermaphrodite cat from a shelter once (RIP, Sailor Bob). I can honestly say that I have no prejudices when it comes to pets, yet there I was, staring at this photo on TV of a completely ordinary any dog and being disappointed that it didn't have, I don't know, SOMETHING that indicated it was a foreign dog.

When Jay sat down, I asked him, "Wouldn't you think dogs from another country would, I don't know, look different?" He said, "Why are you watching the news?" I said, "Never mind that. They showed a picture of a dog in some middle east country and it looked EXACTLY like our dogs here in the US." He said, "What? Did you think they'd bark with a French accent?" I said, "Yes. No. I don't know. Maybe. I just didn't think they'd look so familiar. Does that make me animal racist?" He looked me in the eyes and said, "Babe, you're not a racist. You're just an idiot." 

I can always count on my sweetie to tell it to me straight. I'm glad to know I'm not a closet animal racist, but I now realize it's more insidious than people think. If I can just get my kids to stop calling Mellow "The White One" and Dude "The Black One," I'll know we're a completely animal-racism-free home. One step at a time, right?

Living In Perfect Harmony