Compare and contrast

A few years ago, there lived in my neighbourhood a feral tomcat that I named Raffi.  He was a large, virile Maine Coon who fathered several litters of kittens since it appeared that stray females in estrus were plentiful and fruitful.  Our little household managed to shelter a number of these pregnant “queens”, found homes for the offspring and got the females spayed.

A wild and inexperienced mama cat gave birth to her kittens under a porch somewhere but would show up every day for her dish of food.  We called her Moochie.  As her brood got older, they started accompanying her and were also fed on our back deck.  Raffi of course was a regular although he would wait until humans were out of sight before he approached the feline all-you-can-eat buffet.

One day Moochie disappeared.  We became concerned for her and the kittens until Raffi showed up with them.  He let the wee fur balls eat first and then he’d scarf up the leftovers.  We never saw Moochie again but eventually we scooped up all the kittens before they became feral like papa – two of them were spitting images of the sire – though Raffi never let us get close to him to take him to the vet for a check-up and neutering.

Raffi displayed what appeared to be nurturing behaviour towards the kittens that had been left to fend for themselves.  He brought them to our house and would even groom them.

It would seem that Rodney Stuart Miller did not have the nurturing instincts that a feral tomcat displayed towards a litter of abandoned kittens.  In fact, the criminal justice system demonstrated that Miller willfully killed Sarah Marie Russell’s new-born infant. The facts of the case are heart-breaking.

How can two adults, one acting consciously and with forethought, the other passively, be so devoid of compassion and empathy?  What did they not learn, how were they emotionally damaged as children, what led them to these circumstances and such actions?   They are both adults and accountable for their behaviour though one can’t help but wonder if they are replicating cycles of violence that they respectively experienced as infants, children and adolescents.

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Keep in mind that fundamentalist religious zealots like Blob Blogging Wingnut and Operation Rescue equate what Miller did to a legal medical procedure available in this country.  They would criminalize abortion so that physicians and women could be prosecuted for terminating a pregnancy.

There’s currently a prime example of zygote zealotry spewing the predictable pro-lies ideology & crapping all over everyone in the comment section of this post, at unrepentant old hippie, if you feel the need to observe the tactics.