This is filed under Comedy because some of it is comedic. The rest is either tragic or teeth-grindingly irritating, depending on your mindset at a given point in time.
Following the loss of Cotton Kitty in October 2013 due to terminal renal failure, we decided, after some mourning and reflection, to get two sibling kittens to add to our other two cats, Snickers and Luna.
We have begun the process of checking out adoption sites and channels. We got a lead today on a possible litter of female kittens ready in 2-3 weeks in the Metroplex, so Mary rang the adoption organization to find out more about the kittens.
I was listening in in the kitchen, but I immediately understood that the person on the other end of the phone (female) was conducting a classic Q&A session to answer her question "are these people suitable to adopt MY animals". I have been through this process more than once in the UK.
The conversation soon took a negative turn as Mary told the woman that, yes, We Allow Our Cats Outdoors. This elicited a gasp of horror. Why, Mary was told, the entire outdoors was filled with predators - dogs, coyotes, even hawks!
However, what really tipped the scales even further against us was when Mary told the woman that we lived in Duncanville. This elicited a further audible gasp of horror, after which the woman launched into a further monologue about the slavering, lethal predator population of South Dallas, including a rundown of all the various and horrifying ways in which hapless cats could be dispatched if they so much as stepped outside of our house. The woman in question lives in Plano.
Listening from the kitchen, it was clear that this was not a conversation, Mary was now listening to a paranoid person lecturing us about the Terrible Predator Universe, by implication also itemizing our cat-keeping negligence sins.
To my total lack of surprise, we were ruled out summarily as possible adoptees for her kittens.
I can recognize North Metroplex condescension when I hear it, and I certainly recognized it from this woman. It is not the first time our revelation that we live in Duncanville has been greeted with raised eyebrows followed by some variation on "you poor people". It seems that for many people living North of 635, the entire Metroplex area to the South, with the possible exception of some upper-crust enclaves such as Highland Park and Turtle Creek, is a primitive sinkhole of ethnic minority squalor. I recognize this broad-brush stereotyping on the basis of location pathology only too well, having grown up in public housing in the UK, and being subjected to similar condescension when growing up in my home town. I didn't much care for it then, and I still don't care for it today, although I am now mature enough to find it mostly amusing instead of annoying.
The whole business of demanding that cats be kept indoors is one that I find highly vexing. Cats are outdoor hunting animals, of desert origin. They are wily, resourceful and smart; even in their domesticated form, cats are perfectly capable of surviving in the wild as is evidenced by the rise of feral cat colonies in towns and cities. Many cats do not respond well to being kept indoors 24x7, they develop behavioral issues. The practice of declawing cats is almost non-existent in Europe, where most cats are indoor-outdoor cats, but it is shockingly common here in the USA, where some people have come to regard cats as a moving fashion accessory, expected to look decorative and make the house more like a model for the cover of Southern Living. As for actually behaving like cats, Hell No. Whatever next? They might go outdoors and bring in a mouse or a lizard!
If we lived 100 miles out in the country, with coyotes in the area, we would be (at the least) keeping the cats indoors at night. We visited the Earthship colony in Taos a few years back, and the Earthship owners all keep their cats indoors after dark for that reason. This seems sensible. However, in an area where we have little vehicle traffic, little evidence of predators, and only small dog owners in the subdivision, we feel comfortable about allowing our cats outdoors.
More amusingly, Mary had to listen to a lecture on predation from a woman living in (of all places) Plano, an area of the Metroplex that mostly comprises manufactured sub-divisions, with all original traces of nature bulldozed to be replaced by order and ecology sourced from Home Depot and Lowes. Any self-respecting predator landing in Plano would be heading out into the countryside at a rate of knots, rather like the armadillo I saw wandering across a field in Flower Mound a few years ago. He/she was definitely heading for the Red River that day...
So...we will let the paranoid lady in Plano find other homes for her kittens, and I am sure she can regale her friends with more tales of unsuitable silly people from the Primitive South. We will find kittens that will live with us and love their surroundings. Cotton was the happiest cat I lived with, and most of that was down to his access to the yard and house in Duncanville.