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Notes -
I have a huge amount of experience working with animals (both wild and domesticated). Slaughtered quite a few head of livestock by hand in my back yard today, as it happens, which I do about once a week. So I have a lot of thoughts here -- but the main thing I want to suggest to you is that cruelty toward animals is irreverent toward the Creator.
Yes, the chain of being is real and man's place is that of dominion over all other animals and more besides. How then shall we conduct ourselves?
FWIW I completely endorse your perspective on the rat and the kitten, though I don't expect most others to get it. Regardless of intentions, learning to kill animals well requires botching the process rather a lot of times.
Even so, not giving a crap is contraindicated. I doubt you've had much occasion for (or inclination toward) abuse but it never hurts to bear in mind that one will someday stand before the dread judgment seat of Christ.
I crush a worm for no reason - I feel sorrow.
I feed a worm to my chickens - I feel peace.
The first action goes against my values, but not because the worm suffers. The first action is wrong because it reduces a beautifully complex piece of nature to mere goo. The second action transmutes that complexity into a new form.
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I don’t think we’re talking past each other much.
Cats, uh, do not generally deliver a humane and quick death, and hunters who place their shots poorly are not thought well of. I certainly wouldn’t tolerate a novice Hunter making gut shots. But that’s an unrealistic expectation of cats; what animals do to each other is not bound by the golden rule.
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The Buddhist would, of course, be horrified.
The Christian could reason that, acting in the same way as a mother cat would for her kittens, the man is simply doing what a cat would be inclined to do in nature, which is to hunt. And God made his creatures to do what they do, and lacking volition are inherently blameless in deed.
The aesthete would go: "Which is cuter and/or tastes better?"
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