Once Again, the Cats Aren't Voting

A D.C. nonprofit organization has been caught mailing out applications to encourage registration of Virginia pets to vote in Election 2012...

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/virginia-politics/2012/jul/25/15/tdmain01-romney-camp-asks-va-to-probe-voter-forms-ar-2081517/

This post will serve as official notice that, although the Cat Sanctuary cats do express their opinions on many points of Cat Sanctuary operating policy, they do not vote in human elections. The local registrar knows our address. Any applications for voter registration cards in the names of Grayzel, Candice, Iris, Irene, Ivy, Inkblot, Heather, or Little Mo, associated with the family name "King" or with the real legal family name of any human at the same address, may be prosecuted as fraud.

Cat Sanctuary graduates like Dusty, Polly, Mogwai, Steelgray, and Graybelle don't vote, either. Other residents who've been mentioned here, like Bisquit, Mac, and Princess Anne, never voted while living.

Animals do have political interests. They're definitely concerned about their right to live their own lives, with or without human companions, free from physical injury by humans. They're also interested in their right to self-determination; although a majority of bird and mammal species seem to live longer in captivity, many animals violently resist captivity, and even "domestic" animals show a pronounced preference to spend most of their waking hours in a natural (outdoor) environment among their own species.

It's fair to say that, if animals could read newspapers and operate voting machines, they would vote against any politician, any legislation, or any form of "planning" that aggravates human population density. Cats and dogs would agree that everybody needs a yard and a tree of his or her own. Other lovable animals, like deer and loons, would agree that dense clusters of humans make places unfit to live in.

It's also fair to say that animals would vote against various forms of pollution that are not caused by human population per se, but are the result of humans' choices...like spraying poison or dumping toxic waste into air, water, or soil. Animals have no problem with traditional mining, but residents of Lee and Wise County have described to me what sound like protests against strip mining delivered by many kinds of animals. All animals, even very human-friendly animals like Magic who enjoy riding in cars, appreciate car-free or at least low-traffic environments.

How would animals vote on the local "ordinances" some cities have recently accepted, requiring that some kinds of animals be sterilized? Close observation shows that animals do have individual views of birth control that vary as widely as humans' views do. Many humans who have, for some reason or other, found it unusually difficult to bring up children, not only voluntarily choose to be sterilized but pay substantial amounts of money for the procedure. Other humans want to surround themselves with as many children as they can produce and, if at all possible, adopt additional children as well. We've seen unmistakable animal counterparts of both behavior patterns, and several in between, at the Cat Sanctuary. There are also several reports of wild animals, like Bernd Heinrich's Geese of Beaver Bog, who seem to make case-by-case informed decisions about the need for birth control...preferably for the neighbors and not themselves! We will never be able to get all the information we need, nor will animals be able to get all the information we might think they need, about what animals really think of the need to limit their species population growth. The closest we're likely to come to a consensus on this issue will be an agreement that humans need to make informed individual decisions about what's best for the animals they know best.

Humans should vote with due consideration for our animal friends. Specifically, we should consider politicians' demonstrated ability to say no to polluters, animal haters, and the Humane (Domestic Species Genocide) Society.

However, when voting with our animal friends in mind, we should also remember that animals don't tell lies. Few animals are capable of deliberately deceptive behavior, even when it's justified by survival needs. No animal of another species wants to be, or to pretend to be, a human. The only animal anyone's been able to ask outright, "Which are you, a human or another kind of animal," was a gorilla who replied "Fine animal gorilla."

It's likely that, if our animal friends understood the voting process as something only humans are allowed to do, they would consciously refuse to vote. (And, in reality, when was the last time you saw a dog or a parakeet standing in line at the polls?)

Please do not try to register your pet to vote. Please do not allow anyone else, as it might be a fellow human who votes under his or her own name in a different town, to vote in your pet's name.

And please don't fall for the myth that photo identification will prevent people from voting in the names of animals, or of deceased humans. What requiring photo identification does is create a market for bogus photo identification. Anybody who's willing to register to vote in the name of your dog is willing to fake an identification card matching his or her face with the name of your dog. Why create an industry we don't need?