The Beast Withdraws the Better to Spring (Kitten Post)

Here is the Petfinder post for Friday, with reader comments taken into account, and time taken up by tedious Google updates, and so on...

I seriously think that in a well regulated society, there'd be no professional social workers. Making society work would be everybody's responsibility and nobody's full-time profession. 

I'll grant that otherwise nice people become social workers, just as otherwise decent and even intelligent people become coal miners, just because that's a job they're able to do in a place where they want to live. Almost anything people do in order to provide for their families is better than failing to provide for their families. When the fad for psychotherapy-for-everybody broke, even Wayne Dyer became a motivational speaker, I became a massage therapist, a school friend became an accountant, and some people found it easy and convenient to become social workers. 

But it does raise red flags, for me, that anyone--worst of all a social worker--would be more concerned about whether an article "downs" social workers, i.e. makes them feel bad about themselves, than about whether it's about a problem they can help to solve. "Me-me-me-and-my-widdle-fee-wings" come ahead of the good of society? ????? At this web site adults get to feel good about themselves when they detach from their immediate feelings and make choices for the good of society. If you want to feel good about having developed the ability to mess up someone else's floor, you really need to be a kitten. 

Those who JUST want to see the kittens are invited to stop reading here and scroll down till you see kitten pictures. You can share the links and help picture the kittens homes without steering people to this web site. 

During the week I read some of the details of the 2021 news story about Oakley Carlson, the little girl who disappeared under incredibly incriminating circumstances. 

Just months after being born to two known methamphetamine users, the baby Oakley was placed in foster care, apparently identified as a candidate for adoption. She was a remarkably photogenic child; apparently no published picture of her was taken for commercial modelling purposes, but any of them could have been. I've seen no claims that she was intelligent, but she was happy and healthy and, when told that she had a slightly older sister with disabilities, she wanted to meet her sister. 

Why was the sister not in foster care, some asked. It's a valid question. Andrew Carlson and his girlfriend Jordan Bowers were not people with whom you or I would leave a goldfish. They had three other children besides Oakley. A suspicion arises that the others, at least one of whom was officially considered to have "disabilities," might just have seemed less adorable and adoptable because they were less pretty than Oakley--most children are. Evidence does not suggest that they were better treated than Oakley. On the contrary. Bowers had other babies with other men, one of whom has petitioned for a "permanent no-contact order" to keep her away from their offspring. Hair samples from the three children living with Carlson and Bowers showed, when tested, that the children had been ingesting "substantial amounts" of methamphetamine. Photos of Carlson and Bowers consistently show that both have a drug look, typical of meth users--and worse than that, when little Oakley visited her grandmother after spending just a few weeks in their home, her grandmother told police that Oakley's pretty face was developing that look. Bowers was an accomplished and well known thief. Carlson had been arrested for beating Bowers, though when Oakley visited her natural parents at home she reported that Bowers hit him, too. Carlson was supposed to be in a "treatment" program for domestic violence when Oakley was returned to her natural parents' home, but had been "discharged" for not reporting to the program as ordered. 

Oakley, as the world now knows, was last verifiably seen alive on the day after her former foster mother requested the sheriff check on her. Carlson and Bowers weren't pleased with Mrs. Carlson's concerns about her, either; they'd had no further contact with Carlson's parents since. Outside interest in Oakley's health made the child disappear.  

This was in Washington. Generally it's been considered a very "blue" State, pro-government, not pro-privacy. But Andrew Carlson was a "little guy" if ever one was. He was a laborer if he worked at all. He may have had relatives (or drug customers) in local government, but nobody seems to have pinpointed any connections. It seems to have been policy to turn a blind eye to the fact that he all but literally walked around carrying a sign to tell people "I am an abuser...of a drug well known to promote abuse of people." Why were government officials as protective of him as they were? 

* When Oakley's foster mother, who wanted to adopt Oakley, thought it was awfully early in the domestic violence "treatment" program for Oakley to go back to Carlson and Bowers, the state office's reaction was to move the date for "family reunification" even closer.

* When the foster mother reported what Oakley had told her about Bowers and Carlson fighting, a  male social worker "spoke very sternly" to the foster mother, saying that "since she did not witness any incidents firsthand, he presumed that her information was inaccurate." (Presumed, indeed. There's that failure of society to teach men that, if they have any questions about a woman's word, they need to be very careful about delaying obedience with a humble "I'm sorry, I don't understand," lest their fitness to do any job that involves interaction with anything but garbage cans be called into permanent doubt.) 

* When Oakley's grandmother expressed concerns about the child's developing a drug look in just a few weeks with her druggy parents, social workers ignored her, too.

* When the foster parents expressed concern about Carlson and Bowers having been fired from jobs for drug abuse, they were told that "Being poor isn't a reason for someone to not have their children." 

* Even when legislators proposed closer regulation of "family reunification" in cases where parents' unfitness was caused by drug addiction, social workers led the opposition to a bill nicknamed the Oakley Carlson Act, saying it "would result in a high level of intrusive surveillance." When questioned by the well-intentioned citizens who wanted more surveillance for drug-abusing parents, not for all parents but for those known to be incompetent as a result of their criminal behavior, government employees admitted that their real complaint was that supervising these unincarcerated criminals would not pay for the "treatment facility and ongoing services necessary." 

Have we seen a pattern like this before? We have. La bete recule pour mieux sauter...the beast withdraws, the better to spring.

When state governments have been encouraged to know their place and not over-regulate citizens' behavior, they have strategically under-regulated things enough to create levels of anarchy that would cause citizens to demand some regulations. There were in the past, for example, states where it was considered unnecessary to collect property taxes; when only landowners who paid property taxes had a vote, people assumed that most men would want to be seen paying their taxes like good fellows. In fact, while some men did, states like Kentucky had significant numbers of small farmers who would rather save ten dollars than vote, any day. These slackers exploited the benefits of citizenship while paying no taxes until citizens demanded that a government office be authorized to keep track of all property owners and collect taxes from every one.

More recently Washington, D.C., didn't set up regulations to make marriages a source of revenue, but upheld common-law marriage in situations where the probability was that people had not been living together as couples, even in situations where it was easy for foreigners who wanted to work in the United States to exploit blatantly false claims of marriage to citizens. Any summer student could, in theory, rent a room from a single adult, present any mail they'd received as proof that they'd been living in the person's house, and, whether the home owner was also living in the house or not, claim that they were now married to the home owner. And people did exploit this lack of regulations until D.C. joined the growing list of places where churches had to register for state regulation in order for even church weddings to be upheld by government.

Government employees are unlikely to be honestly suffering from any excess of scruples about intruding on citizens' rights with laws like the Oakley Carlson Act. If they hesitate to over-regulate, we can be sure that what they want is support, financial even more than moral, for intrusive surveillance and over-regulation. Some social workers would love to be authorized to supervise the parenting behavior of every parent who's formed a habit of drinking beer while watching the Sunday afternoon football game. They just want to make sure they're paid for it. So they adopt strategic policies of pushing under-regulation to absurdity.

Any system of regulation of human behavior will sooner or later be corrupted. There are, however, counter-strategies for controlling the "beast" of control freaks in government. Instead of giving in to the "We need more funding to regulate this" with the expected reflex response, "We just want keep meth heads from killing their babies! We'll raise the money somehow...by overregulating some legitimate activity to death, demanding heavy license fees from small businesses, e.g., or from couples who had assumed that any church wedding would be upheld by government"...citizens and lawmakers could cut the complaints about funding short. "We'll revise the budget to free up funding for this by cutting out funding for something that seems less important. Why not reassign to the supervision of unincarcerated criminals all the staff and funding that were formerly directed to enforcing attendance at pre-choice public schools." 

Beasts must be controlled.

For those who have earned or are earning their children's school fees by working inside a beastly system--like yeasts in the intestines of the beast--some emotional consolation may be gained from the company of a friendly, lovable, literal beast.

Kittens are tiny, fluffy, adorable, predatory beasts. They spend a lot of time demonstrating how to withdraw the better to spring. 

It's been said that kittens are naturally housebroken. This is true--sort of. Kittens are born at a rather early stage of development. They can't see, they can't hear, they can't eat solid food, and they can't even get rid of milk after they've digested what nourishment they get from milk. Kitten digest consists of odorless little curds of cat's-milk cheese and, while cleaning her kittens, the mother cat eats these. During the second month of their lives, as their eyes and ears open and their muscles build strength, kittens get control of their excretory processes. This coincides with their developing appetites for solid food and the mother cat's ceasing to clean their bottoms. 

From a kitten's point of view the ability to toddle out of its little den and make a mess on the floor is a milestone in life, something to share with loved ones. Usually that means the mother and perhaps siblings. If a kitten calls your attention, fouls your floor, and beams pride, joy, and innocence up at you, probably it really expects you to share the thrill.

It needs, of course, to learn what the litter box or the sand pit is for...but even while saying "No!", placing the kitten where you want it to go to do that sort of thing, and cleaning up the mess, you need to understand that a kitten who does this disgusting little trick once or twice is telling you it's going to be your pet. It shared this moment with you because it likes you.

There are other moments in life with kittens when their demonstrations of affection will continue to make us wonder about the whole relationship. Cats can bite hard enough to hurt humans; it's not easy for them to break our necks, as they instinctively do to their prey, and most wild cats just don't seem to care for the taste of humans anyway, but they have the ability to eat our flesh. Kittens almost never bite hard enough to do any damage, but they just love to roll over and invite us to touch their underside so they can stick all their little teeth and claws into our hands. But...hands, and sometimes ankles or feet, are what they "attack." They don't go for our eyes or throats. Growing kittens inflict surface wounds on their humans but we must remember, as we push back until the kitten disengages, walk away, and disinfect the wounds, that they're acting on instincts that tell them how to scratch their siblings, who are covered in fur. Some kittens can learn to "be gentle" when playing with humans, but since they need to practice being predators it's generally recommended that at least two kittens be adopted at once and that you keep a few "toys" handy for playing with them. 

What is a cat toy? Anything the cat can safely practice hunting and killing. If you have a fast-growing hedge you can use hedge trimmings, as I usually do. Some cats like to chase rolling balls, and may even figure out that bringing the ball back to you will make you throw it again. Some cats like to play with belts or socks. More elaborate, expensive toys designed just to amuse cats tend to make more impression on humans than on cats, but cats will play with them as long as humans do. 

Indoor cats, of course, often like to play with things they see humans playing with, such as yarn and thread, pens and pencils, expensive dust catchers humans think look decorative, chessboards. sometimes electronics. Some indoor kittens are fascinated by the way human feet move under sheets, too, and some like to capture the socks of people who take their shoes off and walk around in their socks indoors.

Kittens naturally want meals a little before sunrise and a little before sunset. They are naturally most active at the same time their prey species are. Indoor kittens often show an instinctive tendency to wake their humans at six o'clock every morning, often by pouncing on those tempting toes if they are allowed in bedrooms.

Nevertheless, all right-minded people agree that, on the whole, kittens are fun. Their behavior has reasons. They might not be able to explain those reasons in logical terms if they could speak, but if you pay attention, you can. You can figure out why the kitten is doing things you don't like and how to get it to do something different that you like better. This is a real achievement and should make you feel good about yourself. Even if you don't succeed, a purring kitten magically makes you feel good about life in general, anyway.

Here are some of America's most telegenic adoptable kittens--picks from participating animal shelters' photos displayed at Petfinder.com, from New York, Washington, and Atlanta. Obviously I can only judge the photos. If you visit the shelters, animals who didn't photograph so well may be even more adorable, in real life, than the ones who did.

Zipcode 10101: Blue's Babes from New York City 

Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/blues-babes-62575252/nj/union-city/union-city-feral-cat-committee-nj813/

All that's known about their purrsonalities so far is that two are male and two are female, and the shelter insists that at least two be adopted together.

Zipcode 20202: Florence from D.C. 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/florence-61869433/dc/washington/city-dogs-city-kitties-rescue-dc22/

This was not the cutest cat picture on the page.. Not even close. The cutest cat picture, by far, turned out to belong to a kitten someone had already claimed. Well, my opinion, for what it's worth, is that it's hard to go wrong with a dark Tortie, though this one is classified as long-haired, expected to be even fluffier and need daily grooming assistance as she grows up. There's another kitten the same age the shelter recommends adopting with her, unless you're already living with a cat.

Zipcode 30303: Saturn from Atlanta 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/saturn-63189034/ga/atlanta/fulton-county-animal-services-ga217/

Actually she looks too little to be adopted. The shelter staff don't say a word. She and other very young kittens the same shelter calls Venus and Mars may be orphans. Sometimes a spayed female cat likes to adopt very young kittens, and may induce lactation and thus fill in whatever nutrient deficiencies may have been produced by abrupt weaning. If you live with a cat like that, consider adopting orphan kittens.

The Petfinder kittens page for Atlanta was a mess this week. Pages have been created for several kittens who either don't have photos, or have photos that don't make clear that they are kittens. If you go to the shelters you may be pleasantly surprised.