These are subjects that weigh heavily on my souls. I have witnessed and known much proof that animals of all kinds feel emotions, are thinking beings, etc. and I am therefore increasingly sickened by the idea of eating meat, visiting zoos and even aquariums, and even by owning pets.

I’ve read that for the adopted child, their first emotions and transient experience with their adoptive family are fraught with fear and confusion. Where is my mother? Where is her smell? Where is her heartbeat? Why would the same not be true for that moment when a puppy is taken from its mother and given to even the most loving of families? When I look at my dog, Cliffy, I often feel a sadness that he can’t be with his pack, his brothers and sisters, his mother. It’s the domestication of the species by another species that upsets me. What right do we have to not allow dogs to live as families?

The ivory trade is a sickening business partly because we know just how intelligent and emotional elephants are. It’s basically a business of murder, and though it is internationally banned, its outcome is still highly prized in some cultures. Make that analogy to murder in another species and you’ll see how disgusting it is.

The ivory trade’s ugliness inevitably leads my mind to the ugliness of zoos and circuses, as I begin to think about all of the other grave injustices we as humans have committed to such incredible creatures as elephants. Obviously, zoos and circuses do not partake in the same cruelties, and many zoos, especially of late, actively try to work on animal conservation and preservation of species to counteract the cruelty of circuses historically and currently. But zoos are still inherently a caged atmosphere where animals are unnaturally required to get sustenance from humans. Zoos inherently still involve animals separated from their families. Zoos inherently involve the noise of crowds, the tapping of glass, the general melee of humans on the other side of the fence. Even aquariums have these cruelties if you think about it. I’ve heard of people outraged about the whales and the dolphins in captivity, but what about the penguin and the fish? Aren’t they also in a small, cramped, completely unnatural space for our amusement??

Which ultimately leads me to vegetarianism. I love the taste of lamb, of all cuts of beef, of ham, of the dark meat on a turkey. But when I think about liking the dark meat, I can’t help but assess that essentially I am liking the leg of an animal. And that grosses me out. Upon seeing the HBO movie about Temple Grandin, I was struck by how even cows and basic farm animals have emotions. Cows respond to a hugging feeling, and because of this breakthrough in understanding, machines are devised to calm the cows down through a hugging-like device for the purpose of slaughtering them more easily. For purposes of slaughtering them more easily. For purposes of slaughtering them more easily.

When I was younger, my cousin Bridget had a traumatic event at a pig roast because, obviously, she saw the pig and it horrified her the think that everyone was then going to eat that. She refused to eat it at the party, and refused to eat ham, and her mom used to trick her into eating pork by telling her that it wasn’t pig. I remember everyone laughing at how silly the whole thing was, but I don’t see it as silly now. I see it as as a child being able to discern the emotions of another living being much more succinctly than the adults around her, and being affected by those emotions. It reminds me of how as a child, zoo visits were fun but they were never without a hint of sadness for all of the animals that didn’t have their mommies, that were in cages, that looked lonely and scared (even if that was only my perception). I always felt that, acutely.

And now, I think about having children of my own and about how I will raise them and what I will expose them to. I know that I will have to explain to them what humans have done to elephants, lions, monkeys, dogs, cats, koi, goldfish, etc. I know that I’d like to have a vegetarian household, or at least maybe a grass-fed, free-range household that has an open discussions about where meat comes from.

What do you think?