Cat Fights
The human kind, not the cat kind… Not to worry, all is well in LostWoods world. Well, mostly. The Psycho Moms (my new title for Talia and Kali) have decided that Lira Bug should not be anywhere near their children and poor Bug has been exiled upstairs. And Comet is having some adjustment issues at home with his Brenda-mom and Gwena. Not totally unexpected since he had been gone for 7 months - it’s almost like he was going to a new home. But we’ll get things all worked out and peace will reign once again.
Back to what I was going to write about… for those of you on the Wegies or NFCFA list, you’ve seen a fair amount of hatefulness in the posts lately. It’s truly sad to see people lashing out at each other in a forum that should be for learning and sharing information about NFCs. I suppose you could say that the posts have contributed to all our knowledge of cat care and you’d be right. But I feel strongly that the same knowledge could have been shared without the flamers thrown at various breeders. Still we are all human and things get said in times of anger or grief that we may later regret. Don’t let the recent insanity color your perceptions of the people involved. Instead, keep an open mind and if you must judge, judge based on actions, not words. My friend Sondra said something last week that I thought was very appropriate: “There’s no pancake so thin it doesn’t have two sides.” On the lists we don’t see the whole story, so do try not to judge.
One thing I tell anyone who is interested in showing cats is that in the cat fancy there are nice people and not so nice people. You have to have thick skin at times to deal with the nonsense that goes on. But my experience has been that more people are nice than not. And I’ve made some wonderful friends through my cats. I try hard to stay out of the way of people who aren’t nice, sticking to politeness when I do have to deal with them. I’d much rather spend my time having fun with friends than fighting with foes. Not to say that I won’t defend myself if attacked, but even then I’ll try to stay calm and reasonable and respond with facts — at least the facts as I see them. Public scenes? Not for me. If we could all remember that — and especially not argue when it means catching innocent bystanders in the crossfire — we’d all be a lot happier.
So bottom line here, if you’re on the list(s), try to remember that we all are people who feel passionately about our cats and our breed, else we wouldn’t be breeders. And passionate people sometimes talk (write?) without pausing to think. When a cat fight (pun intended) breaks out on the list, try not to be too turned off by the fighting. We’re all (mostly!) nice people.
July 19th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Very nice post…I agree that things can certainly be discussed in a civil and non-accusatory manner. After all, we are all adults!