Cats packaged for shipping to their new home in Guam.
Recently I was reading the newspaper. (Making me one of the last six Americans left who reads print media.)
Towards the back of the slim product (should I even call these limp pamphlets newspapers anymore?) was an article about the Humane Society. (Or as I like to call them “Dons of the Cat Mafia”). The “article” was the usual fluff where some hack copied a press release verbatim and called it journalism. All articles about all things in all newspapers are about the need for more money and this was no exception. Apparently if the Humane Society doesn’t get more money there will be chaos in the streets and we’ll all die. (That was the gist of the article.)
In order to justify their benighted existence they mentioned how many critters the local organization had shuffled to new owners. This, of course, is good. I’m not in favor of cats and dogs starving in the streets. Nor am I in favor of shoveling them into incinerators. A critter in a good home is good karma for all of us. But I do contest their choice of words in describing the transfer of ownership from abandoned/feral to owned by someone who will actually feed the damned thing.
I myself would have used the word “foisted”. “We here at super loving facilities have foisted 65 cats, 97 dogs, and 16 badgers on willing new owners.” Yeah I like the way that sounds.
Traditionally they’ve used the marketing term “adopted”. “Due to our immense dedication 14 iguanas and 3 fruit bats have been adopted by new owners.” I can live with it.
The new term was “re-homed”. “We deserve a huge bunch of money because we have re-homed 64 toads, 18 aardvarks, and 928 cats.”
I can’t abide by that level of horseshit!
No animal that I have possessed has been “re-homed” to me. Many I’ve acquired because I truly want them, some have been foisted, a few have been adopted, and some have just showed up. But I will not go into the dark night of “re-homing” anything.
In my opinion, people who use the term “re-home” in reference to critters should be whacked repeatedly on the nose with a rolled up newspaper wrapped around a lead pipe and/or beaten with a large heavy dictionary. Journalists who cut and paste it without comment should be stripped naked and left on an Antarctic ice floe.
As always. Thanks for listening.
