Tossing Kittens And Brutalizing Horses--Just Another Day At The Human Zoo. By Jeff Smith BEING A STRAY kitten continues to put one at the mercy of the merciless. A brief report in The Arizona Daily Star a couple weeks ago outlined a skin-crawling episode in which the foster parents of a litter of kittens got word they could take the babies to a pet store where they might be saved from strayhood or death and placed in good homes. Apparently an employee of the pet shop had informed the would-be kitten donors of this. At any rate they tried it; taking the kitties to The Puppy Place at 1106 S. Wilmot Road, where the manager told them the store already had a surplus of kittens. A heated discussion ensued. The donors allowed as how they were led to believe they could drop the kittens off, and beat a retreat. The manager reportedly allowed as how they damn sure weren't leaving the kittens, and, as the donors drove away, hurled the kittens against the window of the fleeing truck. Now I understand language is an imprecise and subjective vehicle for conveying absolute truth. Let's say "hurled" isn't the best word, that "tossed" might be more accurate. And let's say perhaps the manager was trying to land the kitties in the bed of the pickup so they'd have a ride back whence they came. Even the more generous interpretation of the facts casts a pall over the apparent intentions of the participants in this pitiful spectacle. The manager, who was cited for cruelty to animals, contends the driver of the truck almost ran her over, and that she gently tossed the kitties onto a tarp over the truck bed. The donors, according to the police report, say she flung them against the window, "very hard." The courts will decide. Meanwhile I have decided they're all ignoring the point here, which is that these innocent kittens--who didn't ask to be born, let alone to put up with this type of abuse--are getting the snot beat out of them. To the foster parents: Nice of you not to dump the kitties in the desert, but get your momma cat spayed, and don't try to leave your problem on someone else's doorstep when she says she can't take in your strays. To the manager of the pet shop: Don't offer to take in strays on an as-needed basis. Kittens are always in greater supply than demand. And never, even on the Letterman show, launch kittens ballistically. To the world at-large: Do not assume, just because someone is in the business of trafficking in animals, that they love the product and will treat it with respect and kindness. Err if you must on the side of caution, and until it be proven otherwise, regard pet shops in the same light as those colonial American institutions wherein domestic workers could be engaged on a long-term basis...for a fee. Then the "product" was human flesh--African men and women. Slave traders weren't notably kind and gentle to the creatures they found homes for either. More recently--than slave-trading or even kitten-tossing--comes news that modern would-be cowboys are making good horses out of those with behavioral disorders, much the way the U.S. Cavalry once was wont to make "good" Indians--by making them dead. The horse in question was a wild one, so it might be argued his carefree behavior wasn't bad at all, but only natural. The owner, and trainers at Iron Horse Stables on Houghton Road, thought otherwise. They wanted the horse to behave like a cow pony. Gee, haw, whoa...that sort of thing. The means they employed to teach these skills consisted principally in running the poor beast to exhaustion, terrorizing him, starving and dehydrating him and ultimately killing him. According to the cowboys I play poker with, dead cow ponies are not of much use. They are as baffled as I am as to why these men murdered this horse. And they are as angry as I am over it. "Cowboying" a horse has come, in certain circles, to mean training and treating it with the stick rather than the carrot, but most cowboys I know are kind and sentimental where horseflesh is concerned. One told me he gives his horse a big old hug every day. I feed mine carrots. And I hope the men who brutalized the horse at Iron Horse Stables are punished to the full extent of the law. And of the marketplace, where people can decide never to do business with them again. Oh, and as an aside, not meant to be flippant: Please don't confuse Iron Horse Stables with Iron Horse Motorcycles. My friend Marty Cohen, the motorcycle dealer, coined the name long before those bozos at the stable hung out their shingle. Marty does not abuse animals. Real men don't. Neither do real women.

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