[Today’s run: 1.5 miles mixed with dog and wife]
On our trip to Colorado in July we took ownership of my daughter’s cat.
We have gotten along fine over the last 6 weeks. She was an indoor/outdoor cat at my daughter’s place so we have been letting her go out a bit every day. But my wife is worried that she will meet up with some other cat, and then we will have more cats than we want. So here is Kali, in the cat carrier, waiting to go to the vet so that she can be retired from the kitten business. She has had three litters of kittens already, so I guess maybe she isn’t too upset about the idea.
I’m a bit of a romantic about this idea and wish we didn’t have to resort to drastic intervention. On the other hand I also don’t want herds of cats wandering around the homestead.
God’s command at creation was: be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. I understand that Roman Catholics use that as a proof-text against birth-avoidance of the human type (don’t know if they feel that way about critters).
On our trip to/from Colorado we listened to Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice. In that book, male heads of households control the livelihood of their offspring, particularly female offspring. Daughters don’t have jobs, their value is in attracting a good son-in-law into the family circle, and then produce more “multiply”. Of course, there was a lot more premature death in those days. So a family on a farm or in a business would need to have lots of children and grandchildren so as to provide a productive labor force. Any misdeeds on a daughter’s part meant less value for the group both socially and economically.
On the other hand, people like Solomon (as the extreme example) had lots of offspring, not out of necessity or obedience to commandment, but just because they can. He had the money to feed them. In our day, men have “baby mommas” and women have “baby daddys”, which we can translate to mean that, again, they can afford to have offspring for reasons other then productivity or loss to disease. They get to be like Solomon I guess.
Women like to be in control of these things, which I can understand. Women have a lot more potential pain. And I sometimes think they are more inclined to serious, practical decisions on the issue instead of romantic idealism. I’m not sure it bothers men as much, or at least not as many as it should.
Finally, for maximum productivity in an age when every pregnancy was Russian Roulette, nothing can beat polygamy for producing an army of kids. It’s kind of hard on the sons though when a few guys marry all of the eligible women. In cattle herds its the extraneous sons who get to go to McDonalds, if you know what I mean.
I guess we are back around to tomcats so here’s the picture:
