They shoot horses, don't they?

No, I've never seen the movie by that name. But all this time that Schmidt and I—and now Marie—have been supporting Ma Schmidt during her decline, there's been an irony afoot.

When I googled pictures of cats and guns, this is
what I got. It's not the right picture for this post.

The Schmidts' dog is old too, very old by dog standards. He used to be a black dog, but at this point his muzzle is completely grey and he has grey in his coat. He has arthritis, and staggers rather than walking. Most of the time he sits on his cushion on the floor of the family room; but he still gets up several times a day to be let outside to "do his business." He may be old, but he still won't soil the floor indoors.

And the Schmidts have a number of cats. Most of these live over at the other house on the same property—the one Schmidt himself lives in, the one I've never seen the inside of. Two of them live with Ma Schmidt, because her son says it's easier to have cats than to set mousetraps. 

But one of the cats that lives with Schmidt is geriatric as well. And sick. A day or two into my visit, he told me he was going to have to make an appointment with the vet to have this cat put down, because she was too sick to recover, and in pain. This evening he remarked that he had canceled the vet appointment, because his cat was suffering enough that he had to do the job himself.

When we all gathered for dinner in the evening (well, Schmidt and Marie and me … Ma Schmidt stayed in bed), Schmidt was calm and businesslike about it all. But I know he loves his cats. What we could see from him was the iron self-discipline that has become such a habit.

And of course nobody commented on the irony that Ma Schmidt and the cat are in very similar situations. So is the dog. But we have to treat them differently. The law says so, and common sentiment says so. "Simple humanity" says so—whatever that is. But what exactly is the logic that tells us to treat human animals so differently from feline animals, even when their situations are so strikingly similar?

They shoot horses, don't they?