Philosophy Now Forum

The good news is, new animal shelters are continuously popping up almost everywhere in the developed world, meaning there’ll be a greater amount of space for homeless animals, a large majority being abandoned or feral felines; cats ironically typically left to freely, instinctually breed thus creating even more homeless cats or kittens to suffer larger predators to come, etcetera.
The bad news is, new animal shelters are continuously popping up almost everywhere in the developed world, meaning that there’s such need in the first place for increasing numbers of animal shelters.
There actually should not be a need for animal shelters: People should keep the pets they adopt, for example, at Christmas time as oh-so-adorable sweet, little pet presents for very young children.
And there’s no excuse to kick your pet because it inadvertently made you trip; sadly, though, the alternative seems to be yet another new animal shelter opening. Furthermore, there should not be any cases of one’s pet cat or dog being left to gratuitously freeze outdoors, go hungry—or especially thirsty without cold, fresh, clean drinking water in the sweltering heat of summer. It often blows my mind how so much of superior-minded humanity’s collective conscience allows so very many animals to suffer.
But, as I feel quite compelled to repeat myself here and there, perhaps the most bitter of animal ironies is: As some pet owners are abusing/killing their helpless pets, tragically overlooked—or just plainly, narrow-mindedly ignored—is the symbiotic-like, physically and mentally healing relationships that can exist between pets and their owners, bonds in which both parties benefit: e.g., lowering dangerously-high blood pressure in humans, and the tendency toward healthier lives for soothingly stroked, i.e. massaged, pet animals.

starving humans all over the world...

fret about the animals.

-Imp

It's the same problem. That problem is irresponsible greed. We do to other humans what we do to other species: those of us who have power use others, then abandon them; every time the balance of power changes, there is a new class of potential victims. Suffering is exactly the same, whether done by a human or some other sentient being. Cruelty is the same, whether inflicted on a human or some other sentient being. One kind of life is not worth more or less than another kind: all life is interrelated, interdependent. Spray pesticide over the fields and the insects die, and then the birds die and then the people who eat the saved crops get sick and die. Throw garbage in the ocean, the fish die and the coral reefs die and there are no more fish and the fishermen's families start to die.
The same self-preoccupied humans who are causing the people to starve are hurting the cats, the elephants and the dolphins.

A way of life so myopic can only lead to more suffering, more destruction, and eventually an uninhabitable planet.