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How am I any less human than she?
She, with her violent stare and coarse, orange fur. Her stripes are like dozens of wounds bleeding ink, her eyes glowing like all-consuming infernos. Her claws taunt me with their majesty, their unobtrusive elegance. Her tongue is the dry pink of a desert sunset. Her teeth are like tarnished pillars in her mouth, the manifestation of faded glory come back again.
Can I not be aloof as she is? Can I not turn my back on the poor and the hungry? Can I not shut my door on the naked and the persecuted, the sick and the lonely?
And, what is more, can I not indulge myself as she does?
I can, I can. I have closed my door like an angry lover. I have licked my paws like a king. I have feasted like a glutton. I have done this.
Yet, she dines at my table, yet, she watches herself in the must of my vanity mirror. She sleeps in my bed and looks out my windows.
Likewise, I dine in her shit, likewise, I watch myself in the puddle of water trapped on her cement floor. I sleep on her hay and look out the bars of her cage.
Why should she be allowed to eat the fruit of my labors? To drink the waters of my pain? Who is she to live in my life?
