Quote:
Originally Posted by
Werewolf Girl
Mostly the improvement was psychological though, I FELT a million times better when I stopped eating meat. There's a really good Kafka quote about how he could look at fish in a tank with peace after he went vegetarian because he didn't eat them anymore, and I feel the same way. Every time I saw a cow or a chicken or a pig before I felt like a horrible monster, now I can look at them as friends.
yes, exactly the way I feel, too! There's dairy farms everywhere in my town. There's one across the street and four just on the way to the local Wal-Mart, and now when I see them I can actually look at them and realize what beautiful animals they are. On my way home from school, there's also a flock of roosters that one house keeps as pets, but they're always outside when I'm walking home, and I didn't notice them until I became vegan. Now when I walk home they all know me and come up to me and let me pet or hold them. I don't know if I just finally noticed them or they sense that I like them or something, but it was such an odd shift.
I saw some cows at a local fair, and I noticed all the little ways they're adorable and like a pet. All the cows were rubbing themselves on the barn doors and rails like a cat does to leave its scent or scratch itself, and the baby cows acted like puppies, jumping skittishly and playfully like they wanted you to come up to them and pet them. The chickens all came up to me when I called to them, too, and let me pet them through the bars. Everyone was crowded around some four day old baby goats, hoping the pair would come up to them and let them pet them, and they all came up to me and let me pet and hold them for a while. I noticed for the first time that the animals in the food areas looked really sad. I could feel the bones of the dairy cows, despite people assuming their fat, I saw how depressed they looked, probably from their babies being taken away, and I hugged one and could feel it's ribs, neck and spine sticking from the skin, probably from being pregnant so often. The meat cows seemed just as sad, and when I saw them many of them had their face on or covered by their hooves, like a cat or dog does when they sleep or cry. It was so sad, and they all woke up and looked at me when I pet them, and it was really heartbreaking to look in their eyes.
In the sheep barn one sheep was whining to everyone, it really wanted to play and be petted, but with all the people walking by no one would pet him except my mom and I, even though he was crying for attention the way a cat meows all night or a dog jumps onto your lap and licks you, no one cared. I would've pet him longer but I accidentally pointed out loudly to my mom that the tail of the sheep had been cut off and she was afraid I'd get us kicked out. The pigs had finger scratches marked all over them in the food barn section of the fair, and they looked sad and just laid there, looking depressed, but even when I called to them they all came up to me to be pet. I never noticed all the ways animals act before. Also, in all these packed barns, it was really sad that all these people just walked by, some even commenting how big a steak or bacon an animal would make and things like that. I know maybe some people wouldn't consider it vegan to visit a fair with animals like this, but when these animals are guaranteed to be slaughtered, I'm glad I got to at least be one of the few people that pet them and paid attention to them and showed any care or kindness toward them before they continued to be tortured or killed, and I think seeing these animals helped me in my veganism to appreciate these animals. I'm not the kind of person that appreciates from videos and things like that, I need experiences to really draw from for inspiration or to actually learn, and seeing all the animals made me really convinced and realize how amazing "farm" animals are and how wrong it is to eat them.