From Amanda Nardone

Terri's presentation made me feel some mixed emotions.  Any time someone set out on a mission for justice, is possible that this mission can cause one to lose sight of its context. I feel that taking cats to shelters is not necessarily the right answer.  We are not the cat, we are the humans. We may perviece their reproduction as a danger to themselves, but the same could be said of our species. Is it right for some outside force to decide to spay and neuter us? Cats make me feel these mixed emotions because they seem to be far more successful in the city than a dog or other domesticated animal. Yes, they have to battle their way to survival, but this is the same for any other animal. The difference between a wild and a domestic cat is temperament. 

Timbuktu created this viewpoint in me. I had previously believed that as humans, we have the responsibility to take the animal to the shelter and have someone adopt it. In Timbuktu, Mr. Bones has the ability to chose his companion because he is a stray and can come and go as he chooses. He is concerned over the human's capacity for kindness and fears those who might want to harm him. I think this model is more successful because it is more true to how domesticated animals evolved in the first place. The wild human and the wild animal chose each other instead of the human picking the animal from a cage.