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A Short Riff from Rusty: “It’s just a…” – Shut your mouth! You’re showing your ignorance!

A Short Riff by Rusty Aldridge

Our Man About Wetumpka Town

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BlackCatAppreciationGroup

Above is a link to a cat fanciers page I belong to on Facebook. Most of the members post pictures of their beloved ‘fur babies’, ask for ‘pet parenting advice’, and share their grief      when their feline friends cross that ‘rainbow bridge’. What I’m about to tell you did not        appear on this page, but was another post on Facebook. It concerned a lady who posted         about her dog that had recently died.

The poor woman was grief stricken and wrote at length about how she would miss her dog and how much she loved him. After reading her post, where she poured her heart out, I scrolled down and saw this response:

It’s just a dog.

I am reminded of the wisdom of Brother Dave Gardner who said, “God must have loved stupid people because He made so many of them!”

This was a true shake my head moment. I could not believe anyone walking on this earth could be so ignorant as to say something like that! I also could not believe anyone this ignorant could figure out how to get on Facebook in the first place! People like this are either cold hearted or just don’t have a clue…I believe it is the latter.

My wife and I never had children, but we have always had cats and through our almost four decades together we even had a dog or two. Whatever sort of pet we had, we always figured God sent them to us to take care of. I have stood there at the vet’s office, holding a sick pet in my arms as they passed from this world to wherever it is they go, crying like a baby because I was losing a friend. A true friend. A friend who loved me for no other reason than because I loved them.

It’s just a cat.

You don’t even want to smack this person upside they head, because they would never understand why you did it. All I can do is stand back and wonder if they are able to tie their own shoes and if they need any help with personal hygiene. Mouth breathing, knuckle dragging…I’ll bet they licked the window on the school bus!

I don’t put dogs and cats (or any pet) on the same level as humans, but grief and sorrow, on any level, is pretty much the same. If we lose a loved one, we cry, we grieve, we heal, then we move on. But our memories of that dog running up and licking our face, or the cat jumping into our laps to curl up and go to sleep, stay with us. It’s just like our memories of our human loved ones, only a little different. Love for another being is love. If you haven’t lived that, it’s hard to explain.

Pardon the rant, and oh…if you’re one of those folks who say, “It’s just a dog” or “It’s just a cat” I just have just one thing to say…try telling that to John Wick.

Rusty Aldridge is a veteran radio personality and lives in Wetumpka.