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Transcript of The Little Things in Life
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The Little Things in Li fe- Ditt y 1
The Little Things in Life
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The Lit tle Things in Li fe- Ditt y 2
The Little Things in Life; a
Collection of Two Essays
By Melissa Ditty
Edited by: English 306.01
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The Litt le Things in Life- Ditt y 3
CONTENTS
PART ONE:
I.
The Truth Behind Addiction 7-37Original; Edited by Todd Mckinney
Second Draft; Edited by Leigh Vorhees
Third Draft; Edited by Will (with Rubric)
Final Draft; by Melissa Ditty
PART TWO:
II. The Effects of Rescuing the Dot 38-87Original; Edited by Todd Mckinney
Second Draft; Edited by Leigh Vorhees
Third Draft; Edited by Krista
Fourth Draft; Edited by Austin
Final Draft; by Melissa Ditty
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PART ONE;THE TRUTH BEHIND THE ADDICTION
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Melissa Ditty
English 306
April, 24 2011
The Truth behind Addiction
One of the most addictive games, in my opinion, would have to be World of Warcraft
(WoW). This massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) was developed by
Blizzard Entertainment in 2004. Although, the game has been out for seven years, it still holds 62
percent of the worlds MMO players. With its latest expansion, Cataclysm, WoW has roughly 12
million subscribers worldwide (Wikipedia). My adventure with WoW didnt start until summer of
2007, when I entered the realm Demon Soul, for the first time. I am now on my fourth year of
WoW and on this date in 2011, all I have to show for my experience with WoW is the following.
I used to hate WoW because it took real life away from my friends. I loathed the monthly
subscription fee my friends paid to play a game instead of purchasing food to live on. However, my
true hate for WoW evolved from the way WoWdissconected people from the outside world. I
read on WoWaholics.org how the game was nothing more than an addiction and promoted
depressed individuals to sit all day in front of a computer. I couldnt understand the thrill my sister
had for playing a game where a character ran around mass murdering innocent non-violent pigs in
order to loot their tusks because another character requested her to. If I had requested her to go
outside and collect five feces samples from an animal (dog) that I renamed (Shaka Hound), Im not
so sure my real life request would go as well as the WoW avatars had. The pigs she killed had no
significance in her life, yet she shot arrows into them just to earn a necklace with a bloody fang on it
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for her character to wear as a reward. The practice of this violence came off, to me, as inhumane
and brutal. She, however, let out a long sigh of relief to have killed twenty or so pigs. She gloated
to me about her ability to wear a bloody necklace for the statistical information written on the
item. I was stumped at her act of violence. The necklace turned out to be a reward that allowed her
to kill more pigs.
I remember one day in early summer when I was sitting at home as a bored college student
without classes to attend. My sister and I fought about how WoW was wasting her life, why I
didnt want to try the game and said horrible things to each other we didnt mean. She wanted me
to play WoW with her, but I was scared of the ramifications a WoW player endures After all, I had
read about players of the game who were trying to break their addiction to the game on
WoWDetox.com. I didnt want to be another statistic and I certainly had avoided all other
addictive habits to this point in life: smoking, drinking, drugs and etc. My sister had other plans for
my future however with her, You never know until you try it, and the you cant believe
everything you read on the internet, attitude. She told me that she knew I would like the game and
that it would give me something to do on my summer break, since the economy provided no part-
time seasonal jobs.
I had been on summer vacation for a month at the point of this fight and hadnt a single call
back for employment. I felt down on myself and began to believe that there was some part of me
employers didnt want working for them. Maybe I didnt have the right answer to question, I often
get upset when guilty people are let free of punishment. I guess I should have disagreed instead of
whatever I answered (each time was probably different. What person reads online applications
word for word anyway?)
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The next day I was awakened at 4pm by my sister, who was about to leave for her serving
job at a local ice cream shop. She entered my room in great haste, slamming my door against the
wall and still upset from me saying horrible things to her the night before. She threw an index card
on my sleep covered face and said; just try it. After my morning grog disappeared I read the index
card to realize she had left me with the information to her World of Warcraft account. Feeling
already disconnected from the social world and unable to get a part-time job, I entered the
information in the computer and logged on World of Warcraft for the first time. I created a
character, picked its name and entered the unknown world. I was, in theory, birthed from nowhere
cyberspace into this zone full of other people running around mass murdering worm looking
creatures. Avatars collected around a single elf looking character that remained stagnant in position
and had exclamation mark above his head. I could click on the elf, but he only responded by
sending me to kill the worm creatures and ask me to report back to him. Like a socially competent
person, I followed suit with the rest of the population. I collected worm eyes, turned them in and
before I knew it I, Tglimus, was a level 3 Blood Elf Hunter.
As I moved from quest to quest, I tried to convince myself of the unethical patterns I had
been practicing and how the game was for losers. Yet, I kept on running around murdering animals
and other people with my arrows. I ran bloody heads to the multiple quest giving characters like
everyone else and received rewards of cash, money and items to wear. When my sister came home,
she found me playing. She and I talked through the practices of the game and I tried to convince her
that I wasnt having fun playing the game. Like all nice sisters, she laughed and shrugged me off
with the, if you want to play tomorrow while Im at work, you can.
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I did just that. I entered my second day of World of Warcraft out of quests and level ten.
Unsure of what to do I stood outside what seemed to be a big city and read the quest telling me to
go to a new place. There was only one problem, I had no idea how to GPS myself to this new
location. So I stood outside this city pondering what to do when a screen popped up from nowhere
asking me if I wanted to duel. I accepted and continued to stand in the same place. Out of nowhere
the numbers, 3, 2 and 1, appeared on my screen and my health started decreasing. I was being
attacked by another player in a city. I didnt know, at the time that was possible, so I ran away in
panic. A few seconds later I was bowing and my chat box read, Sworth has defeated Tglimus in a
duel. Then I received a message in my chat box from another player stating, Good duel. I
replied, I have no idea what Im doing.
This is how I met Sworth, my first WoW friend and joined my first guild. I had no idea
what to expect of this guild I had joined. I knew that guilds were collections of people working
together for communal betterment of the guild, but even with this thought, I was unsure how to
act in the guild. Unfortunately for me, I was unable to figure out the inner workings of a guild
because my membership lasted only a few days. I was kicked out of the guild for taking one gold
from the guildsbank that I had deposited the day before. I realize now that I had committed a guild
offense, but at the time I had no clue what I was doing. I spent the next ten levels without a guild
and questing with my new friend, Sworth. As we quested, we chatted about different things and I
began to understand this new world better. I eventually made more friends and gained more levels
of experience in the game.
The World of Warcraft is a brutal one. By my tenth level, I killed more people, animals and
animal-people then I could count. I collected: heads, gizzards, wings, slime, teeth, hooves, feces,
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water and even baby animals. I literally had killed everything for my own betterment. I, like my
sister had, wanted the bloody fang necklace. I had traveled through forests with walking trees, been
attacked by zombies, killed spiders bigger than my character, swam in an ocean without getting wet
and even explored a catacomb all in one week of experience. The best part of it all was that I had
completed most of those feats with little help from other players.
A week later I was fed up with guild-hopping. No guild had what I looked for and Sworth
hopped between six or seven different guilds. By my 26th level of the 70 levels I was to complete on
my character, I considered myself well versed in the WoW. I ran to a local major city, collected
other player signatures and created my own guild The Cost of Silence. Upon guild creation, I
gathered all the people I met in the game and asked them to join. My guild thrived with over 100
members by the time my character leveled to 27.
At the time, I thought I was a successful guild leader. I had created rules, designed a guild
crest, and managed to keep the guild peace for about a week. After that week, however, I found
myself becoming bitter at some guild members and created rules to spite them. I even created a
rule that prevented guild members from killing any of the cat critters (level one animals that are
harmless) and another rule preventing annoying teenage guild members from raving havoc on other
guild members. This first guild of mine was clearly a dictatorship that allowed for absolutely
nothing to be chatted about that I was not okay with. I realize now just how much of a prude I was,
but at that time I just removed guild members ranks without thinking about the ramifications of my
actions.
After a month, my guild had more drama then a high school at midterm time and everyone
was fighting. I found myself disliking this guild I created and wanted out. I talked to my officers and
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told them I was moving my highest level character to my sisters guild and transferring the leader
position to one of my alternate characters. This is not how the guild leader shift went, however. I
logged on my alternate character only to receive a long message from officer telling me that he was
a power hungry mutant and was keeping my guild. (Well more or less.) His actual words were
more of I like having power in the guild and I want to keep the guild.
I was again alone in the World of Warcraft and found myself guild-hopping until my sisters
guild took me in. I wasnt connected to her guild like she was and I refused to speak unless spoken
to. I didnt want to anger anyone and I didnt want anyone to think I was a noob. If anyone in her
guild knew I was a new player (noob), they would have attacked me quicker than sharks to a drop
of blood in ocean. I realized how much I still had to learn and I learned the hard way that this guild
my sister brought me into was way more serious about the game than I was about the actual content
of the game. They liked to kill monsters and collect loot to make the guild better. I liked to chat
about life and get questing advice. At this point I was more into the social aspect of World of
Warcraft more so than beating in the faces of new players and enemy characters.
In September of 2008, a year into my World of Warcraft experience, I created the guild
Assimilated by Horde (ABH). ABH was founded by the players I got along with in my first guild
and new people my sister found that werent as serious as her guild liked WoW players to be.
After much contemplation on why my old guild failed, I entered ABH with higher hopes and new
goals. I would be queen Tglimus and the guild members that werent in my royal ranks would be
the minions or so I thought until I actually got to know my fellow guild members.
A month after ABH creation, I was introduced to a player named Zenlode. My sister had
found him being a social butterfly in a city general chat looking for a guild. She asked him to join
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and the next thing I know I found myself talking to him about guild things and later about real life.
As it turned out, Zenlode was a tell it like it is kind of guy and called me out on my prudish
nature. We talked a lot and he would help me get through guild issues without losing my whole
guild member list. A few months after first meeting Zenlode, he invited his friend Bunnymonster
to join the guild, she invited her friends and ABH was growing in great numbers each day. The
more serious ABH became some members, who disagreed with ABH policy, left to start their own
guild. These ex-guild members spread rumors about higher ranked ABH members and turned ABH
friends into enemies. As those members left, so did I from WoW. I found myself too involved in a
game that was virtually uncontrollable.
I disowned my character on WoW for a few months, but I still talked to my friends outside
of the game. We discussed love, life, war, drugs, cats, and etc. Some of my guild members from
Assimilated by Horde are the best friends I have ever had in my life. These people, who live miles
away, have been there for me when my local college friends were not able to help. It is true that
WoW takes away from real life, but it replaces it with a new real life with people that one would
have otherwise never met.
This is the glory of WoW. I determined the interaction that I had with other characters on
the realm. I built friendships in a fake world, which I was able to transcend into the real world. The
friends that I made in the game were there for me when I logged in, but dont always disappear
when you log out. They arent like the fake friends I made in high school that I spent eight hours a
day for four years with, only to leave behind for college. My high school friends developed lives.
Overtime common high school interests grew distant and friendships dwindled. The same could
happen with my WoW friends, but that is yet to be seen and unpredictable.
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After four years of collecting millions of bloody fangs I realized that WoW, in theory, was
supposed to be about the craft of war. This how many people fall into the addiction; they wanted to
be the best player and have the best gear. Some WoW players did whatever, to whomever as long
as they attained the best.
To me, WoW is less about gear, but more about making friends in guilds and attaining
accomplishments with those people. The game that I hated has taught me more about myself and
the world than any real life friend that I have made. I have been able to take the leadership skills I
learned in game and apply them to my real life. This is why no matter how many times in the last
four years I have tried to quit the game I havent been able to. Maybe this is what all things in life
boil down to; becoming so worthwhile that quitting becomes too difficult. Sounds like an addiction
doesnt it? I suppose one could call it addiction, but would have to then call hanging out with their
friends an addiction as well.
Although some World of Warcraft players are antisocial basement dwellers, the stereotype
does not fit the majority. Some people, myself included, learn more about the social norms of the
world in game than from real life. If I mess up the social norms I change my characters name;
problem solved. After placing myself into a game I once hated, I was able to develop an
understanding about the addiction aspect of the game. With a little self control one can easily
monitor their time in and out of game; just as one does by turning on and off an Xbox or closes an
internet browser. The addiction isnt the game. The truth about the addiction is that humans are
creatures that require social interaction. The ability to interact as a social being in game is what
makes WoW so addictive and interesting. One never knows whats in store around the next
mountain.
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PART TWO;THE EFFECTS OF RESCUING THE DOT
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Ditty-The Effects of Rescuing the Dot-79
Melissa Ditty
English 306.01
27, April 2011
The Effects of Rescuing the Dot
I. The storyIn the winter of 2010, I adopted my first pet of my adult life from an Animal Shelter. The
animal was a young adult cat who the shelter named Carla. (I would later name her Dot.) While I
cant explain how the unity happened exactly, I am aware that this fuzzy little brat chose me. There
was a strange correlation between this cat and myself that, after one look, sparked me to walk
through the rest of Petsmart thinking about her nonstop. Out of all the trips I had made to Petsmart
and pets I had ever owned, I had never felt the same connection to them as I had with this long
haired grey cat.
This specific trip to Petsmart resulted from a failed normal Thanksgiving Day tradition. My
father had surgery and was unable to eat a big meal of turkey and potatoes, so my family decided
that the best course of action was just to cancel Thanksgiving for one year. My sister and I were
both students of Ball State University at the time and lived closer to each other than either of us
lived to our parents. After chatting online over World of Warcraft we decided that we would
spend the holiday with each other and fine dining on Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and McDonalds.
My sister and Is get togethers were often predictable in nature. One of us would drive to the
others house. Whoever didnt make that long drive would drive to Meijer, Petsmart, and
anywhere else in town we decided to go. Im not much of a window shopper or a shopper (period),
but my sister is. She always had to look at everything in a store, in case there was something she
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needed, but had forgotten to write down. She would debate over which shade of grey mouse toy
was the best for her cat for more than an hour before deciding to purchase the purple one.
I only ever went with her to Petsmart and, prior to this day, had only ever walked out with
toys for my parents cats. Her hour long debate over a toy mouse, on this trip, left me with ample
time to weigh all the possible outcomes of bringing an animal into my life. An animal would be a
ten to fifteen year commitment and to this point, I had proven a failure to commit to anything for
more than a couple years. I had changed majors two times in four years, became and gave up being
a vegetarian in one year, I play multiple characters in games because I want to try the new in or
popular thing. One could even take a glance at my debit card ownership and quickly figure out
how uncommitted I am to keeping objects. Could I really take care of another living thing for its
entire life?
After picking a purple mouse for her already spoiled cats, my sister and I left Petsmart and
returned to my apartment. I cant have a cat, mom and dad would kill me, I responded to my
sisters, You know you wanted that cat. I could tell because you kept walkin over and petting it. It
could die in that shelter in a couple days. Thirty minutes after leaving, I arrived back at Petsmart,
located a Petsmart employee, and before I knew what was happening I was holding the scared grey
and long haired cat. A silent little beast, whose paw hugged my arm and purred soft breaths to be
out of her metal bar boxed in life.
At the time of adoption I knew that my cat was from a kill animal shelter, although, I had no
idea at the time what that fully meant. According to the Humane Society, most animal shelters
have no set time limit for holding an animal. In the vast majority of shelters, decisions about
adoption and euthanasia are based on factors that include the temperament and health of the animal,
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Ditty-The Effects of Rescuing the Dot-81and the space and resources available to humanely house and properly care for the animal. They
also, recommendthat shelters hold stray animals for a minimum of five operating days (Humane
Society). Ive had a loaf of bread for a month before. How could they only allow a living creature
only five days?
A few weeks after adopting my cat a friend shared with me how barbaric the people working at
these shelters were. They sent me the videos of shelters shoving many cats in a box where two
shelter workers asphyxiated the cats with carbon monoxide or euthanized the cats using things
called Heart-Sticks. I can only imagine how painful it must be to be electrocuted straight in the
heart, let alone by a human being you placed full trust in. Simply put the humane euthanasia that
shelters, like the one where I got my cat, claimed to do was actually just translated to (in my
opinion) kill by any means possible. I was especially appalled by an animal shelter in North Carolina
that posted a video of how they deal with animal control ("Davie's Law/ Humane Euthanasia in
NC Animal Shelters"). I am sure these people have to appreciate life, the way they threw five to ten
puppies or dogs into a box before filling it with toxic gas like a puppy concentration camp
punishment.
II. The effects of the causeGrowing up as a child, I was taught to do the right thing; taught that if we help out the
community we will be paid back in some sort of fantasized afterlife. Animals had feelings, not quite
like human feelings, but they were to be treated as living breathing creatures nonetheless. This is
possibly why I was driven to figure out some way to help more animals than just my one adopted
cat. I tried to convince my parents into allowing me to adopt many cats, but the odds of that
happening were nonexistent. I spent the next few months after adopting my cat researching
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different rescues and trying to figure out a way that I could help give back to the shelter that gave
me a life time companion. In a long drawn out period of time I found nothing more than the same
answers replicated or worded different on every website. No shelter, besides the Humane Society
of the United States, admitted in their about sections to being a kill shelter. This struck me as odd
because all the shelters that were no kill, such as Animal Rescue Fund of Muncie and Action for
Animals of Muncie, stated there were No kill.
My research continued for months until I found a current news website looking for someone to
write on cat rescue. I eagerly submitted an application with writing examples and was sure that I
could not only give back to a cause that changed my life, but could also pave way for my future
writing career and generate a little self revenue. Although, I admit that the job paid less than a kids
lemonade stand, I earned a total of twenty-five dollars for the entire time I wrote for
Examiner.com.
After my second month of writing, I began to realize that the job was never about the money,
nor was it about fulfilling my communal obligation. It was about trying to help the animals because
they could not and cannot help themselves. For this reason on Wednesday of every week I would
post Crazy Kitty Wednesday, a column devoted only to promote available adoptable cats. While
this article would not pay the one dollar I got for posting (up to five dollars a week), I wanted to
help local shelters promote their cats that needed adoption.
I spent the beginning of my summer vacation in 2010 interviewing Animal Shelters in my local
area. I wanted to help more; I wanted to be involved. I wanted to know how shelters ran and what
I could give to the shelter beyond donations. The shelters were not as open to me as I was to them.
Most of the shelters gave me no response; this is excluding Action for Animals where a woman
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named Teresa wrote me an email about what volunteers do at shelters and ways that people can
help. It was a resourceful letter that not only said I could help by food and money donations, but by
donating my time and talents (writing) as well. Although I was hoping for feedback from multiple
shelters, the letter was the kick I needed to jumpstart more topics for more articles.
III. Help not wantedAfter writing for months on cat rescue, I again ran out of ideas for topics. I had written about
adoption, local shelters, why people should adopt, the problems that can arise in adoption,
adopting my cat and just about anything I could find online about cat rescue. I had even created a
Facebook page (Ditty2), a twitter page, and emailed several of the local Indiana Animal Rescues. I
sent out business cards with letters asking people in the community to contact me with stories.
I received very little back from the community. Maybe they viewed me as a scam writer. Some
may have even thought I was wasting their time with insignificant trivial matters. Whatever their
thinking, I wasnt taken seriously. I had only two animal rescues respond , both were by email and
were the same shelters from before. One email was from Action for Animals and the other was
from Muncie Animal Rescue Fund (ARF). I corresponded with both shelters for several weeks
asking questions and collecting stories. I even took a trip to ARF where I interviewed Dana Salkosk.
She walked me through ARFs Catty Shack house and answered my questions. I told her about my
experience with adopting a cat at Petsmart. She explained to me that this happens with many
animal adoption parents. The adoptive parent walks in wanting one kind of animal, but ends up
leaving with another. From what I was able to understand, a person may walk into a shelter
wanting an orange tabby, but walk out of the shelter with a Great Dane. The idea could also mean
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that a person walks into a shelter wanting an orange short-haired tabby cat and leaving with a long
haired black cat.
I had never walked into an animal rescue facility prior to this interview. Looking back I realize
how much I assumed about animal rescues. My mother had always told me that the rescues were
flea infested diseased places where animals were euthanized if their stay was too long. She also told
me, in my childhood days onto adulthood, that I could never handle an animal rescue because many
of the shelters kill unwanted animals. It was, after all, their job to control the animal populations.
In my article House in Indiana devoted to cat rescue, I discuss my interview I had with Salkosk at
ARF. This interview not only gave me a subject to write about, but it also allowed me to question
some of the logic about shelters pressed on me by my peers. I write, As Salkoski walked me
through the house (Catty Shack) she began telling me stories of how the cats came into their
possession. As she spoke I began to realize that preconception of people dumping off unwanted
animals was a great misconception. Most of the cats ofARF ended up at the Catty Shack because of
family financial obligations, health issues (much of the time a simple one time medication), they
were born at ARF, or their owners passed away.
After the interview with Salkosk of ARF was formally over, I asked how I could help her shelter
and found out that unless I wanted to donate money or time at the shelter, they would appreciate
any help they could get. However, this was contradicted a month later when I did a follow up
interview of a volunteer at ARF (name withheld for her benefit) I was told to remove my article by
that volunteer because it falsified what she said.Since I didnt have a voice recording, I had to
remove the article. Instead of appreciating that a positive article was created to promote the
betterment of animals at a shelter and showing the positives of volunteering at an animal rescue
http://www.munciearf.com/http://www.munciearf.com/http://www.munciearf.com/http://www.munciearf.com/http://www.munciearf.com/ -
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facility, this volunteer was more worried that I misquoted her (unknown by me) about something
in the article.
What I concluded from my writing about animal rescue was that while animal shelters
seemingly want supply donations, money donation, animal fosters and time donations. They do not
(in the case of ARF) want people to write about the happenings of their facility, unless of course,
you are a famous news outlet such as FOX or the less worldwide Star Press, who both recently
covered the flooding of their shelter (Mc Cl ur e) .
My animal shelter writing career was ended quickly by a lack of response from local animal
shelters. I had run out of things to say and felt that I was writing the same thing over and over
again. Without discussing the animal adoption world with people that cared about the animals, I
had nothing new or fresh to create. What it all boils down to is that unless you are donating
something the shelter can physically use, their rule is: Help Unwanted.
IV. La Fine of the animal shelterWriting about animal rescue, if it gave me nothing else, allowed me to dive into a new world
where a living thing has no say in its treatment. It would be silly to think that an animal chooses to
be abandoned into a humanistic world where its survival instincts arent enough to fend off
malicious humans. It allowed me to realize that I saved my cats life. Without me, my cat could
have been euthanized (humanely or inhumanely). Most likely, in my opinion based on my research,
my cat would have been shoved in a metal box with twenty other cats scratching to get out and
fighting with other cats. After all the other cats were placed in the box, the lid would close and she
would have been surrounded by total blackness. The blackness would then steal her ability to
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breath and cause her, and the other cats, to stop moving. Eventually she would essentially
asphyxiate, thrown onto a mound of other dead animals and left to rot in a nearby landfill.
This is the cruel reality we live in. The worst part is the lack of remorse on the shelter workers
face, the quotidian front the faces of these employees express. Their actions; as if it is normal to
throw a two month old puppy into its death like it was the packaging to a Big Mac from
McDonalds. Luckily, my cat will never have to suffer from anything beyond being chased around
my apartment and laundry basket captures. Its hard to believe a little over a year ago I couldnt
imagine a life caring for another living thing and now I cant imagine my life without it. I hear from
friend and read all around the internet that this is how most animal-owner relationships are. As silly
and crazy cat lady as it sounds, adopting my cat from a shelter filled a void in me somehow. My cat
has taught me more about myself than any one person ever has. I realize how silly this sounds and
unless you have adopted an animal in that time of your life when you are lost, I doubt you
understand. I hope however, to be proved wrong in thinking this.
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Ditty-The Effects of Rescuing the Dot-87
Citation
"Common Questions about Animal Shelters." The Humane Society of the United States, 26 10
2009. Web. 14 Apr 2011.
.
"Davie's Law/ Humane Euthanasia in NC Animal Shelters." Youtube. Web. 14 Apr 2011.
.
Ditty, Melissa. "House in Indiana Devoted to Cat Rescue." (2010): n. pag. Web. 8 Apr 2011.
.
Ditty, Melissa. "Indiana Cat Rescue Examiner." Web. 8 Apr 2011.
.
McClure, Vanessa . "Muncie Animal Rescue Fund ready to re-open after flood
damage." Volunteers and donations help ARF open doors sooner than expected (2011):
Web. 8 Apr 2011.
.
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