Respect

Here, I was given an opportunity to speak for 5 minutes in front of an audience of 800 people. One month later, it was on youtube.

Watching this today, for the first time, and listening to the audience's response...well no wonder I cried. How difficult to be right in the midst of a rescue situation...living it and breathing it every day, then trying to talk about it to unsympathetic listeners.

If it weren't for Sara, this may not have been received well at all. I knew her brief life was for a purpose...this was it. The audience turned when I cried on stage.

All the discussions us "rat people" have about which antibiotic to use first and which diet is best fades in importance when so many are being put to their cruel deaths every day.

Last night, I read accounts of how rats suffer when strangled to death by snakes and how, because we have minimized the importance of their lives, they are treated with unimaginable cruelty in the name of fun.

As I held the soft, warm bodies to administer medication, I could not fathom how or why a human could bash one of these bodies against a wall to knock him out...or step on him in order to crush him to death. But then, we know the same atrocities have been committed against our own kind, so why not these helpless creatures?

I think what we do to small animals is symptomatic of the big problem. As long as we think there are people or animals that are lesser than ourselves...less worthy...less deserving...we will not have peace. We will not have peace in this world until we learn to treat our littlest creatures with care and realize that every living being has a right to be here and to be treated with respect.

I don't encourage everyone to have a companion rat, but, I encourage everyone who wants a healthy world for themselves and their progeny to have respect enough for every living creature to speak out against tortuous and barbaric behavior of every kind.