Two Live Kills

Yesterday, I went to the market with teacher and friend Liru. Along the way, I saw a kitten dying by the side of the road. It had not been hit by a car but rather was either sick or simply starving. I wanted to put the kitten in the basket on my bike and take it somewhere so that at least it would be cool and comfortable and out of the sun. Liru convinced me that there was nothing I could do, so I left the kitten to die. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it, though, and my response seems to be about something more than the lonely death of a particular cat. It is in addition my discomfort with the way we seal ourselves off from the suffering of others, whether those others are animals or people.

In quick succession, I experienced another jolt when we went into the market. I’ve walked through several of these markets since I’ve been in Suzhou—bustling places packed into narrow lanes, with rows of colorful and sometimes unfamiliar vegetables, old women and little girls shelling buckets of beans, pails full of slithering eels, mesh baskets stuffed with live turtles and frogs, cages of chickens and ducks decked in their soiled feathers, bloody chopping blocks and piles of fish heads and guts—but this was the first time I purchased any meat. Liru picked out a live chicken, and a man killed it and plucked it on the spot. I had to look away and have felt nauseous ever since. Of course, I know that all meat I eat comes from an animal that has been killed, but I’ve never actually witnessed the killing before, sheltered as I have been by clean wrappings and chilled grocery story bins. Later at my apartment, Liru stir-fried the whole bird—head, feet, and all, with every piece bearing a bone.

All of this made me recall why I had become a vegetarian when I was 19, more a visceral than intellectual or even emotional response, so sickened was I by the images of Chicago slaughterhouses in Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle. I did not eat meat for 17 years and only resumed doing so to accommodate my wife’s celiac diet. And I’ve never prepared any meat by myself and even would ask Sandy to cut it for me when we ate it so that I wouldn’t have to confront a slab of flesh. Now that I am here alone, perhaps I should go back to vegetarianism.

To people like Liru who have grown up on a farm, my reaction must seem like mere hypersensitivity; she would no more give thought to the life of a chicken than to the life of a carrot. But yesterday’s experiences leave me feeling a kinship with the Buddhists who attempt to refrain from harming any sentient being. It strikes me as callous to let a cat die alone by the road or to pick out a live chicken as if it were a stalk of celery, to look at these creatures as if their lives do not matter, when, perhaps, they matter no less than my own. I don’t think this is hypersensitivity. It is simply refusing to lose the capacity to feel.