PERFECT TIMING... ASSUMING OUR IDEA OF TIME IS CORRECT

So my sister's boyfriend had to give up his cat. Not that it was a bad cat, because it wasn't... but sometimes there are greater forces at play. No, Trixie Cat had to leave because landlords often value money over the pleasure of campanionship. There was just one problem (well, aside from the mother problem of having to get rid of the cat): no one wanted Trixie Cat.

It was a pretty bad situation. My sister was disheveled because the cat had to be out by monday and there were no takers. Sure the humane society would take Trixie in, but apparently cats (unlike dogs) are considered "feral" and if they aren't adopted within a set amount of time, they are "let go"... asked to "re-apply"... "check-out", etc.

Monday came and there were no takers for the Trixie Cat.

So my sister and her boyfriend go to this "society of the humane" and they tell her that they will NOT take the cat unless she pays them a fee of something to the tune of $150.

Yeah, crazy.

As this was going down, a gentleman was waiting there as well. He was looking to adopt a cat of the black and white persuasion to match his dog (how chic). The humane society told this sir that it would cost him about $150 to adopt a cat but they didn't have a black and white cat for him to adopt... at least not until my sister and her boyfriend give those kind folks Trixie Cat.

So this thought goes through their heads (because thoughts often are shared): why pay $150 to give a cat to some place who is then going to charge $150 to someone else to adopt the cat, when all they have to do is give the cat to the man for free? Not only do my sister and her boyfriend save $150, but the said man also saves $150... PLUS Moe's cat problem is fixed and the man's lack-of-a-cat problem is fixed.

My sister, her boyfriend, and this man go out into the parking lot and do business like all legit black market business is done and go their seperate ways.

Why did I feel I should share this? I shared this story for a few reasons.

1) Why do we call it the "humane society" when to be "humane" is (as according to www.dictionary.com) to be "characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, esp. for the suffering or distressed", yet the living space in which the animals are subjected to call home is so disgusting I wouldn't want bin Laden to have to stay in there?

2) Why do we call being characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals "humane" (which is taken from the word "human") when being humane isn't even a part of human nature? There are those who believe that humans are naturally good-willed and mean the best. I don't think this is accurate. At all. Just take a look at what happened after Katrina... do you call that good nature?! Strip humans of synthetic order and the materialist life that they are used to, and what remains is basic human instinct to rape, murder, and pillage. Because we have higher thinking abilities, we automatically assume we are better than everything else on this planet. But when you take away all that we have created, we are left with nothing but our own animal instinct emerging from the darkness of our psyche. If humans are naturally good, then why are there so many bad people out there? If humans are naturally good, why does everyone seek to fulfill their own agendas, regardless of the cost?

No, I don't believe humans are naturally good or better than animals. It's sort of like being the relatives to Hitler... how do you live that down? You didn't do anything wrong, but because you share that blood you may feel like you have to live that down. Same works with human instinct... there was a time when we let it control us. Then we developed higher thinking and spent our time questioning the world. Then we put ourselves on autopilot and stopped thinking for ourselves. We buy our clothes and put on our make-up, we ride around in our cars and have discussions of philosophy, we create with our hands and our minds; but beneath it all there lies human instinct, passed down generation to generation... not by words, but through genetic code. Human instinct is the term we use to describe our animal instinct. Even in describing our natural tendancies we try to cover it up, to make it sound seperate from the rest of the animals here on Earth.

Some say it's our ability to have higher mental processes that seperates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. I think that it's our ability to live in denial that seperates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We've already proven that animals can communicate and use tools... but when was the last time you saw an animal pretend to be something it's not?

We put so much faith in our ability to think, yet we still find ourselves enslaved to ideas of mythical gods. We claim we are better than the rest because we can reason, yet we can't accept evolution as fact. Where is the reason in that given all the facts regarding evolution? I believe that excuse is treated as a double standard.

3) In my quest to find a home for Trixie Cat prior to monday, I had called a friend of mine to ask if he would like the cat. He said no and I, being in a hurry to find a home for the cat so I could go about my personal business, told him I had to go and would explain later... but he kept bugging about why I asked him if he wanted a cat. I eventually had to hang up because I was wasting valuable time.

When I asked him the next day what his problem was, he said that he (and I quote) thought that "... later was now". I thought about this for a second and realized that he was dead serious. He honestly thought that when I said I was going to tell him later, my idea of later was that I was going to tell him right after I said I wasn't going to.

I've been trying to wrap my head around this for days and still can't quite comprehend the idea behind it. I then thought back to other things that this person had said previous in regards to time. He can never seem to have a grasp on how much time has passed from one event to another. This got me thinking: everyone has their own concept of time, so what allows some people to have an accurate sense of time while others are completely off?

I run into this a lot at my job. Working in dental insurance, I get calls from people who have questions regarding claims. What amazes me is how so many people are unable to give even an estimated date should I ask them about when a procedure was done. Personally, you could ask me to state the last five times I've been to the dentist over the past few years and I could tell you which month each visit was in, and yet there are people who can't even tell you a week in which they may have gone in the current month!

So if the perception of time is different depending on the individual, how are we certain that we even have the concept of time correct to begin with? I could go my whole life thinking a cat is a tire simply because someone said it was so, and wouldn't know any different until someone would say "yeah dude, that's a cat... not a tire". And this would all tie back into how we each experience our own realities.

Personally, I think the whole concept of time is silly. Not time as in space-time (like, the continuum), but what we base time on here on Earth. Our entire concept of time is based on how many times the Earth goes around Sol. If you think about it, outside of the solar system that means completely dick. So we base everything on that concept (yet another way that humans demonstrate that they are only capable of thinking of themselves). Convenient? Yes. Practical? I don't think so. I would much rather enjoy a more accurate way of measuring my time in this body.

And speaking of time, I've been working on an idea regarding quantum time and how our perception of time in the macrocosm may be completely off... especially when you consider what the past, present, and future mean. Of course I'm not quantum physicist, it's just a hobby of mine... but once I get my research straight and thoughts worked out, I'll be sure to share my theory.

Wow, all of this because Trixie Cat needed a new home. I don't think you would believe me if I told you the whole point of me writing about the cat was to discuss how sometimes things work out a little too well. How strange is it that as a cat was being dropped off, someone was looking for just the same cat? There is an infinite amount of possibilities of how that could have worked out... and yet both parties ended up at the right place at the right time. Somehow I went from that to all of the above. This tends to happen quite often. Rambling? Maybe. Pure thought and emotion? Yes, most definitely.