09.07.2009 - 2:34 p.m.

Ah internets folk, i'm not sure where to even begin with this. I'm aware that i am also a regular visitor to this electron ridden faeryworld and could be considered as a lesser form of internets bod, but due to my outstanding wonderfulness and expansive general knowledge combined with a sense of my own limits, i'm a part of a subsection of internets folk i like to call 'normals'.

I'm happy to say that there's lots evidence for the presence of 'normals' in dland. These people are easily identified, especially in type, by the normal things they print which are devoid of the casual racism and gross idiocy found pretty much everywhere else on this planet.

Recently i came across some pictures from a russian homestead where they have a fishing cat as a pet, as a cat person i was happy to see a lesser seen feline in all its glory. The impression gleaned from these images was a happy house with happy animals (ok, i don't know about the people so much, but the animals were happy and healthy and that's all that matters to me) What i found simultaneously interesting/dismaying were the comments, there's a couple of sites hosting these images and predictably there were a long list of comments attached to both. With the exception of the minority of comments from 'normals' which went along the lines of:

What a gorgeous animal, i wish i could have one

All the other comments (these headings would be applicable to any list of comments anywhere on the webs) could be grouped under the following headings -

The 'ignorance is no impediment to opinion' person -
I know nothing about animals because i hate all of them, by extension i am therefore the best person to make comments on this subject

The obnoxious wanker -
I know everything, that fishing cat is clearly actually bengal cat / ocelot / armchair and i must be right because my ego tells me so (even though i'll shortly be proved wrong and then i've an excuse to start a comments flame war)

The PETA approach -
All animals should live in the wild, they cannot possibly be happy when domesticated, even if they'll be hunted and killed in the wild, they'll be happy as they're skinned for their fur

The pessimist who also knows nothing about animals -
They won't be happy when it turns on them and kills them / their other pets / their children

America -
I'm an american and only dimly aware of, and badly informed about, the rest of the planet

Confused -
I don't know what i'm looking at / I don't understand / The daylight blinds me

I checked into fishing cats and it turns out they're on the endangered list because of humans hunting them for their pelt. If the survival of a species means that they only live in captivity then at least the genetic line is sustained, pretty soon the only tigers alive will be as pets or in zoos and mostly in the USA. As any cat can be domesticated to a greater or lesser degree of success i'll guarantee from my anthropomorphic soapbox and resevoir of knowledge that they'll be happier with regular meals, stimulating social interaction and medical cover than they ever would living in a cave and just surviving long enough to reproduce, plus the rate of infant mortality will be much lower, and everyone loves kittens. The cat featured in the photos looks happier and better groomed than any contained in zoos, and a playful cat is a contented cat.

A story about a lion i heard from craig busch concerns a lion cub raised in an italian flat and was fed its whole life on pasta, when the lion outgrew the flat it had to go to a sanctuary and undergo a transitional phase of pasta and bolognese before moving onto meat, this lion was a soft as any domestic cat just twenty times the size, mr busch also said that lions and cheetahs are the easiest to domesticate and provided you raise them right will be safe and soft, like a lolcat but biggerer.

I would guess that any comments box on teh web will receive the same proportion of crazy to sane comments, the two that stood out for me were:

Mistaking a black camera squeeze bulb trigger thing for a) a grenade b) a butt-plug, just how sheltered do you have to be to think that ?
A yank called the guardian anti-semitic and anti-american, when it is the (alright one of the two) most even-handed and liberal papers in print in the UK today, but i can forgive him because if it ain't Fox it ain't news.