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Everything Ended Tragically and Terribly Wrong for Domino
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"After living outdoors for his entire life, he transitioned smoothly to the comforts of indoor living, and was a delightful house guest."-- Patrick H. Parker
The eggheads have another cat's scalp to proudly display on their flagpoles. This time around their victim was a handsome, green-eyed tuxedo named Domino who was killed off on May 3rd by the ingrates at the University of Texas (UT) in Austin.
Diagnosed to be suffering from an upper respiratory infection (URI), the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), and a growth in his throat that possibly could have been cancerous, he was executed by an unidentified veterinarian at the behest of a group of volunteers who practice trap, neuter, and return (TNR) under the banner of the Cats of West Campus. All totaled, there are believed to be between forty and fifty homeless cats living on the sprawling four-hundred-thirty-one-acre campus and it is only a matter of time before they, too, are going to meet with the same cruel fate as did Domino.
Every bit as reprehensible, it is a good bet that most of them have been heartlessly abandoned by the degree mill's irresponsible students with the remainder of them having been dumped by residents of Austin. (See University of Texas News, July 20, 2021, "The Domino Effect.")
In Domino's case, no one has been willing to speculate as to either where he came from or even when he was born. He apparently simply turned up on campus one day out of the blue in 2009 while he was still a kitten.
At some undisclosed point thereafter, a group of students, professors, and administrators from the Cats of West Campus had him sterilized and vaccinated. They fed and watered him twice a day and provided him with two small houses as shelter from the elements.
He also carved out for himself an underground bunker that he frequented but most days he could be found outside the Peter T. Flawn Academic Center (FAC). Over time, he became a surrogate pet and the unofficial mascot of the college.
With profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tinder, he also became known all over the globe. In his later years, he was the subject of newspaper articles, television reports, and posts on Reddit.
Considering the huge impact that he had on the campus community over the course of the preceding thirteen years, his killing brought a sad end to the spring semester. "Domino, the most well-known and beloved of the University of Texas (at) Austin's campus cats, was a welcoming friend on our campus for many years," Eliska Padilla, a spokesperson for the administration, told the Austin American-Statesman on May 5th. (See "University of Texas Mourns Loss of Beloved Campus Cat Domino.") "We will remember him fondly, and thank the community who cares for these cats for all the love and care given to him these past months."
Renee Babcock, an academic advising coordinator who used to help care for Domino, also paused in order to remember him. "I loved seeing students interacting with him. We loved this silly little cat with the grumpy face. He was a real rock star," she testified to the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, on May 8th. (See "'Long Live the King': University of Texas's Beloved Cat Domino Loses Battle with Cancer.'') "I feel like I've lost one of my own cats. I think there was something about his presence that we all counted on."
Staffer Christina Huizer, who helped care for Domino between 2016 and 2019, remembered him as being a good luck charm for students as well as a great ambassador for homeless cats. "(He) has (sic) such a big personality. He had very definite ideas about what he did and didn't like. Sometimes, he would come crawling on your lap and be the absolute sweetest kitten. Other times when you would show up, he would sniff the food you brought him, (and) looked at you like, 'Is that it?' and walk away," she recalled to the Austin American-Statesman. "He always lived life on his own terms...and we loved him."
It is remotely possible that both she and Babcock could be telling a semblance of the truth when it comes to their self-proclaimed love for Domino, but even so that does not in any way alter the salient fact that they ultimately ran out on him and left his care to others. Like everyone else who walked in and out of his life over the years, they were interlopers who came, took what they wanted from him, and then cruelly deserted him without so much as a second thought of ever improving his lot in this world.
Another one of Domino's caretakers, Patrick H. Parker of the Department of Neuroscience, remembered Domino's uniqueness. "There have been a bunch of Bevos (the university's longhorn steer mascots) and white squirrels, but there is only one Domino," he declared to the Austin American-Statesman.
On May 4th, he presided over a memorial service that was held on campus and attracted around one-hundred mourners. Flowers, notes, artwork, and cans of cat food were left outside one of the tiny houses that Domino had called home for so many years. The tower of the Main Building at 110 Inner Campus Drive was lit up in orange and the Tower bell carillonneurs played "Taps," "Amazing Grace," and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." There even has been some talk of commissioning a statue of him but that is highly unlikely to come about because such efforts on other college campuses have rarely ever gotten off the ground. They were all just so much palaver.
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| Domino's Cold, FIV, and Oral Growth Could Have Been Treated... |
Most glaringly of all, the degree mill has not announced what was done with his remains and that in turn leads to speculation that they either were incinerated or casually tossed out in the trash. Under the circumstances, the very best memorial that the eggheads could have given him would have been to have buried him in a wooden coffin on campus with a fitting tombstone but they were too cheap and uncaring to even have done that much for him and that in turn calls into question the veracity of their supposedly heartfelt eulogies.
Even more unforgivably, the short shrift that they gave him in death pales in comparison with how horribly that they used and abused him while he was alive. First of all, the university nakedly exploited him as an unpaid wet nurse for its immature and irresponsible students.
"He is a lot of people's surrogate pet. I think he is the biggest comfort animal possibly at the whole university," science professor Al Mackrell, who also served as one of Domino's caretakers, told medium.com on May 4th. (See "Domino, in Memoriam, 2009-2022") "Students come from a really awful exam, or something bad happens to them, and he's just always there."
Graduate student Muneeb Aslam, who has been slaving away and keeping the toffs in clover ever since 2014, concurred. "Domino approached me, and it really made my day," he told The Daily Texan. "(He) showed me love and affection, and it gave me a glimpse of what it felt like to be at home."
Freshman Connor Leu likewise freely availed himself of Domino's charms. "I have a cat at home that I don't get to see for months at a time, and seeing Domino always reminded me of my cat," he confessed to the Austin American-Statesman. "At the same time, Domino's uniqueness made him stand out to the University of Texas population...He was a friendly face to everybody passing by the lawn in front of the FAC."
That pretty much says it all and in doing so pinpoints precisely everything that is so terribly wrong with eggheads and the degree mills. In Leu's case, he apparently is unaware that cats live very short existences and that as a consequence owners are only allotted a finite amount of time to spend with them even under the very best of circumstances.
More to the point, no one who truly cared about a cat would ever desert it, especially in order to pursue something as trivial and thoroughly worthless as a college education. Rather, he would attempt to emulate the sterling example set all those years ago by none other than the noble Charlie Brown who quit school in order to devote his life to making his dog, Snoopy, happy.
Secondly, even a small amount of time spent on a college campus is more than sufficient in order to corrupt otherwise sensible and halfway decent individuals into consummate narcissists who are thoroughly incapable of genuinely caring about any animal or individual. Perhaps worst of all, most college graduates are destined to go forth in life without ever realizing that they have been sold a bill of goods by unscrupulous professors.
"Either you think -- or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural taste, civilize and sterilize you," F. Scott Fitzgerald warned in his 1934 novel, Tender Is the Night.
Being far too selfish in order to recognize all cats as sentient individuals, is by no means a problem that is confined to the degree mills, but rather it extends to most institutions and retail concerns, such as museums, libraries, breweries, prisons, and farms, that employ working cats and mascots. What all of these venues have in common is that they are either frequented by, inhabited by, or employ individuals who do not want to be there in the first place and therefore seek out any and all distractions that will help them to make it through their dreary days.
No lasting moral and legal bonds are therefore ever established and as a consequence they only exploit and neglect every cat that so much as crosses their paths. (See Cat Defender post of April 30,2022 entitled "Regulated to the Dustbin of History and All but Forgotten by the Grossly Negligent Annapolis Maritime Museum, Miss Pearl's Beautiful Soul Continues to Cry Out from the Grave for Justice.")
Therefore, what professors need is some sort of honest toil, such as working in a coal mine, as opposed to hoodwinking students out of their money and bankrupting the United States Treasury in the process. Unless they are in a position to squander the best four years of their lives and several hundred thousand dollars, students likewise would be better off working. Besides, those of them who fervently believe that attending a few lectures, reading a book or two, and then spitting the same sottise back to their professors on an exam is hard and stressful work, are in for a rather rude awakening if they should ever decide to venture into the workforce or to get married.
Like so many TNR fanatics, Old Parker Bird mindlessly believes that a managed colony is the ne plus ultra in compassionate cat care and therefore trumps all other issues, including the welfare and happiness of individual cats. "Domino's long life is a testament to all the people that cared for him all these years," he blowed long and hard to the Austin American-Statesman. "He lived so much longer than it's expected for any outdoor cat to live. And it's a testament to the empathy of those people and everyone that loves
( sic) him so much."
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...but UT Was Too Cheap, Lazy, and Callous to Have Done So
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In the medium. com article cited supra, he laid it on even thicker. "In addition to giving love and joy to thousands of Longhorns over the years, Domino has been a great ambassador for the cause of stray cat welfare," he opined with, presumably, a straight face. "His fame has helped to raise awareness, gather cat food donations, and find homes for stray cats and kittens."
To have penned such outrageously hypocritical drivel as that Parker surely must be either delusional or living in a parallel universe. Au contraire, the reckless manner in which he and the remainder of UT used, abused, neglected, and ultimately killed off Domino paint an entirely different picture of both them and TNR.
First of all, with an annual budget in excess of US$3.1 billion and a system-wide endowment of US$43 billion, UT does not have any business bumming cat food. Clearly, eggheads are not only selfish but every bit as cheap as the day is long.
Secondly, Parker and his cohorts never attempted to place Domino in a permanent home. While it is true that they belatedly did place him in foster care, by that time he was on his last gasp.
That inexcusable negligence was in spite of the petit fait that he always had been an extremely friendly cat from the time that he arrived on campus thirteen years earlier. It is indisputable therefore that he would have made someone a simply wonderful companion.
"After living outdoors for his entire life, he transitioned very smoothly to the comforts of indoor living, and he was a delightful house guest," Parker belatedly confessed to medium.com. "In his final month, he lived with wonderful and kind caretakers, and he had his own bed and patio. He checked out his new kitchen and learned that they serve(d) salmon. He loved getting brushed."
The practitioners of TNR at UT are far from being the only ones who are guilty of cruelly condemning preeminently adoptable cats to rot and, ultimately, die in the street; on the contrary, all of them are guilty, to one degree or another, of committing the same dastardly offense while simultaneously defending their abhorrent conduct by falsely claiming that cats like Domino are unadoptable.
For example, at Coors Field in Denver there is an eighteen-year-old black tom named Midnight who has belonged to a managed colony for an astounding fourteen years. Like Domino, he is extremely friendly and would really appreciate a warm and secure home of his own, especially at this stage of his life, but his caretakers are unwilling to accommodate him.
Instead, they are devoting their time and money to feeding the public the same sottise as Old Parker Bird and his cronies did for years concerning Domino. "We're (Midnight and Socks) fed and cared for by two extremely devoted women who love us and whom we love," they wrote July 15th on Twitter. "We're happy at the ballpark and love seeing mew (sic)."
Parker and his misbegotten ilk can lie their ugly faces off until the cows come home, but individuals who truly care about cats do not leave them outdoors to fend for themselves in a hostile world when homes are readily available. It is probably unrealistic to believe that homes can be found for every homeless cat in this world but that most assuredly does not mean that such an all-out effort should not be made.
Besides, it is dangerous for cats to be left outdoors without any protection, even if they do belong to managed colonies. (See Cat Defender posts of January 5,2011 and August 24,2017 entitled, respectively, "Gunned Down by an Assassin, and Then Mowed Down by a Hit-and-Run Driver, Big Bob Loses a Leg but Survives and Now Is Looking for a Home" and "The Brutal Murders of a Trio of Atlantic City's Boardwalk Cats Provide an Occasion for the Local Rag and PETA to Whoop It Up and to Break Out the Champagne.")
None of that is in any way meant to imply that TNR has been a bad development; on the contrary, it is far preferable to all trap and kill schemes. It simply does not go far enough. Specifically, practitioners urgently need to provide some type of security for the cats under their control and to get as many of them as is possible into homes as quickly as it is feasible.
The longer that any cat remains on its own the more susceptible it becomes to being attacked by ailurophobes, such as ornithologists and wildlife biologists, trapped and killed by Animal Control officers and shelters, deliberately mowed down and killed by motorists, and attacked by dogs, raccoons, skunks, coyotes, fishers, birds of prey, and other prolific feline predators. Poisoners are another major threat to their survival as are diseases, such as FIV in Domino's case.
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Domino Was Not Only Overweight but Fed an Improper Diet as Well
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Some of them sans doute even starve to death in the wintertime. "I have been a street cat," Midnight Louise admitted in the late Carole Nelson Douglas's delightfully entertaining 2008 novel, Cat in a Sapphire Slipper. "There is not much time to master the finer points of human misbehavior when one is scrambling for a mote of food and a drop of water or avoiding imminent danger under radial tires."
To put the matter another way, almost anything bad can, and usually does, happen to homeless cats. It therefore is imperative for those individuals who truly care about them to be proactive; the species' sworn enemies certainly are and, above all, they never rest upon their laurels. (See Phys. org, articles dated November 30, 2021 and August 30, 2022 and entitled, respectively, "Novel Implants to Protect Australia's Wildlife from Feral Cats" and "Using Poison Pills to Help Protect Endangered Species in Australia.")
In spite of what the eggheads claim, all of the available evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that the thirteen years that Domino spent at UT were anything but a cup of tea. Rather, a strong case could be made that he survived because of his own resourcefulness and dogged determination as opposed to anything that Parker and his cronies ever did for him.
First of all, Parker has admitted that he was attacked on several occasions by raccoons that also reside on campus. He also more than likely had his share of run-ins with canines as well.
Secondly, sometime last year he received a nasty cut behind one of his ears. Parker has speculated that it was inflicted by another cat but the damage could have been done by almost any animal or human.
Thirdly, in February of 2021 Parker and his colleagues, who claim to have cared so much about him, left Domino all alone and outdoors during a rare weeklong winter storm that sent the thermometer plunging well below the freezing mark and dropped a small amount of snow and ice on Austin. In fact, after he had gone missing for five days, they wasted little time in writing him off as being dead.
Actually, he had been holed up in his underground bunker but without food and water. "He had to make a dramatic entrance," Mackrell later told the University of Texas News in the article cited supra. "I think a bunch of us ugly-cried when we realized he was okay."
Inclement weather is another compelling reason why that all TNR practitioners should endeavor to socialize and to place in loving homes as quickly as possible all of the cats under their control. After all, it is ridiculous to believe that very many of them are going to venture out during heavy snowstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other cataclysmic events in order to check on the welfare of their cats.
Even if they were willing to do so, locating them and spiriting them to safety would require a considerable expenditure of both time and effort under extremely trying conditions. For example, when hurricanes Irene and Sandy pummeled the northeast in 2011 and 2012, respectively, Alley Cat Allies (ACA) of Bethesda, Maryland, left its Boardwalk Cats in Atlantic City to fend for themselves but it never did disclose how many of them perished during those powerful storms.
Fourthly, the winter storm that impacted Austin also killed the vegetation that surrounded Domino's shelter, feeding station, and underground bunker and that in turn presented staffers at the school's Landscaping Services with a golden opportunity in August of last year to evict him so that they could remove the dead bushes. Although the workers did eventually replace his shelter and feeding station, he was rudely relocated to another location on campus during the interim.
New vegetation was supposed to have been planted late last autumn but it is not known if Domino lived long enough in order to have ever seen his old abode again. (See KUSA-TV of Denver, September 6, 2021, "University of Texas-Austin Community Cares for Campus Cat after Landscaping Removes His Home.")
Soon thereafter in late 2021, he began experiencing breathing difficulties and that led Parker and Huizer to betray his confidence by forcibly manhandling him into a trap and then hauling him off to an unidentified veterinarian who initially diagnosed him to be suffering from a URI and FIV. That definitely was the last that he ever saw of his longtime, beloved home on campus in that he subsequently was locked in a bathroom at the home of an unidentified fosterer. Even that was shamefully cruel in that nobody who cares anything about a cat, especially a sickly and dying one, would ever so much as think of locking him up in a smelly toilet.
In most cases, a URI amounts to little more than a common cold and as such it can be easily remedied by one or two weeks of supportive care that is administered indoors and out of the cold and elements. More serious respiratory infections that are accompanied by nasal and ocular discharges are treated with antibiotics, such as Doxycycline.
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Near the End, UT Took Away Domino's Beloved Bushes and Evicted Him
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Such infections are contracted through interactions with other cats and the sharing of food dishes and water bowls. Being forced to live outdoors in the cold, rain, and snow with all the stress that goes along with being homeless only makes such infections worse, especially if they are allowed to go untreated.
Although they are easily cured, just about all TNR practitioners and owners alike instead elect to have their cats rubbed out. Doing so is cheaper and easier on them, but certainly not their cats. (See Cat Defender post of October 18, 2014 entitled "Hamish McHamish's Derelict Owner Reenters His Life after Fourteen Years of Abject Neglect Only to Have Him Killed off after He Contracts a Preeminently Treatable Common Cold.")
FIV on the other hand is a serious matter in that it is very similar to HIV-AIDS in humans and therefore attacks the white blood cells of cats thus weakening their immune systems and making them prone to a host of secondary infections. Even so, many FIV-positive cats remain asymptomatic for years and are thus able to lead relatively normal lives.
The disease is transmitted genetically and through scratches and bite wounds. With that being the case, it is not surprising that it primarily afflicts intact males between five and ten years of age. It thus is fair to conclude that tangling with members of the opposite sex is fraught with dangers for both cats and humans alike.
The good news is that it is not known to be spread through social grooming, the sharing of food and water containers, litter boxes, and sneezing. FIV transmission is therefore rare even in multi-cat households, provided that all new arrivals are screened for the disease beforehand.
Some of the common symptoms of the disease include, inter alia, a poor coat condition, recurring fevers, a lack of appetite, inflammation of the mouth and gums, and chronic infections of the eyes, skin, the respiratory tract, and bladder. Tragically, there is not any cure for the disease and practitioners instead attempt to keep FIV-positive cats asymptomatic for as long as possible by treating secondary illnesses, controlling parasites, prescribing electrolyte replacement therapy as well as drugs to enhance their immune systems and to counteract inflammation, and by placing afflicted cats on a diet that does not contain raw meat and eggs. (See WebMD, February 13, 2021, "Cats and FIV: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatments.")
Compounding an already dreadful situation to begin with, there is not any effective vaccine for FIV. Between 2002 and 2017 a vaccine was foisted upon naïve owners in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom but it afforded only limited protection for cats in North American and none whatsoever for those living throughout the United Kingdom.
Secondly, annual boosters were required and as an adjuvanted vaccine it contained additives that stimulated the immune systems of cats. Thirdly, such vaccines are known to cause vaccine associated sarcomas (VAS).
Worst of all, since diagnostic tests were unable to distinguish between the antibodies produced by the vaccine and the infection itself, that in turn led to wholesale false positives. As a result, shelters and veterinarians had a field day exterminating in droves not only totally healthy cats but also FIV-positive ones as well that could have lived pretty much normal lives.
"A positive FIV test in a cat is not necessarily a diagnosis. False positives can occur," ACA states in an undated white paper which can be found on its web site. (See "Feline Immunodeficiency Virus.") "We strongly recommend against testing community cats for FIV."
The FIV vaccine debacle is yet still another poignant example of what a grandiose fraud the practice of veterinary medicine is as applied to cats. Caveat emptor! (See Cat Defender post of August 14, 2021 entitled "Amazing Little Juicebox Overcomes Not Only a Near Fatal Mauling at the Hands of His Owners' Dog but also Penury and Being Cruelly Abandoned to Shift for Himself Inside the Snake Pit World of Veterinary Medicine.")
It is highly doubtful that anybody ever will know just how many cats that the veterinary medical profession killed directly and indirectly as the result of its phony-baloney testing and FIV vaccine but instead of demonstrating so much as an ounce of remorse, practitioner Natalie Stilwell of PetMD ludicrously declared on June 21, 2019 that this wholesale carnage could have been prevented if owners had only microchipped and tagged their cats. (See "What Is FIV and Why Is the FIV Vaccine No Longer Available?")
Quite obviously, she is not only ignorant of the petit fait that many shelters think so little of feline lives that they do not even bother to scan impounded cats for implanted microchips. Likewise, most individuals who dump their cats are astute enough to first remove their collars and tags. (See Cat Defender posts of May 23, 2022, January 9, 2022, June 22, 2010, and May 28, 2008 entitled, respectively, "Tilly Is Returned to Her Owner after a Seventeen and One-Half Year Separation but Their Reunion Is Destined to Be, Sadly, a Brief and Bittersweet One," "Marley Is Reunited with Her Family after Having Gone Missing Nine Years Ago but Her Deliverance Does Not Establish Either the Efficacy or Desirability of Microchipping Cats," "Hobson Is Forced to Wander Around Yorkshire for Months Trapped in an Elastic Collar That Steadily Was Eating Away at His Shoulder and Leg," and "Collars Turn into Death Traps for Trooper and Que but Both Are Rescued at the Eleventh Hour.")
Stilwell caps off her harangue by arguing that the only way to protect cats from FIV is to sterilize them, keep them under lock and key indoors, and to test all new adoptees for the disease. In doing so, she thus has aligned herself with the American Bird Conservancy's "Cats Indoors" agenda and PETA's en masse feline extermination campaign.
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| The Tower Was Lit Up in Domino's Memory |
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C'est-à-dire, she and her comrades believe that the only good cats are dead ones and those that have been denatured and are kept indoors and out of sight. Owners therefore should not expect very much in the way of worthwhile assistance from the veterinary medical profession in the fight against FIV and the dozens of other diseases that are plaguing the lives of cats; au contraire, the only things that Stilwell and her colleagues are good for are cleaning out owners' pockets and defaming their beloved companions.
Based upon the paucity of information available online, it is not known when Domino was sterilized. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that if he had been altered immediately after he had arrived on campus in 2009 he might not have contracted FIV by, presumably, scrapping with other toms during Paarungszeit.
On the other hand, he already could have been FIV-positive before he arrived on campus. Even more disconcertingly, sterilizing a tom does not protect him from being bitten and scratched by other males. Besides, male cats tussle over matters other than sex.
Secondly, it has not been disclosed if his caretakers provided him with any parasite control, such as outfitting him with a flea and tick collar, brushing his fur daily with a flea and tick comb, and by manually removing all parasites. Topical insecticides, such as Bravecto,® have been linked to pancreatitis and other deadly maladies and therefore should be avoided; in fact, chemicals always should be shunned in favor of all-natural medicines and foods.
Thirdly, while it is extremely doubtful that his caretakers ever bothered to have brushed Domino's teeth, doing so would have alerted them to not only any potential dental problems but also to inflammation of his teeth and gums, which is one indication of FIV. Fourthly, press report indicate that he was fed a daily ration of "human-grade" salmon and tuna by his caretakers but hopefully he was not fed raw seafood.
They have admitted, however, of attempting to get him to consume cheeseburgers, hamburgers, steak, shrimp, and lobster but he wisely demurred. Instead, he should have been fed high quality canned food, such as Fancy Feast® and Friskies' Glaz'd & Infuz'd®, but his caretakers apparently were too cheap to have done so.
Instead, it looks like they tossed him whatever was cheap and readily available. It is the same old story all over the world in that those individuals with the deepest pockets invariably have the shortest arms.
It accordingly is not surprising that by weighing in at more than sixteen pounds, Domino was slightly overweight. In his case, however, the principal concern appears to have been one of what, rather than how much, that he was being fed.
Considering that his caretakers so obstinately and heartlessly refused to have placed him in a loving home, they could not possibly have been monitoring what he was consuming and eliminating. That is especially the case given that not only many other cats sampled his fare but also raccoons, opossums, birds, and rodents.
The vast majority of TNR practitioners drop off kibble and water either once or twice a day and then immediately hightail it back to their warm, secure, and moneyed homes. They accordingly could not possibly have much of an idea of how that any cat living in their colonies is faring.
It is even difficult for diligent owners who have multiple cats to properly monitor their health unless they stay at home with them every day and observe what they are eating, drinking, and leaving behind in their litter boxes. Multiple feeding dishes and litter boxes would be, however, a positive step in the right direction.
Cats additionally crave human attention but apparently no one at UT had very much time for Domino. "I've been thinking about one night, during the COVID lockdown, when Christina (Huizer) and I fed Domino. I guess he was missing all his fans, because he kept following us, crying, down the West Mall as we tried to leave," Parker related in the medium.com article cited supra. "We would stop and visit with him and give him more food, but he kept following us and crying -- he didn't want us to leave. And that's how I feel now, I just keep crying and crying because I don't want him to leave so soon."
Even if Old Parker Bird should be even remotely sincere, he should have been astute enough to have realized what English author and poet Oliver Herford did all those years ago when he penned the following lines:
"Gather kittens while you may,
Time brings only sorrow;
And the kittens of today;
Will be old cats tomorrow."
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Students and Others at the Memorial Service on May 4th
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As things eventually turned out, a common cold and FIV were the least of Domino's health problems. Parker does not provide any dates, but apparently somewhere along about February Domino was taken to a practitioner who discovered a growth in his mouth that was impeding his breathing.
That is one reason that the antibiotics had failed to clear up his URI, that is, if he actually had one in the first place. It additionally is outrageous that the veterinarian who initially treated him had failed to diagnose the growth.
Of course, when it comes to treating cats, veterinary incompetence and dishonesty is the rule rather than the exception. For instance, when Denise Traynor of Charford in Bromsgrove, Worcester, took her seven-month-old kitten, Molly, to an unidentified practitioner on July 2, 2010 that individual was so incompetent as to have overlooked a ball bearing embedded in her left eye. (See Cat Defender post of July 19, 2010 entitled "Molly Loses an Eye to an Assailant with a Ball Bearing Gun Only to Later Be Victimized by an Incompetent Veterinarian.")
Domino subsequently was taken to an unidentified internist who concluded that the growth likely was cancerous. Based upon that bit of guesswork, Parker and his cronies decided to have him killed off.
Last November, a pretty tuxedo named Socks who, like Midnight, also resides at Coors Field in Denver, came within a hairsbreadth of being victimized by the same caliber of shoddy veterinary work. Trapped by TNR practitioner Jenni Leigh, she was transported to the Pet Care Coalition Incorporated Veterinary Clinic in nearby Aurora where a small growth was found on one of her mammary glands.
Without even so much as taking a biopsy of the growth, veterinarians Genevieve Forster and Crystal A. Hoffsetz-Sinner informed Leigh that the growth likely was not only cancerous but that it had metastasized as well and that as a result Socks surely would be as dead as a doornail within three months. Because of Socks' online notoriety, Leigh wisely elected to have the growth surgically removed and a biopsy taken of it rather than to immediately pull the plug on her. Even though she had been granted a temporary reprieve, Socks nevertheless was consigned to a cell on death row in order to await the results of the pathology report.
Not surprisingly, the vets were dead wrong in that the growth turned out to have been benign and Socks, at last report, is alive and well today at Coors Field. That is a good deal more than can be said for her fellow tenants at the ballpark, the Rockies, who are deader than last week's news. (See Cat Defender post of December 11, 2021 entitled "Socks, Coors Field's Most Famous Resident, Is Saved from the Gallows by a Pathology Report after She Is Trapped, Misdiagnosed, and Then Unjustly Consigned to Death Row.")
In that light, it is quite revealing to listen to veterinarians, physicians, and other professionals tout the superiority of their science, facts, and diagnostic tests one minute only to turn around and lapse into guesswork and hackneyed opinions the next minute. Being men and women for all seasons, most of them are more than willing to say and do almost anything that will put a fast and easy buck in their pockets.
In Domino's case, a biopsy would have been required followed by either oral surgery and chemotherapy, and possibly both. The removal of the growth would have cost thousands of dollars and the chemotherapy a comparable amount but neither his caretakers nor the tightfisted University of Texas were about to spend anywhere near those amounts, especially on a cat.
Instead, all concerned elected to take the cheap and easy way out by having Domino killed off. They are simply too dishonest to ever admit the truth.
To be fair about the matter, by the time that May had arrived he was in terrible shape. Specifically, he was experiencing difficulties not only breathing but also eating.
Nevertheless, the biopsy should have been performed. Depending upon the results of it and especially if the growth had turned out to be benign, an effort should have been made to either have shrunk it or to have surgically removed it.
Failing that, he could have been administered painkillers, fed intravenously, and placed on a ventilator. It would have been a difficult battle to be sure but he perhaps could have been saved.
Like all Animal Control officers, shelters, and veterinarians, the practitioners of TNR are too overly fond of trap and kill and, even worse, they have a clearly discernible fondness for playing god. There is something about holding the power of life and death in one's hands that automatically transforms seemingly otherwise decent individuals into monsters. Even more alarmingly, since the right of all cats to live never has been held to be inviolable, that has allowed societies all over the world to commit not only every abuse known under the sun against them but to do so with impunity.
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Flowers, Notes, and Artwork Were Left at One of Domino's Shelters
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Regrettably, some practitioners have and are continuing to besmirch the once venerated reputation of TNR by abandoning their principles and instead doing the dirty work of Animal Control officers, shelters, and veterinarians. Even worst, a few of them are actually practicing trap and kill under the guise of TNR.
(See Cat Defender post of December 22, 2011 entitled "A Rogue TNR Practitioner and Three Unscrupulous Veterinarians Kill at Least Sixty-Two Cats with the Complicity of the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals.")Looking back over the course of Domino's sad and troubled life, it is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion than that he never stood much of a chance of ever making it in this world. Cruelly and inexcusably abandoned as a kitten, he was forced to rely upon his own resourcefulness in order to survive in a heartless and violent world.
Although his winding up at one of the managed colonies at UT may au premier coup d'oeil have been a godsend, it merely continued the hideous neglect and naked exploitation that had plagued his life from the very beginning by spreading it out over the course of thirteen years. In particular, his caretakers never endeavored to place him in a loving home, to provide him with any personal protection whatsoever, and whatever little veterinary care that he was lucky enough to have received seems to have been pretty much limited to occasional check-ups conducted by grossly incompetent practitioners.
They additionally never fed him a balanced and nutritional diet. They therefore never even marginally improved his lot in life.
Most shameful of all, the eggheads never once looked upon him as a sentient individual who was endowed with rights, needs, and feelings of his own and that can readily be seen in their eulogies. Every syllable that they ever uttered about him was always concerned with their own needs and promoting TNR and seldom, if ever, him and his welfare.
That same perverted mindset prevails on college campuses all over the globe. (See Cat Defender posts of June 9 2008, October 15, 2012, November 21, 2012, September 15, 2017, October 3, 2017 republished on January 10, 2018, and August 23, 2022 entitled, respectively, "A Small Pennsylvania College Greedily Snatches Up an Alumnus' Multimillion-Dollar Bequest but Turns Away His Cat, Princess," "Texas A&M Ushers In a New Academic Year but Things Are Just Not Quite the Same Without Its Beloved Bisbee," "Officials at Plymouth College of Art Should Be Charged with Gross Negligence and Animal Cruelty in the Tragic Death of the School's Longtime Resident Feline, PCAT," "King Loui I's Days of Roaming the Perilous Streets of Aachen Come to a Sad End Shortly after He Is Diagnosed with Inoperable Throat Cancer," "Jordan, the University of Edinburgh's Library Cat, Disappears into Thin Air but No One Either Cares, Knows, or Is Willing to Say What Has Happened to Him," and "The Narcissists at Kenyon College Enter Into an Unholy Alliance with an Ambitious Methodist Minister and in Doing So Doom Moxie to an Early Grave Through Their Insufferable Arrogance, Naked Exploitation, and Abject Neglect of Him.")
UT's final betrayal of Domino came when Parker and Huizer hustled him into a cage and then paid a veterinarian to take him off their hands. Contrary to what all practitioner of trap and kill proclaim to the contrary, there is not anything either morally acceptable or humane about such atrocities. (See Cat Defender posts of September 28, 2011 and April 8, 2018 entitled, respectively, "Marvin Is Betrayed, Abducted, and Murdered by a Journalist and a Shelter Who Preposterously Maintain That They Were Doing Him a Favor" and "A Rare Behind the Scenes Glimpse at the Ruthless Murders of Two Cats by an Indiana Veterinarian Exposes All Those Who Claim That Lethal Injections Are Humane to Be Barefaced Liars.")
To top off this entire sorry business, Domino's killers have had the unmitigated gall to claim that by ending his life they were doing him a huge favor. "A compassionate vet visited him at his home to provide him with a peaceful transition across the Rainbow Bridge," is how that Parker cavalierly dismissed his perfidy and heinous crime.
First of all, compassionate veterinarians are about as rare as hens' teeth in this world; rather, the overwhelming majority of them are moneygrubbing charlatans and ruthless cat killers. Secondly, Domino never had a home. Thirdly, the Rainbow Bridge no more exists than does the heaven of the Christians.
All killers lamely attempt to excuse their despicable crimes by claiming that they cannot bear to either see cats suffer or for the quality of their lives to decline, but that is arguably the biggest of their myriad of lies. What they are really saying is that they are unwilling to pay for their cats' treatment and are too lazy to devote the time and care that are required in order to nurse them back to health.
Besides, once a cat is no longer useful to them, they do not hesitate to get rid of it as quickly and as expeditiously as possible as if it were nothing more than an old, worn-out pair of shoes. They accordingly are bereft of both conscience as well as so much as a speck of honesty.
It is just too bad that there is not some means whereby Parker, Huizer, and the remainder of their likeminded ilk could not be treated to a good dose of their own sophistry. C'est-à-dire, what they so richly deserve is to be forcibly picked up off the street, confined to a cage at a local jail, and then killed off themselves by a gaoler who is shouting in their terrified faces that he, too, is doing them a favor.
Deplorably, as indispensable cogs within the great American indoctrination and propaganda apparatchik, the eggheads not only enjoy immunity from prosecution but they are encouraged by the authorities to continue to commit their immoralities, to propagate their myriad of lies and, above all, to kill cats. Every corrupt society requires a steady supply of pimps and whores and the University of Texas and its fellow degree mills are certainly doing their part by churning them out by the tens of millions each year.
Photos: medium.com (Domino in the grass, on the scales, the Tower, and the memorial service), the University of Texas (Domino near one of his shelters, in the dirt, and in the bushes), and Sara Diggins of the Austin American-Statesman (flowers at one of his shelters).
