Anyone else find equating pets and animals with humans to be rather strange?

[politicat]

107. So the drowning situation doesn't work as a thought experiment but...

I don't have a dog; I have a cat who has been with me for all of my marriage and more than half of my partner's life. She's 23, she is our child in all emotional ways, and she's an experimental subject helping to find the means to use stem cells to treat kidney failure. So she's exceptionally important to me emotionally and practically. (And may someday be important to a lot of people who are currently on dialysis. If we can learn to treat feline renal disease with stem cells, it's not a huge leap to treating it in people.)

However, she's never near water, we live in an almost desert, we live on highish ground, and when we have to deal with flash floods, we will evac at the first warning (and yes, our cat goes with). That's just how we roll. So drowning... Not good for a thought experiment.

Let's try a car accident, since I do take her to the veterinary teaching hospital where she's in her study. Something like we get t-boned at an intersection. Assuming that I am the adult who is able to get myself out of my vehicle and help the people in the other, and the other driver is unable to get out to assist, then here is my priority:

1. Get myself out to safety. I can't help anyone if I am a casualty. Check and make sure my car isn't burning, leaking fuel or otherwise about to make me a casualty. If it's safe-ish, then...

2. Get my cat out of my vehicle so I can not worry about her and because I'm already right there, and getting her out is going to be natural since I will also be getting to my rescue tool. (My rescue tool lives in the elastic pocket behind the driver's seat. When kitty has to be in the car, the place where she rides best is in her carrier in the footwell behind the driver's seat.) This should take between 10 and 45 seconds. Place cat carrier out of the way, where she's safe. If she's injured, I'm not a vet and I don't have much feline first aid in my arsenal, but since I've just been in a car accident, I can't get her to the Vet ER anyway. If she's just pissed and scared, I can't help and I'm better off if she's in the carrier, yelling her head off. Either way, the place where she's best off is out of the way and secure.

3. Now check other car. There's a triage system that has a lot of variables, but if the driver is seriously injured and the kid is safe in the car seat, but panicking, then the driver gets first attention. If there's ABC compromise for either driver or passenger, then those get priority, unless it looks like a neck or spine, then that person stays put until EMS gets there, unless the previous thing about leaking fuel or fire apply. Here's why I need my rescue tool -- I probably can't get the windows open or the seat belts open without it. The rescue tool can break safety glass and cut through seat-belting, and has enough length to provide me with some leverage to pry open doors in an emergency. (And yes, I've had the first responder training for this.) I can't rescue a kid if the car seat won't come out of the car, or the adult if their safety belt is jammed. Do the extra 30 seconds to get my tool and move the cat carrier matter? Um... Not really. If someone is so gravely injured or so imperiled that the 30 seconds to make my cat safe matter, then nothing I could have done would have saved them. I cannot get a child out of a car in 30 seconds, nor free an adult from a jammed seatbelt if that's the only thing keeping them pinned. I CANNOT free a person from a crushed footwell, or unimpale a steering column. I am neither a fire/rescue responder nor EMT. I've had advanced first aid, Red Cross first responder and an incident management class. I'm a good Good Samaritan, but that's all I am.

It's not that I value animal life over human, it's that I have good triage skills. In an emergency, one gets the shaken bystanders and the walking wounded out of the way so there's space to deal with the yellow and red tags. In any car accident, my cat is likely to be either a green tag (no injuries or only superficial ones) or a black tag (dead at scene), so either way, making her not something to worry about leaves me better able to help others. Yes, I am the type of person who puts her oxygen mask on first before helping someone else. But I am also not going to make things worse for someone by interfering with something better left to professionals -- I won't extract someone with a potentially damaged spine, and I won't move someone who might bleed out if it's safe enough to wait for EMS. I will hold that person's hand, say comforting things, and keep a close eye on ABC. Note that I'm not doing the same for my cat. (Drowning is the only exception, and in my case, both cat and child are equally screwed. I swim just well enough to save myself, and I'd likely be making myself into a 3rd casualty.)

Now... There are a lot of times that I do value my cat over people, especially in non-emergent situations. If it's a choice between taking my cat to the vet and meeting my mom for breakfast, cat wins every time. Kitty will get her food and get her meds before I do our discretionary spending. Indeed, our 4 pound cat does get what feels like 1/3 of our CalKing bed, taken out of the dead center. If kitty is having a crisis, then yes, I'll stay with her rather than going to prod my grandmother in assisted living. (Gran is safe. Gran has people to help her. Kitty has me and partner.)

And if it's my cat or Louie Gohmert? One is a small, petulant creature who whines and spews up toxicity on a regular basis, and the other is a cat. No contest.