A Dose of Cuteness & Sweetness

Every so often, I get a dose of pure, absolute cuteness in my email inbox.

It comes from a link to a website run by two gerbils named Timon and Pumbaa (https://gerbilsworld.wordpress.com/).

The gerbils, who are brothers, describe their activities, food, human guardian, exercise, and other fun aspects of their existence.

They have a loving mom, lots of toys, a clean and safe environment, delicious food.

In return, they’re pudgy, cute, sweet furballs.

The gerbils remind me of an episode from the original Star Trek series, called “The Trouble With Tribbles.”

I won’t do a spoiler on it, but I can share with you that Tribbles are cute furballs, perhaps too cute.

You’ll want to watch the Star Trek episode to find out why.

Gerbils are particularly low-maintenance animals to have around the house because their desert origins mean they use little water and thus they excrete a lot less urine than dogs, cats, and other animals humans have as companions.

They’re very smart and loving, without aggressive tendencies or annoying habits. Plus, they’re active and personable.

As a Vegan Samurai, I’m totally opposed to vivisection and any form of animal experimentation.

Unfortunately, Timon and Pumbaa would be outraged to discover that greedy corporations have genetically modified gerbils and use them in all kinds of cruel research.

For example, a sinister corporation called Janvier Labs describes “their” gerbils as “products” and “models,” the same way a car company would refer to cars.

This same company also offers mice, rats, and many other mammals on its “product” list.

The “product description” for gerbils indicates that they’re radiated in some experiments, and subject to all kinds of other tortures.

Indeed, the use of “rodents” in animal testing for the pharmaceutical, chemical, military, surgery, and many other industries is a major source of suffering for innocent, defenseless sentient beings.

More than 100 million mice, gerbils, rats, rabbits, and other mammals are tortured and killed every year to support needless animal testing.

The kinds of things done to these innocent, sweet little creatures are so cruel and grotesque as to defy your darkest imaginations.

Corporate lab techs and academic researchers  drill holes in the skulls of unanesthesized animals.

They electroshock them.

They drown them.

They burn them.

They induce cancers and other fatal, painful diseases.

They poison them.

The humans who do these things are cold-hearted and soulless, impervious to the pleading eyes, pain, suffering, and helplessness of the tiny creatures they torment and murder.

When you read the blog postings and look at the pictures on Timon and Pumbaa’s “A Gerbil’s World” website, you feel a poignant pang in your heart.

I often look at the gerbil pictures when I’m depressed, and they always cheer me up and remind me that the universe gives us gifts of living sweetness to counteract the harsh realities of the human world.

Being sometimes depressed is a natural thing for an authentic vegan, living in a world surrounded by humans for whom harming, eating, tormenting, and exploiting animals is considered fun, useful, and totally acceptable.

Our current human culture is extremely disappointing in its careless brutality towards innocent animals and the earth itself.

I’m constantly meeting people who love to hunt, fish, eat animals, go to rodeos and circuses, and who vehemently defend what they see as the “right” of humans to do whatever they want to all other animals, and the earth.

It wears me down, makes me sad, and sometimes makes me angry.

So when I see the many pictures of Timon and Pumbaa, and read of their fun life and how much their human “mom” loves them, it’s a healing moment.

If you love animals and see how cute and sweet they are, how majestic they are, and how every animal feels pain and wants to be left alone to live as Nature intended, you’ll be vegan.

And when you want your own dose of cuteness and relief, visit Timon and Pumbaa.

It’s so good to know they’re loved and pampered, safe forever from the vivisectionists, hunters, dogs, and others who’d harm them.

Five Ways Being Vegan Includes More than Not Eating Animals

There’s a form of veganism that a Vegan Samurai calls “Vegan Lite.”

Vegan Lite is…

A person doesn’t consume any food products derived from the capture, domination of, enslavement, torture, or killing of animals.

This includes eggs, dairy, fish, and meat.

The Vegan Lite person limits their vegan activism to their dietary choices.

In contrast, an authentic “Vegan Samurai” refuses to participate in any industry that exploits and harm animals.

Here’s what I mean…

The Vegan Samurai Opposes the Animal Entertainment Industry

The animal entertainment industry includes circuses, Seaworld, zoos, rodeos, dolphin encounter businesses, and other facilities that take animals away from their natural habitats, biological pathways, and social groupings.

The zoo and animal theme park industries claim their facilities educate people about and expose them to animals, but the most pervasive message animal captivity facilities implant in peoples’ heads is that animals have no rights to live as Nature intended, and are ours to capture, cage, and gawk at.

There are limited exceptions one could make for wildlife rehab centers and farm animal sanctuaries, although I’ve seen examples where both of these categories are actually exploiting animals rather than helping them.

The Vegan Samurai Opposes Using Animals for Clothing & Other Materials

For centuries, trapping of animals for fur has been one of the most brutal ways humans abuse animals.

In the modern era, so-called “fur farms” imprison, enslave, and often electrocute animals so their furs can be made into fancy coats for humans.

We also see cows, pigs, and other animals skinned alive so leather, pigskin, and other materials can be made into wallets, shoes, gloves, coats, and other items that instead could  be made with materials from non-animal sources.

Animals in the wild are hunted for furs, or for ludicrous uses such as “bearskin rugs.”

The Vegan Samurai Opposes Hunting & Fishing

Other than the few remote, indigenous native peoples whose cultures have no choice but to rely on hunting for sustenance, nobody on the planet needs to hunt to eat.

They do it because they like to kill innocent animals, not because they have to do it.

Hunting and fishing are nothing more than humans invading the homes of other animals, using vehicles, dogs, hooks, boats, overwhelming firepower and other means to murder animals that haven’t done anything wrong, and can’t fight back.

The Vegan Samurai Opposes Vivisection (Animal Experimentation)

The horrors of vivisection in some cases are more disgusting even than the terrible atrocities you see in undercover videos that expose the animal foods industry.

And the “benefits” of vivisection are vastly overstated.

In fact, the defense given for vivisection is that vivisection helps humans develop medical treatments and medicines, and is wholly based on specieism (the belief that our species is more important than all other species).

I’ve spoken to animal experimenters who actually say things like, “If I have to stick electrodes into the heads of kittens so I can help even one human, it’s worth it.”

The real truth is that most vivisection is unnecessary if not inapplicable to human medical needs, experiments can be conducted without animals, and a lot of animal experimentation is conducted for ridiculous purposes, such as the torture done to rabbits by eye make-up companies.

A Vegan Samuria also opposes transgenic experimentation, such as the creation of chimeras that are part non-human animal, part human animal.

We oppose Frankenstein experiments done with animals!

The Vegan Samurai Opposes Animals Used for Labor

Have you seen the incredible movie War Horse?

One of the most powerful scenes is when majestic horses are harnessed and used to pull heavy military equipment, which injures and kills them.

Contrary to the nostalgic way we’ve been taught to look at oxen and horses hooked up to plows and other human machinery, the Vegan Samurai opposes ALL use of animals for labor.

Why? Because animals can never give us explicit, non-coerced, voluntary consent to what we want them to do.

And yes, this includes “service dogs.”

I realize that people who are Vegan Lite may initially feel the Vegan Samurai paradigm is challenging, shocking, or “too extreme.”

But I can assure you the Vegan Samurai paradigm is well-analyzed and totally solid from the perspective of logical, ethical consistency.

If it’s wrong to be a customer of a food industry that imprisons, enslaves, and harms animals, then it’s wrong to be a customer of other industries (such as zoos, aquariums, circuses, animal experimentation labs, rodeos, animal labor, etc.) that also harm animals by imprisoning and harming them.

I urge everyone who’s a vegan to adopt the Vegan Samurai paradigm as described above.

It’s the most all-encompassing, morally-consistent vegan paradigm, and it cleanses you from being a participant in any system that harms animals.