Animals are Scary

Fun fact: I'm a life long ovo-lacto vegetarian.  That means I consume eggs, milk, honey, and other products made by animals but I don't consume fish, red meat, white meat, or sea food which would require harming an animal.  You can think of the difference being like one of the dividers between vegetables and fruits.  Vegetables are the plant and harm the plant when you remove the deliciousness.  Fruits can be taken from the plant without mutilating the plant.  This is why things like peppers and tomatoes are sometimes classified as fruits even though chemically they are vegetables.  The more you know.

I also don't wear leather.  This is because my high school history/psychology/philosophy/study hall teacher once kicked me in the shoe for being unwilling to kill an animal for food but having no qualms about wearing an animal to keep my toes warm.  He had a point. 

I would be willing to bet that most vegetarians you've met fall into one of the following categories:
a) Hippy crunchy granola save the rainforest types
b) Super skinny girls
c) People of Eastern decent/culture/religion

I fall into none of these categories. I'm more yuppie than hippie.  I'm somewhere between a size 10 and a size 6, and I'm an American atheist of northern European decent. This particular outlier came to be because her mom decided to stop eating meat when she was a poor newlywed dietetic student living in Texas. 

You may have noticed that people from categories a through c all tend to love animals.  They pet dogs they pass on the sidewalk and they stop talking during Sarah McLachlan commercials.  My first pet besides fish is Roommate's cat.  I don't even know what to do with Roommate's cat.  You know how comical it is when you give a 40 something confirmed bachelor a baby to hold?  That's like me with this cat.  I'm socially awkward around animals.  I'm more than a little afraid they are all going to try to eat me. 

I like people.  I've spent a great deal of time learning what goes on in their heads, and I have a sporting chance of actually understanding how another person things. (Thomas Nagel's paper convinced me no one can ever know what it's like to be a bat or any other animal.)  People take care of their own poop, they talk, and they don't shed on me quite so often.  And have you noticed a trend here? HIV, bird flu, swine flu, mad cow: don't mess with the animals or they will mess you up.

Roommate's cat is good for me though.  Maybe she will teach me to be less awkward and freaked out around animals.  And then I can check "living with an animal" off of my list of important life experiences.