Dead Kittens vs. Dead Enders

I recently learned the term “Dead Ender”. It’s is apparently the name for those men & women who have made it their business to not have children. Now, I have known for quite some time that I wanted no part of producing and raising offspring. But I was unaware that their was an inferantly negative term dedicated to those of us who have made the conscious decision to not reproduce the growing garbage machines that will leave increasingly detrimental carbon footprints on the blue marble. Not that my motivations have anything to do with any lofty environmentalist notions, but don’t get me started on the irony of hippie-ass Whole Foods type supermarkets, that refuse to give you a plastic bag for your minor stockpile of purchased goods, reserving several preferential parking spots at the front of the establishment, near the handicap spots, for the sole benefit of “new & expectant mothers”. No offense, but fuck those bitches. Really? Nothing does more damage to our beloved planet than the rapid & random creation of a subsequent human. I can’t get one fucking plastic grocery bag to carry my egg sandwich, two bottles of water, block of cheese and a 1/2 & ½ creamer, yet these manufactures of walking dirty bombs get preferential treatment? Whatever dick.
But I digress, that’s not the genesis of my reasoning. It’s not that I hate kids, far from it. There are a few members of the pediatric generation whose company I find somewhat charming and quite entertaining. It is because over a myriad of years & experiences I have taken notice of the fact that children & myself have no business in the company of one another. It was of no use or benefit to either of us, and in some cases been to the possible detriment of both of us, especially them. So in that sense perhaps, it is because I like children that I have come to this conclusion. The following is the best example of that train of though that I could relate to you.
At some point in 1997 I was raising both a beautiful, female, red nose pitbull and an amazing all black cat. The cat, Sativa, had in the last week given birth to a litter of kittens. My impressively sexy friend Abbey heard about the new birth and thought it a good idea to bring her six year old little sister to come see the new brood of baby cats. So I, naively trying to relate to the youngins agreed to have them come to my apartment & show this little girl the kittens.
The two came over and I brought them to the bedroom closet where the new family made their home, but as we opened the door to the closet and looked in, it became apparent that the kittens had been unceremoniously disemboweled. For whatever reason she saw germane, the mother had chosen to eviscerate her progeny. Obviously this crime scene of mass feline infanticide was a bit much on the fragile mind of a six year old girl, and it’s impact, well-meaning insufferable prick that I am, was not lost on me. Predictably I fumbled for any semblance of recovery or explanation.
Before anything made it’s way from my stymied brain to my mouth, Little Sister looks to Big Sister and says “Abbey, the doggy killed the kittens!”. Obviously this was not the case. But from my humble perspective, in a child’s mind dogs & cats are known natural enemies, synonymously so. So her natural assumption that the dog killed the cats, however erroneous or grievous to witness, made sense and thus the world still made sense, hence I was comfortable with that misconception and was not only in no way ready to correct that misconception, but was grateful for what I saw as the easiest exit from the worst case scenario. No sooner had I acquiesced to this solution than Abbey explained to baby girl, “No honey, the mommy killed the babies. It wasn’t the dog, the mommy killed the babies”. Why the motherfuck?!
At this point I smoked a cigarette and tried to decipher my next step. Now, these aren’t six dead goldfish and I’m thinking about the most humane method of disposal. I happened to live in an apartment that had a back balcony that overlooked a patch of forest. It’s not like I could flush a half a dozen dead kittens down the toilet, no that would’ve been too neat and clean,. But dumping a series of newborn cat corpses in the trash seemed too disrespectful in a back alley abortion kind of way. So it was at this point that I made the decision that is the crux of my argument as to why it is best to not let me and children intermingle.
As the young girl sat on my living room couch crying, with her older sister consoling her, in what way I can’t imagine from her last explanation of life’s harsh realities, I decided that the best and most caring way to dispose of the bodies was to give them back to nature, i.e. throw them off the back balcony into the woods. To wit, throw animal carcass’ into the woods and continue Elton John’s much venerated circle of life. It was following this train of thought that I walked to the kitchen and retrieved one plastic Ingles shopping bag (thanks for nothing Whole Foods) and proceeded to the scene of the crime. I pushed my hand into the bottom of the bag in an inside-out fashion and reached for the pick of the litter so-to-speak so that it rested in my hand through the bag.
Walking from the bedroom to the balcony, past my friend Chris, who was incidentally, smoking a blunt on the back porch with a stoner’s keen perception for the many layers of irony that were at work in this tragicomedy. Holding the bag high over the edge of the balcony’s railing I launched the most adorable of cadavers from the bottom of the bag towards it’s destiny in the woods. As the kitten’s mortal coil was ejected from my clutches it’s feeble paws spread eagled, catching the ringed handles of the plastic shopping bag, and with it’s momentum carrying the bag, perfectly laced in it’s underarms, the kitten’s remains flew just a few feet from it’s launching point before the bag caught the wind and before the aghast eyes of all present, this dead baby cat parachuted close-eyed, head bowed, slowly and deliberately down three stories to the earth, a great many yards from it’s intended resting place in the forest. As this adorable post-mortem paratrooper floated mockingly down to my new-to-be desecrated back yard, I turned my gaze over my shoulder to see a miniature, toe-headed angel in a gape-mouthed state of horrification, never to be the same again.
I don’t think it takes any explanation to bring to light why this is less than analogy, and more a stand-alone reason, amongst many as to why I say I am a stalwart “Dead Ender”.