Everyday Canvas

On Animals and Women’s Intellectuality

Prompt: "A woman can be beautiful as well as intellectual." Audrey Hepburn. Do you agree? Write anything you want about this.

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Sure! I agree. It is a given. The same goes for a handsome man being an intellectual. It is the use of one’s brain and social and educational skills that makes the person, a person; man or woman, I don’t see the difference in that.

Possibly, in Audrey Hepburn’s time and social circles, basically in Hollywood, only a female’s beauty made the sales. In real life, a beautiful woman or a handsome man is good to look at, but for how long can one keep watching the good looks if that beauty has no substance as a person? After all, we are people and we like to communicate with each other in a meaningful way.

Prompt: Anatole France said, “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.” What do you take from this quote and what do you think of people who don’t like animals?

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Some people think having animals around helps the children to develop a healthier social life, but is that all? I think animals help our existence no matter what age we are. On the physical side, animals can reduce our cardiac reactivity to stress and they help us recover from illnesses more quickly. Some psychologists claim having a healthy relationship with an animal companion raises the oxytocin (the feel-happy hormone) levels in the brain.

Animals are really sincere in their feelings and in their show of love to people they connect with. Animals try to communicate with us although we are too thickheaded to understand them sometimes. Look at an animal’s eyes and see the emotion and the innocence in them. Most of them value their independence and they don’t whine about someone ignoring them. When their basic needs are met, they live in greater contentment that we ever can. They do not philosophize and sermonize in a condescending manner; they do not look down on us for our beliefs; they do not try to inject us with their religious or political views. They do not criticize, pass judgment, or ask too many questions. Above all, they are loyal to the bone and make great friends for they accept us as we are.

It hurts me greatly to see animals abandoned, put down, abused and lonely. I don’t like people declawing their cats, either. It also hurts me when an animal I love dies. When I was thirteen, my tabby cat passed away. I was so stricken that I got sick for three days and couldn’t go to school, and I was a nerd. I loved school. Those three days were possibly the only absences during my jr. high years.

In my life, all through my childhood and teens, I had cats. My cats were free to roam around in the yard or in the neighbors’ yards. This was because the three streets of residences formed a triangle in the back, making our backyards safe for everyone’s cats.

As much as I like animals, I don’t like to see them restrained too much. I think it is because of the leash laws that dogs I see in my neighborhood sometimes act nervous, aggressive, or unhappy. Still, I approve of the leash laws in neighborhoods where houses are too close together and the animals present a danger to people or to themselves because of the traffic. When I had my Newfoundland, similar to the place I grew up in, every neighbor had a dog and a large yard, and we had an understanding among us that we let our dogs roam on their own. My dog sometimes accepted visitors and went to visit his friends, although he knew to stick around in our property most of the time.

I love not only the domesticated animals but also the wild animals; although I would respect them and not bother them in their natural habitats. That’s where they belong and we shouldn’t trespass. It annoys me, in the state that I live in, instead of selling and using the existing residences and now emptied shopping centers, builders are taking over preserves and woods. Almost every year or so, we get a wild animal infestation just because somebody razed down the trees and stole the habitats from animals. Someday, the human race will be very sorry when our planet will be barren, dull, and without its animals, due to our greed.