The Rights (and Wrongs) of Cats

摘要

Biophilia: the love of life. Entomologist Edward O. Wilson says it's an innate human attribute. But when it comes to loving animals, one person's steak and potatoes may be another's stuffed quail. Helen loves cats. For ten years she has been coming to Golden Gate Park's Stow Lake every morning with fancy food for her "children." She is Saint Francis-like in her efforts to ease their suffering, but relations with humans are more complex. Emerging from her cat feeding station in the bushes, she eyes me warily as I approach, and she declines to tell me her last name. ("Helen is enough.") She does let me tag along as she walks around the lake, chasing off gulls and feeding geese and ducks from a big bag of white bread. All the dogs here know her, it seems, and she dotes on and teases each one before feeding it a treat, studiously ignoring the owners on the distant ends of the leashes.