Everything is relative in matters of cuteness

JAKARTA (JP): I love animals, apart from reptiles, which disgust and scare me. I am left so depressed if I accidentally touch a picture of a snake in an encyclopedia; I guess I have a sort of snake phobia.

Members of the bird family do not do much for me, except baby birds. Yes, all baby animals are cute, save for babies of reptiles and insects. Confusing, huh? I love mammals and fish. My favorite mammals are dolphins and cows, but alas it's impossible to have those animals as pets since I do not live by the sea nor on a farm. I prefer the humble dog as the next best pet after fish and I am sure all dogs love me.

My mom gave me a pet rabbit when I was in high school. He was so cute, and at first everybody in the family loved him. As he got older, however, he started to chew my father's shoes, then he gnawed on my mom's favorite couch. My mom was so infuriated she gave him to my uncle. Then he chewed my uncle's bed, so he gave him away to a friend of his.

I heard this man decided to eat the rabbit after he chewed his daughter's school bag!

When I was in university, my sister brought home a puppy. She named him after the Russian scientist Pavlov. I loved him so much.

One day we had to leave him with someone because we needed to visit my grandparents in the village. A day after we got back home, I found him sick. He died in my arms at the vet's.

My sister tried to cheer me up by saying it was all her fault because she had named him after a well-known scientist. A Javanese belief is that when you are named after an important person, there is the probability that the name could be too much for you to bear, burdening you with bad luck all your life. Perhaps the name Pavlov was too much for my pooch.

I am afraid I am sort of a black widow to pets. After Pavlov, a friend gave me a purebred Pekinese. He died of a heart attack when we had to renovate our house and the noise of the work was too much for him.

Well, at least I do not eat them. I was invited to visit a friend in eastern France and they showed me around their house and introduced me to their dogs, plus a cute rabbit.

While I was playing with the rabbit, they said: "He is going to be dinner tonight, and he's going to be yummy." Excuse me, I thought, but isn't he too cute to be on a plate?

A professor of mine, also from France, told a story of how he ate dog in China.

"Professor, how could you, they're man's best friend," I said.

"So you love dogs, young lady?"

"Yes."

"So do I, but on a plate," he said.

Forgive me for being too conservative when it comes to what meat to eat. For me, cute things deserve to be cuddled, not eaten.

A friend asked me: "How about cows?"

"They're cute."

"How about goats?"

"They're cute, too." They are cute, especially the young ones.

"And how about fish?"

"Of course they are cute"

"So why eat them?"

He said my definition of cuteness was relative. Something cute for me may be ugly for somebody else. And my argument that cute animals should not be eaten did not work along the same lines as my eating habits. He said I did not appear to recognize the logical contradiction in my egocentric thoughts.

My answer is that we can easily accept things that make us happy, things that we consider to be beautiful, cute, sexy, things we can control, all having good attributes according to our own values.

In contrast, we cannot accept things with bad attributes, according to our own definition of what is badness itself. Everything is relative. Everybody has their own beliefs and preferences on things they like.

A Taoist principles states: "When everyone knows beauty is beauty, this is bad. When everyone knows good is good, this is not good. So being and nonbeing produce difficulty and complement each other, long and short shape each other, high and low contrast with each other ..."

In life we have to accept good and bad, because that is what makes the world go round.

Whenever I meet the professor now and he asks me if I still eat meat and fish, I answer, "I'm almost a vegetarian now".

Which I am not. Shhhhhh.

-- Laksmi Prasvita