Back After a Hiatus to Blog as Much as I Can..

You may have noticed that I disappeared for a while. Judging from my last Blog post - in August 2013 - it has been nearly a year.

Good blogging is not easy. It requires a lot of time and thought and energy. I've been writing a lot over the past year. Alas, not much of it has been about animals. I've turned my attention to my fiction, which has, I'm pleased to say, really taken off.

But the plight of animals haunts me. Specifically, the horrific treatment of animals by human beings continues to vex me. I can't outrun it. I can't get away from it. I lose sleep over the treatment of animals.

One of the reasons I stopped blogging last year is because so much of what I blog about here is tragic. I'd always make an effort to post something happy, but in the end - let's face it - the giant historical record of human interaction with animals has been, on the whole, one filled with ghastly nightmares and unspeakable horror shows, and acts of kindness have been drops of water in the ocean, and grains of sand on the beach.

To deny this is to deny an essential truth about human beings. Whatever good comes of the human species, it is offset by giant factories and huge storage warehouses and massive tanker ships full of cruelty. There is no escaping human sadism when it comes to animals.

Those of us who are sensitive souls can do one of two things. We can run away from it, or try to shield ourselves from it.

Or we can reluctantly march into battle, a battle we'll lose, but one we ought nevertheless to fight, against our fellow human beings who are inflicting this cruelty.

Part of the battle, it seems to me, is to show the positive and healthy ways in which a growing number of human beings are interacting with animals in this day and age.

But it would be a lie - a big lie - to emphasize these happy interactions at the expense of more disturbing truths.

I'll blog as much as I can about animals, as much as my psyche and stomach and soul will allow. Blogging is one way to fight against the cruelty. Another is to educate ourselves. And still another is to take some sort of action to help the animals. Even little steps, small things, make a big difference.

I like to hope things are changing, moving in a positive direction. I'm not always sure of it. But I am sure of one thing. I want to return to the march to sanity. Because when I take part in it, I feel better. I feel engaged in something bigger than myself. Fighting for animals is one of the few things that makes me feel fully human again.