I'm sure Baldrick feels joy, love, excitement, as well as (hopefully much
less often) sadness and fear.  People who claim animals do not experience
emotions probably do not live closely with animals.  The nervous and
endocrine systems in mammals (including ferrets) are perfectly complex
enough to produce emotional sensations.
 
Kelly Anspaugh said,
>Those who believe in the supernatural have a theory about cats: that they
>are "familiars," possessed of the spirits of people who have passed on.
>Familiars can be evil (as in the case of the black cat that accompany
>witches on their broomsticks) or good (acting as guardian angels to their
>companions).
 
Nothing against Kelly or her theory, but I would just like to point out
that there is nothing about witches or their familiars which is necissarily
evil; even the witches I know who have black cats don't seem to be any more
evil on the whole than other people.  In fact, it is an axiom among witches
that when a "black cat arrives, good fortune thrives."
 
Furthermore, just because an entity happens to be an angel doesn't
necessarily mean he/she/it is particularly interested in the well-being of
humans.  Some of those angels don't give a damn about us, and would much
prefer spending eternity gazing at the countenance of God than helping lost
souls find their way.  Not all angels are like that, of course ... I'm
sure they can be very helpful when they deign to take an interest in human
affairs.
 
Just an alternative view.
 
-Brandon Burt
[Posted in FML issue 3160]