<BEGIN RANT>
 
I see that the people that have posted in a negative way about Matan are
angry and (to my opinion) rightfully so.
 
I have myself bit my lip, shook my head and whispered cuss words a few
times while reading his posts.  On the other hand Matan (if he is real)
is coming to the FML for information and as much as we disagree with his
postings and care of his jill, we should be patient (especially with the
obvious language barrier)and try to answer as much as we can.  I myself
am not originally from this country and in Italy many of us did not belive
is spaying our animals (I now think different).
 
In my youth I lived in a city (in Italy) where one of our beaches was over
populated by cats and kittens and the only way people knew how to deal with
that was capture as many as they could and put them down.  They knew no
better.  Lack of information and a different culture is what Matan is
guilty of.  He is simply reacting to how he was thought and how his country
does things.  I have seen some of you reacting in a negative way when you
heard of people in Europe and how they use their ferrets for hunting etc.
On the other side of the coin I heard people from Europe calling our
ferret "plush pets" (or something similar).
 
This list has people from all over the world and we all do things
different.  Is it our right to tell them how terrible they are?  Or is it
our duty as animal lovers to try and do our best to educate everyone on a
better way to do what they are doing?
 
Sometimes we take for granted that here, in the USA, we have better access
to the Internet and that access here is cheaper if not free.  Matan might
only have a few minutes a day or week to write emails before his parents
yell at him for running up the phone bill.  That may be a reason why he
doesn't respond to everyone.
 
On a better note, when I went back to my country (after 15 years)I walked
by the same beach and saw that there were fewer cats, my aunt then told
me that, now, some people will capture the cats and get them spayed and
return them.  Not a perfect solution but I guess with the passing of time
people got more educated on the subject.  Wonder where they got the info
from?  ;-)
 
</END RANT>
 
Rome was not build in a day.
[Posted in FML issue 3452]