The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Tag: Cats

  • Questions: Bruce, How Do You Afford to Feed All Those Cats?

    bethany feeding cats

    Joel asked:

    How do you afford to feed all those cats? Does the SPCA help out?

    First, we do not receive help feeding the cats from anyone, including the Humane Society. There are several non-kill cat shelters in our area, but they are over-capacity. So, for the past twenty years, we have fed every stray/feral cat that has frequented our backyard. We have also fed wandering indoor cats, raccoons, possums, skunks, deer, squirrels, and a plethora of birds, including hawks and woodpeckers.

    Second, we feel we have a moral duty to care for the “least of these.” We also have four inside cats that were once stay/feral cats. We have cared for countless animals — domesticated and wild — over the years. This year (so far), only one cat, Fluffy — a longhaired black cat –has had kittens. Two of her young’uns died not long after birth. Currently, we have a six-week-old black kitten hanging out with the big cats. The kitten should be weaned in about two weeks, though I noticed he/she was eating dry food today.

    Third, the Bible says that “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” We spent fifty years of our lives giving thousands of dollars to “God.” We learned that he had a poor rate of return. Many of us have discretionary income. We choose to spend this money in a variety of ways. I am not inclined to question how people spend their money. Each to their own, right? I remember when we bought our first new car. We have largely driven older cars, and in our early years, we drove automobiles best described as clunkers and rust buckets. I did all our repair work, which gave me plenty to do over the years. Now that I am a broken-down crippled man, I am forced to pay for mechanical services. I miss the days of leaning over the front of a car, working on it as my pants slide down, revealing the Grand Canyon. The good old days, I suppose.

    We have purchased four new cars over the past twenty years. Our latest vehicle is a 2020 Ford Edge, with 120,000 miles. We don’t plan to buy another new car, hoping this car will be our last one before we die. Of course that could quickly change if I get a hankering for another car, even though I can no longer drive. I drove for the last time in 2020. My nerve pain and reaction times are such that I am no longer a safe to driver.

    Bruce, you pivoted from cats to cars. What gives? Hang on, I’m planning to land this plane soon. 🙂 After we bought our first new car, I mentioned it on this site. Several readers decided to lecture me about the cost effectiveness of buying a new car; that we were being wasteful with our money. This angered me, but I said little. I learned long ago that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. For my partner and I, having driven cars that embarrassed our kids when we picked them up for school, we were thrilled to own a car that wasn’t always a threat to break down or have a flat tire. Simply put, we bought new cars because we wanted to. Isn’t that the reason any of us do the things we do?

    We feed and care for cats because it is important for us to do so. If we don’t care for these abandoned animals, who will? It’s a matter of morality, for us. How could we in good conscience leave a cat (or cats) begging at our back door for food and water? We cannot and will not turn them away. In caring for cats and wildlife, we are teaching our grandchildren to be kind to animals, even spiders, snakes, and ants. Two weeks ago, I awoke to Bethany wanting to tell me what she proudly did a few moments before. Somehow, a snake slithered into our utility room. Instead of hollering DAD! Bethany picked the snake up and put it outside. Way to go girl, though I would like to have seen it to make sure it wasn’t poisonous.

    Yes, it requires a financial commitment from us to care for our backyard friends, but we are more than willing to pay for their feeding and care. It feels good to look out the back door as see “our” cats; happy and thriving, despite the assholes who left them to their own devices. If we had homeless humans camping in our yard, we would care for them too. You see, we may be godless, degenerate sinners, but we love and care for both animals and humans. No need for God. All one needs is kindness and compassion.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

    Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

  • Short Stories: Bethany, the Pied Piper of Cats

    bethany 2019

    We are cat people. Currently, we have four inside cats: Socks, Petey, Charley, and Lilith, and we care for around — depending on the day — ten feral/stray cats. It is our daughter Bethany’s job to feed the cats several times a day. Bethany has Down syndrome, and just turned thirty-six.

    Every day, around 10:30 am, Bethany walks out our back door to feed the cats and put out the bird feeders. We have to put the feeders away each evening to keep the coons from eating everything. We have RING security door cameras on our front and back doors. When Bethany feeds the cats, the camera records what she is doing. So entertaining …

    If I walk out the back door, the cats head for the hills. If I stand still long enough, several of them might come closer to me, but never so close that I can pet or hold them. Let Bethany come out the door, and the cats treat her like a long lost relative. They follow after her through the yard as she puts out the feeders, pours cat food in their bowls, and refills the water bowl. Sometimes, the cats even follow her into our shed. Much like St. Francis of Assisi, Bethany has a way with animals, including wild ones. Our yard is frequented by numerous raccoons and possums. It is not uncommon to look out the back door late at night and see a coon, a possum, and a handful of cats all eating the same scraps; all getting along with each other. One night I said to myself, “Too bad we humans can’t get along like these animals do.”

    Bethany is definitely the Pied Piper of Cats. One reason for this is that she feeds them. Cats naturally become more friendly with the person who gives them food every day. But there is more to this than that. People with Down syndrome are innocent, friendly, and kind. Oh, Bethany can be a shit now and again — like loading our Netflix watch folder with more than a hundred vampire movies I have to remove one at a time– but she is usually a delight to be around. I suspect the cats sense that Bethany is a harmless soul, kind to a fault.

    Yesterday, I listened to an infuriating debate about human value on an atheist YouTube channel. One of the participants claimed we should judge people based on their productivity; that people who don’t produce add little to no value to our society. This is a classic capitalist argument, though I was disappointed it was an atheist making this repulsive statement. This shouldn’t have surprised me. Atheists are not immune from bad claims and arguments.

    All humans have intrinsic value, regardless of whether they add anything materially to our society. I don’t judge people based on the value-added. Instead, I judge them according to their behavior. Using this standard, you will see all sorts of wonderful people who may not add much to the bottom line, but they enrich our lives more than we could ever imagine. So it is with Bethany, the Pied Piper of Cats.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

    Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

  • Black Collar Crime: Church of Christ Pastor Jason Swick Accused of Shooting Harmless Cat

    pastor jason swick

    The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

    Jason Swick, pastor of Prineville Church of Christ in Prineville, Oregon, stands accused of trying to kill an innocent, harmless cat. Swick claimed the animal was a feral cat, as if that somehow justifies his violent behavior. He could cared for the cat or taken it in. Instead, he picked up a gun, shot the cat several times, and then threw the injured animal in a dumpster behind the church. Fortunately, the cat survived, but is now blind. By the way, the cat, named Pumpkin, belonged to one of his neighbors.

    KTVZ reports:

    A Prineville church pastor who allegedly shot a neighborhood cat and placed in a church dumpster now faces a first-degree animal abuse charge.

    Swick is accused of shooting a cat named Pumpkin several times at his Prineville home in early September before placing the injured animal in a dumpster at the church.

    The cat survived the shooting but suffered severe facial injuries that left him permanently blind.

    Swick says on his church’s profile page that he is a basketball referee and substitute teacher at Crook County High School. The Prineville Review said state records confirmed he holds an active restricted substitute teaching license.

    KTVZ News earlier worked alongside the Prineville Review to investigate the incident, which sparked a protest at the church. We asked the pastor for comment, to which he did not reply. However, he posted to his Facebook page that he believed the cat was feral and had been attacking his family’s chickens. The post later was deleted, but Swick expressed remorse over what happened.

    Depending on the circumstances, the charge of first-degree animal abuse can be either a Class A misdemeanor or a Class C felony, the Prineville Review reported. If convicted on the misdemeanor-level charge, Swick could be prohibited from owning any animals for up to five years under Oregon law.

    KTVZ also reported:

    A Prineville pastor is facing community backlash after allegations surfaced that he shot a neighborhood cat and placed it in a church dumpster.

    On Tuesday, posts in the “Prineville Information” Facebook group claimed a local pastor shot a cat late Monday night near Bailey Street.

    The cat’s owner said they confronted the pastor after the incident. According to the posts, the pastor said the cat had gotten into a chicken coop, and the injured animal was later moved to a dumpster at the church.

    A group of protesters showed up at the church with signs, condemning the alleged shooting.

    “You can’t go shooting guns in city limits. You’re free to have guns, but, you know, you shouldn’t be going around shooting, you know, bullets can hit somebody or kids or whatever and just do the right thing, you know, like, hey, there’s other ways to get rid of a cat, you know, like scare it off,” said protestor, Matthew Bond.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

    Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

  • Short Stories: I Killed the Kittens With a Hammer, Says a Local Evangelical Farmer

    feral cats in barn-008
    Barn cats at my Son and Daughter-in-law’s Farm

    As Polly and I wrapped up our twenty-five-year tour of duty pastoring churches, we began looking for a new church home. I had pastored Our Father’s House in West Unity, Ohio from 1997 to 2002, and after leaving the church, we attended — for a short time — an Independent Fundamental Churches of America (IFCA) church in Butler, Indiana. The congregation itself was not much to write home about, but we dearly loved the pastor, Jim Glasscock, and his family. After attending for a few months, we decided that we would join the church, only to find out that we couldn’t do so because we weren’t Dispensational and Premillennial. That’s right, we couldn’t join because of our amillennial, posttribulational, non-dispensational eschatology. Such is the fracturing nature of Christian Fundamentalism. We soon left, looking for friendlier confines. The pastor and his wife — by now friends — were, as we were, disappointed. We felt, at the time, that we couldn’t in good conscience attend a church that wouldn’t accept us as members. The church later closed its doors and the pastor and his family moved on to a new ministry.

    While I could tell many stories about our time at this church (good, bad, and funny), one stands out above all others. One Sunday morning we were sitting around a table in the fellowship hall swapping stories. Somehow, the subject of cats came up. Now, I am a cat lover. We have always had at least one cat, and have had as many as three. Currently, we have a fat, lazy yellow sixteen-year-old cat named Joe Meower and a year-and-a-half-old stray we took in named Socks. We regularly feed the neighborhood’s feral cats, hopefully providing them a bit of respite from the cruelty inflicted upon them by thoughtless humans.

    As we talked about cats, an aged farmer decided to share a story about his barn cats. One of his cats had recently given birth to a litter of kittens. I thought, how nice, this man is going to take care of these feral cats and their offspring. I quickly learned, however, this man was anything but nice. Not that he was peculiar. Lots of Jesus-loving, God-fearing locals are quite cruel to animals. Some of the most cruel people I know are local Amish farmers. I asked the man how the kittens were doing. Oh, he chuckled, I killed them. I got a hammer out and smacked each one of them in the head! I quickly felt my face becoming flush as rage filled my mind. I thought, you could have given the kittens away, or better yet, you could have had your female barn cats spayed. Instead, your cruel hands picked up a hammer and beat them to death.

    I quickly exited the fellowship hall, fearing that I was going to have a “Bruce moment.” My rage passed, but I have not forgotten that people who speak of the love of God can often be cruel and violent; that God commanding them to have dominion over the earth means that they can indiscriminately kill. In an anthropocentric world, man rules the roost. All other life only has the value given to it by its overlords. This is why this farmer could, as if he was telling a story about his grandchildren, share his murderous rampage with his fellow church members.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

    Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

  • Mary Ellen Mayo Has Died

    mary ellen mayo cat

    Mary Ellen Mayo, a friend and loyal reader of this blog died June 19, 2017 of congestive heart failure. Mary Ellen was 56. Mary Ellen infrequently commented, often choosing to comment when she felt I needed encouragement or moral support.  Some long time readers may remember her using the Amazonfeet moniker. Mary Ellen, a resident of Florida, battled a number of health problems. (She had Marfan Syndrome.) I was Facebook friends with Mary Ellen. We shared not only our experiences with chronic illness, but also a commitment to progressive political values and a love of cats. A few days before Mary Ellen died, her last post to Facebook was the cat meme posted above.

    Mary Ellen will be missed. I am blessed to have been her friend.  Mary Ellen was a member of First Unitarian Church in Orlando, Florida.  Her church family will hold a memorial service for her on Monday, July 3rd.

  • 2003 Letter to the Editor: Cat Killer

    letter to the editor

    Letter to the Editor of the Bryan Times. Published 2003. I thought posting this letter here might help readers understand how much my religious and political views had changed by the early 2000s. This particular letter was written after the county prosecutor declined to prosecute a cat killer.

    Dear Editor,

    A cat killer is loose in Williams County. He is known by our local authorities. He even boasts of his cat killing and the enjoyment it gives him. Why should this be a concern to anyone? After all, he is just killing cats, right?

    The Humane Society spoke of prosecuting the man because cats are considered property, and by his actions he violated the property rights of the cat owner (s). Do they have any moral standing apart from their relation to their owner?

    All animals are a part of God’s created order. They were endowed by their creator with life, and with that life given certain rights. Animals have a right to be respected as created beings within the context of the order of Creation. While it is debated whether or not animals should be eaten for food, there should be no debate concerning the care of, love for, and responsibility to animals. Factory farms, factory slaughter houses, trophy hunting, and abandoned, mistreated animals are all abhorrent testimonies to the depravity of man. The wicked man cares not for the life of his beast (Proverbs 12:10).

    The man who killed these cats should be prosecuted. Prosecutors who hide behind their prosecutorial discretion should be reminded of voter discretion at the next election. We need government leaders who recognize that cruelty to animals is just as abhorrent as a crime against a human. If we do not prosecute when it involves the “least” of us, who is to say we will not turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to other immoral behaviors deemed more serious by the powers that be?

    If this man can not be prosecuted, how about a sign in front of his house that says “Beware, cat killer lives here!”

    Rev. Bruce Gerencser
    Alvordton, Ohio