To Alan, from a few letters down:

Don't worry, Dude, we liberals know that today's "Conservatives" are nothing but. They are rightwing radicals and extremists and anarchists, but they ain't conservative.

Cary,

What if next time she leaps over the dishwasher door and plunges a finely curved nail deep into his eye? What if she grabs a knife off the counter and plunges it into his throat? It's so easy to see this couple ending very badly, so they should split up now and only see each other in the company of a therapist. Hopefully they can both reach a nonviolent and supportive level; I wish them the best of luck. Until then, the letter writer needs to get away before he gets seriously injured or killed.

P.S. to Brightstar, below: I'm a male, feminist, liberal Democrat, and you wrote a bunch of nonsense!

"...all this man has to do is backhand her and she ends up seriously hurt is to ignore a biological reality. -- poeslygeia"

Ah, it is to laugh. I have sparred with many a woman who could hit and kick with enough force to knock me flat on my back. Our sparring instructor was a middle-aged woman who could wipe the floor with men twice her size. Add in the rage factor, and it's obvious to anyone who has actually fought a determined woman that women can be very effective and lethal fighters. Don't underestimate 'em.

There are many, many things to criticize regarding the loathsome Newt Gingrich, but this one says it all about the man: he served his wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital fighting off cancer.

Try spinning that.

I don't feed my cats raw food, and while I'm not necessarily against raw food, my concerns would be: 1)bacteria, and 2) wild animals' immunes systmes might be different or stronger than those of their domesticated cousins.

Anyway, I think the most important advice is to avoid supermarket pet food, i.e., garbage. It's cheap for a reason folks. If you can afford to buy better, you should. It's much healthier if you serve your pets canned and dry food made from human-quality ingredients. Go to a pet store like PetSmart and get the better foods. Avoid any food that has "by-products" in the ingredients, since that's a sure sign the food is made with garbage.

Like Purple Kitty, I don't eat meat. However, my pet cats do. In fact, they must eat meat to survive. I consider it a necessary evil, then, to buy them meat-based foods. Maybe one day when kitten- and puppy mills have been abolished and the animal shelters are empty, we can revisit the issue. Until then, homeless cats and dogs need to be adopted, and they need to be fed. I do hope, however, that a high-quality vegetarian cat food does come along.

As for your not getting a pet until all the world's problems are solved, that makes no sense. For one thing, pet overpopulation is in many ways a people-created problem, so other people need to help solve it. Also (and here's the part that will blow your mind), you can give a needy animal a home AND work to help people. That's what many of us pet owners do. Lastly, unless you willingly live like a pauper and spend 100% of your disposable income on feeding programs for the poor and hungry, you have no business lecturing anyone about "priorities."

"This is why I LMAO at you vegetarians. Your 'necessary evils' are fine, but the rest of us are held to your silly standards. Face it, you're just as full of sh*t as everyone else, present company included. That was my point. We're all just hyperventilating silly twits. Left, Right, Vegan, carnivore, pet, non-pet."

Cheer up, LMAO: you're probably not as terrible a person as you think you are.

Poco: I'm holding a metal spoon in front of my monitor. If you can bend it, then I'll send you money.

Spiteme, you wrote: "Somewhere there is a planet where all fundamentalists (vegan, raw food, christian, islamic) can be sent to live..."

Interesting choice of words there: "...sent to live." Not, "where they can go to live." You sound somewhat, er, intolerant and unwilling to live with those with whom you disagree. I don't know why you're so threatened by people who live according to their own principles, but as long as you do not try to force me to do something against my will, like exiling me to a distant planet, then I'm willing to leave you to your own devices.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to eat some delicious vegan dark chocolate (imported from Planet Vega, naturally).

Kat,

I see that Pottenger conducted his study from 1932-1942. Factory farming didn't really take off until the 1940's; today factory farming is associated with terrible bacteria like e-coli and salmonella, which is why people are supposed to be very careful around raw meat and why I would hesitate to give my cats raw meat. I wonder if Pottenger's meat was healthier than today's factory farmed offal.

I suppose one could purchase meat from smaller, humane farms that would replicate that of Pottenger's time.

What exactly do you feed your cats? I tried to give my cats raw chicken necks (from Fresh Fields) a few years ago and they all ignored it.