If it were not for the love of an ol’ hog, I could say that I’m 100 percent for the humane treatment of animals.

But a greasy, fried pork chop comes between me and that. As does a slab of apple cured bacon and a country ham.

Probably a lot of folks are just like me …if they would admit it.

Animal cruelty is something that I don’t “cotton to” but then, like I said, I do enjoy a good piece of pork.

“But it’s not the same thing,” said a friend who loves beef as much as I love pork. “Some animals are here for our nourishment.”

And where is that written?

I’ve not read that anywhere.

But maybe it’s in the Old Testament between all the begetting and begotten and I just skipped over it. Or maybe its somewhere in the United States Constitution. I’ll admit that I haven’t read the whole thing.

But, as far as I know, no pig or cow or any form of poultry has voluntarily given itself over to the platter.

So, by partaking of any matter of meat, I forego my right to say I am 100 percent for the humane treatment of animals. But it’s only pork that’s holding me back.

It’s certainly not cats.

If I weren’t right up there near the top rung for the humane treatment of animals, well, there would be two less cats on this earth.

Since they have taken up with me, I have become the biggest advocate on this planet for the “fixing” of animals. The reason being that cats are very good at math. They can multiply like nobody’s business.

And, I’m thoroughly convinced that the best way to control the stray animal population is by having pets spayed or neutered.

Because these two cats are “wild” cats, I can’t catch them and I can’t trap them so I’ve had to cancel appointment after appointment with Dr. Jones and it’s beginning to look like they’ll never be fixed and I’ll become a “federal” cat millionaire.

I bemoaned my situation in a column sometime back and mentioned that my daddy, like the granny in the story, “My Grandmother and Her Many Harbors,” who filled a sack with kittens and took them to the river, did a little animal controlling of his own.

I pitched a big fit for a little girl. Fell down on the ground and kicked the air until Mama came out of the house and put an end to it.

Daddy explained that the puppies would not have lived and that what he did was the most humane thing that could be done.

When that column appeared in the newspaper, I have never. Folks that I knew — and some that I didn’t — came up to me and said they couldn’t believe that my daddy would do such a thing. That he would actually drown the puppies of a stray dog with the red mange.

The column had run down the left rail of the newspaper. The rest of that whole page was devoted to a feature story about abortion and how, every day, about 3,000 babies are aborted in the United States. Not one person mentioned that to me. Not a single one.

What about the babies? What about them?

That’s just what I was thinking about today. How we speak out of both sides of our mouths about one thing and are tight-lipped about another.