Since I am a self-confessed, card-carrying curmudgeon, kindness is not generally considered to be one of my prominent character traits.  Nevertheless, we curmudgeons tend to have a soft spot for so-called lower animals because the supposedly higher animals – namely, our fellow human beings – continually distress, disappoint, and annoy us.

We do acknowledge the scientific evidence that our species has appeared to evolve physically more than any other.  We admit that the human brain is probably more complex than any other known living brain, although we seriously question the uses to which our species has put this organ, and we often wonder whether some of our kind use it much at all.  After all, there must be some reason why the adjective stupid is more often applied to people than to other animals.  As for our supposed sense of morality – the ethics that we presume that amoral* lower animals lack – the verdict is still out.  The most highly developed human brains seem hard-pressed to agree on what is "right" and what is "wrong" in many situations.  While we may argue that lower animals cannot do this either, that they live by instincts alone (a hypothesis now being refuted by many scientists), our relativistic morality does not necessarily mark us as superior.  An equally valid conclusion could be that it serves mainly to make us more confused.

Be that as it may, even we curmudgeons believe that kindness to animals (meaning, of course, other animals) is an admirable, possibly ennobling, trait.  I'm not talking only about the fuzzy, loveable animals we have as pets.  I, for example, am partial to warthogs, although I wouldn't have one as a pet.  Somehow, I feel that any animal that ugly (in my perception of beauty) must have a beautiful soul.**  Besides, if warthogs didn't find each other attractive, there wouldn't be any baby warthogs, would there?  No great loss, you say?  Well, that's your perspective and is not the warthog's view; nor is it mine.

I suppose that a case could be made against poisonous snakes, vultures, rats, and such creatures, but they are only doing what they must to protect themselves and survive.  One can hardly fault a grizzly bear for mauling a two-legged intruder who threatens its young or stands between it and dinner.  After all, people clobber and sometimes kill other people for little or no reason.  Animals do not wage war, and, though I'm no zoologist, I don't think many of them kill for the sheer fun of it.

I've never understood people who shoot animals for sport.  Oddly enough, people who would never think of killing a dog or cat for fun are greatly entertained by killing a deer or bear or elephant that has done nothing all its life but mind its own business.  Besides, there are better things to shoot.  For instance, when your computer or washing machine has broken down beyond repair, take out your trusty AK-47 or Smith & Wesson and blow that sucker to smithereens.  It won't feel a thing.

What fool thinks that animals don't feel pain?  They have nervous systems and brains.  Some of the less-developed species and orders indeed lack central nervous systems (yes, I swat flies and step on ants), but that's not what we're talking about here.  We're talking about sentient creatures.  We can't be sure what feelings they have – biologists are still working on that – but their inability to express feelings in words doesn't mean that they don't have them.  That they can't shed tears doesn't mean that they can't feel hurt, mentally as well as physically.  As Mark Twain observed, man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.  Does that mean that other animals can't feel embarrassment?  I swear I've seen many a cat or dog, caught in the act of doing something it knows it shouldn't, look embarrassed.

One of my fellow curmudgeons, the late Cleveland Amory, wrote that he was forming the "Hunt the Hunters Club," the motto for which was, "If it's red and moves, shoot it."  Perhaps I should revive this noble cause.

Still, putting aside the issue of hunting, there's no reason why we cannot be much kinder to other animals than we are.  I confess my regret that I was raised to be a carnivore, and I envy people who can take their kindness toward animals to the limit of eating nothing but plants, especially when I read the horrifying articles about the way some animals are treated before they are slaughtered as food for humans.  I don't like to think about what something I'm eating looked like or how it felt when it was alive.  Yesterday's loveable and attractive animal is tomorrow's fricassee.  Yech!

Still, this is all the more reason for those of us who are habitual meat-eaters to be kind to the animals that live among us and even to those that are fortunate enough to live in the wild, mostly apart from us.  As with our own kind, it costs us nothing to try to understand them, to empathize with them as much as is humanly (and humanely) possible, to be gentle and considerate.

To end where I began, we curmudgeons often have difficulty viewing our species as superior, let alone noble.  In particular, this curmudgeon feels that the actions of people who are cruel to animals are proof of the human capacity to be barbaric and mean.  On the other hand, ironically, people who treat animals with respect, consideration, and kindness give the word humanity at least one positive meaning.

*For the first time on this website, I am using a word link that takes the user to definitions at answers.com.  If you click on amoral, you will go to sources clarifying that amoral does not have the same meaning as immoral (the opposite of moral) but refers to the state of being neither moral nor immoral, of existing outside the context of morality.

**"That's ridiculous," you say, "Warthogs don't have souls."  How do you know?  It could be that, when they die, their beautiful souls ascend to warthog heaven, the Great Mudhole in the Sky.