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The Shock & Saddness

As many of you realize, I am not an overly surprisable and shockable man. I do get a bit sentimental at times, but usually am fairly immune to distortion, gore, and general mayhem. Yet, an image in our newspaper yesterday has made me feel very sad and very emotional.

In the newspaper (I have looked for a photograph of it on-line, but to no avail, all I have found is this even more sad preserved specimin on and old eBay preserved by this site: www.fecesflingingmonkey.com/ 0103/cyclops.htm ) Apparently there was a small kitten born that was an actual cyclops... meaning it had one eye. The preserved specimin suggests it happens on rare occasion, but the one in the newspaper happened only a few days ago. The poor kitten died, as it lacked many other facial features.

I am not sure if anyone else has seen that newspaper article, but it actually made me feel so sad that I cried, and it has made me feel emotional enough to write about it today. I do not quite understand why, for I have seen other images of deformity due to my background in medical biology (I teach anatomy & physiology, endocrinology, etc), but it has really affected me.

The preserved specimin that is shown on the link is very similar to the photograph of the kitten I speak of, but of course it shows even more poorly due to preservation. If anyone cares to venture a guess, I would appreciate ideas as to why this situation has affected me so strongly.

PipeTobacco