How I Put the Horse before Descartes: an Autobiographical Fragment

Even as a child, I recall wondering why ''humane" societies and animal "shelters" spent IOC>St of their time and effort "putting to sleep" healthy dogs and cats. The official "for their own good" response (what a friend of mine nastily labels "preventive death") didnt.t make a great deal of sense to me, and so I -shrugged it off, figuring that this was yet another mystery which would be resolved when I grew up, along with other insoluble questions like where pencils came frem and disa~ed to, and how dirty jokes came into existence. Although I am now presumable "grawn up," I have not yet received adequate answers to any of these questions. Perhaps, like particularly thorny questions of Talmudic ~, resolution awaits the coming of the (Jewish) Messiah.