MMMMM!!! Poached kittens!!

You may have read that PETA's latest attempt to end thousands of years of human carnivourous activity involves suggesting that we start referring to fish as "sea kittens."

This is the kind of desperation that would get a convict put on suicide watch.

"Warden. Inmate #90210 just started babbling about how fish are really kittens of the sea."

"Take his belt and have him watched closely. By the way, what's on the cafeteria menu tonight?"

"Tuna melt."

"MMMM!!! Sounds good. Just send him a burger though. Cut it up into small pieces."

Now, I suppose one might go so far to argue that kittens have whiskers and some varieties of fish also have whisker-like appendages, but beyond that, eyes, and a seervicable mouth with teeth, there's about as much in common between a fish and a kitten as tere is between a mashie niblick and Burma.

The ironies do abound however. For one, kittens like their older feline brethren, adore fish. Throw a few flakes of halibut in front of a mildly peckish tabby and they won't wonder for a second if some animal liberation loony's wandering around calling it "Mr. Buttons," much less clinically referring to it as a fellow member of the Felus family. They'll be too busy ripping it to shreds, licking their furry chops, and wondering if there's a few more pounds of that delicious meaty substance to go round.

The other irony is that this probably will catch on in some faraway country where fish are considered a staple part of the diet. They'll sit around and ponder the philosophical meaning of it all and decide that if trout and haddie are kittens, then what they need on the diet are more kittens. The menu trends in that little principality will henceforth curl Ingrid Newkirk's hair.

Now, I'm all for humane treatment of animals, whether those on the food chain* or in medical research. However, the addition of furry little kittens isn't exactly a positive trend in the march towards a world without animal cruelty, is it? Next thing you know they'll be calling squid "ocean puppies" and dog will appear on the menu in 20 new countries.

*For example, if I was set upon by a hungry tiger, I'd much prefer it offer me an overdose of barbituates before it ripped open my belly. I'm not holding my breath for that possibility.