Chapter 9: Animal Cops Dresden

"Billy opened his eyes. A middle-aged man and wife were crooning to the horses. They were noticing what the Americans had not noticed- that the horses' mouths were bleeding, gashed to the bits, that the horses' hooves were broken, so that every step meant agony, that the horses were insane with thirst. The Americans had treated their form of transportation as though it were no more senstitive than a six-cylinder Chevrolet" (Vonnegut 196).

This small and slightly irrelevant paragraph of Chapter 9 reminded me of a show on Animal Planet called Animal Cops: Miami. I only watch it when my other favorite reality TV shows aren't on, and usually I can only bear to look for a few minutes. Usually, the stories are nearly the same. Strong, harsh animal cops bust into homes, homeless peoples' shacks, and cars to free trapped, abused, or neglected animals from their owners. Always a lot of bleeped-out words, blacked-out faces, and those blurry squares on the owners. The most common factor between the owners is simple: they usually cannot take care of themselves or lack the means for basic hygiene or food, so the possibility of taking adequate care of the animals becomes out of the question. Animal Cops is unbelievably sorrowful; the passage in Slaughterhouse-Five is very similar. Billy and the other Americans are so desperate and deprived of their needs that they neglected the very horses which provided them transportation around "the surface of the moon." The animals bled and cut themselves and trekked on without catching the eyes of the miserable Americans in the coffin-carriage. It was only in the horrible state of themselves and of the town that the Americans allowed the horses to suffer greatly and overwork themselves. Vonnegut meant to demonstrate that the conditions of the P.O.W.'s and of the ruins of Dresden was so terrible that humans could barely function for themselves, yet alone take care of other animals.