Just when you thought Homo sapiens might be taking that next step toward actual humanity, members of the species do something that just makes you want to take the species outside and put it over your knee. Case in point: Fairfield, Iowa.

Perhaps you have already heard about this incident. It happened while most of you were away during spring break, so I will review the facts.

Sometime in the early morning hours of March 7, someone broke into Noah’s Ark Animal Foundation animal shelter near the town of Fairfield. Unfortunately, the motive was not robbery.

Fifteen cats at the shelter were removed from their cages and beaten to death. Seven other cats were critically injured. Three of the seven were brought to the Iowa State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital for surgery.

The bodies of the cats were removed from the shelter prior to the arrival of the television crews. The scene was still more than I cared to witness. Bright red blood was splattered throughout the cage area, as if someone had thrown balloons filled with red paint against the walls and floor.

The pictures of the cats who survived were even more shocking. Most of them had broken bones. Their legs were wrapped in gauze and tape as they lie motionless in the arms of the care workers. They are now scared to death by human touch.

This sort of cruelty toward animals, particularly cats, is nothing new to me. I grew up next to the Mississippi River. In my home town there was one method for dealing with unwanted kittens. You didn’t spay your cat. You merely put the kittens in a bag and drown them in the river. I had to rescue more than one kitten from such a fate.

Exposure to this sort of outrageous conduct did not condition me for the immediate reaction I had to the pictures of the cats in Fairfield. I was disgusted to the core of my being, and would have been more than happy to give the perpetrators of this crime the same sort of treatment they gave to the cats.

What was even more sickening, however, was the reaction some people had to the crime, in which three Fairfield High School students are being held as suspects.

The Cedar Rapids Gazette talked to some of the suspects’ classmates. The students made it perfectly clear that they saw nothing wrong with the act. They couldn’t understand what the big deal was about.

The big deal is about respect. It is about respect for other living creatures who share this planet with us.

Yes, I realize I might be asking for too much. After all, humans can barely show respect for other humans, and now I am asking people to show respect for dumb animals?

Humans are a funny bunch. We generally place ourselves above other animals, unless it serves our purposes to do otherwise. We are disgusted by the idea that we might be descended from a common ancestor with the monkey, and we typically commend our species for its obvious moral and technological superiority. At the same time, we excuse our more base behavior as part of our “inherent animal nature.”

True, our species has achieved great technological and cultural advancements. Unfortunately, our moral aptitude or conscience has not always kept pace enough to allow use to use our technology in fair, wise and humane ways. We have a habit of acting first and thinking later.

Our species also has a habit of looking only to our own short-term interests. We know our penchant for pollution and ozone depletion could be a problem for the world’s environmental health, yet we push the problem off on the next generation. We rarely consider the impact on future generations, let alone other species.

This is not to say that the rest of the animal kingdom is any more considerate than we are. Other species are just as self-centered and short-sighted.

It is hypocritical for us, however, to bolster our own egos by elevating our species above all others, while we refuse to amend our “animal nature” enough to become more long-term in our policies and more considerate of the safety and habitats of others. The contradiction would not be so important were we not the one species on the planet that could obliterate all others.

I am not asking people to equate humans with animals, which is sometimes how my views are perceived. I fully appreciate the food chain, in which people eat animals and sometimes animals eat people. I have no problem acknowledging that humans are the dominant species.

The problem I have with the status quo is our cavalier attitude toward the other residents of this planet. The problem I have is with the lack of respect we show animals, let alone other people. We may not be able to agree on whether animals have souls or personalities or feelings, but they know pain. They know distrust. They know fear.

The only evidence I needed I saw on television when 15 cats were beaten to death and seven others were left clinging to life.

Unfortunately for them, not all of us are as “humane” as our name would imply.

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Theresa Wilson is a graduate student in political science at ISU from Dubuque. She is a second-year law student at Drake University.