No Sir, We Slaughter Lots of Hogs But No Cats

By ART CULLEN

The debate camera zoomed in and cropped around Donald Trump’s jowels, angry eyes and puckered lips: “They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats!” Later, at a rally: “They’re eating the geese! From the parks!”

Immigrants. Criminals. From insane asylums and such. Invading and preying.

Then bomb threats are made in Springfield, Ohio. The hate flies, the mayor pleads for mercy and understanding: The Haitian refugees, now a quarter of Springfield’s 60,000 population, work hard and fill jobs vital to reviving a Rust Belt city. They’re mortified.

It could have been Storm Lake. We’ve taken our share of abuse from distortions of The City Beautiful by outside interest groups over the years. Back in 1996, national TV ads using images from Flint, Mich., portrayed Storm Lake as a rotted-out haven for criminal aliens. Reality was that we were building new schools to accommodate immigrant families and remodeling city hall. We know what it’s like to be the subject of false propaganda.

So here we go again: A fellow called from out of town Sept. 12. He said he heard from a friend that cats were being slaughtered in Storm Lake. He was serious.

Well look here. Storm Lake has an army of stray cats patrolling the lakeshore and pooping on the ballfields. This is also a town that is predominantly immigrant. What gives?

Geese? We got geese. Scout Park festers with gaggles. Fecal coli levels must be a fright at the beach. They leave their mark along the LakeTrail. The hunters are not good enough. We hired a man and a dog for awhile to try to keep the honkers off land and in the water. Noting can stop them now that we banned DDT. Thin the flock and feed the poor, I say.

We are in the throes of building a shelter for stray cats and dogs. A generous gift of $400,000 has been received. Lake Animal Hospital has been overwhelmed with stray and neglected animals. The city council has been consumed of late discussing a trap, neuter and release program for the felines.

I wish somebody would eat my neighbor’s dog when it barks non-stop all day long. It is lean and rangy but might work well in a soup. I hate the idea of cats killing gold finches at Sleepy Hollow by the lake.

The French eat horses. You might be cool with pork, but Muslims and Jews aren’t. Hindus won’t eat a cow. I can imagine that cat tastes like sheep so I will stay away. If you can eat a hog you can eat a dog.

Except, nobody is eating cats or dogs or geese in Springfield, Ohio, according to the police chief and mayor.

But there are Black people in town. Haitians.

J.D. Vance got Trump going with urban myth — actually, a pack of lies cooked up by a White supremacy group, and spread on social media — that Haitians in Springfield were hunting cats and dogs.

Trump doubled down on it during the debate, like a madman, and tripled down on it afterwards. He thinks that it’s working because the base is eating it up.

No, I explained to the caller, we are inundated with cats. We do slaughter hogs and turkeys, I told the guy. The people doing the hard work are immigrants. They eat well. Storm Lake has some of the best Mexican and Asian food you will find anywhere. Some of it is weird: tongue, stomach, tripe and stuff like that, everything but the squeal we like to say. Head cheese is weird, but people like it.

We’ve heard first-hand from Lao people of eating rats in refugee camps. Been there, done that, they say. They are not about to go for feral in Storm Lake when they can buy a pork loin pretty cheap.

The problem with racists is that they want you to think that Haitians with full-time jobs in Springfield would rather eat your cat than grill hamburgers with you. They want to set you against your Latino neighbor. The lies are told to keep Black people afraid and in their place, to keep the Latinos from joining a union, and to make people think that Asians are subversive. The whole notion is about consolidating power among the vested. Places like Springfield and Storm Lake are kept from reaching their potential so long as people are divided by a narrative of lies.

Truth is, nobody is eating cats in Storm Lake. I wish that nice lady would quit feeding them. I wish the neighbor dogs would quit barking. I wish that our neighbors could be citizens. I wish that those Haitians know that they are welcome here. Dominicans and Cubans, too. Tai Dam and Hmong. We’re all Americans in Springfield and Storm Lake. I’ll just have what they’re eating.

Art Cullen is publisher and editor of The Storm Lake Times Pilot in northwest Iowa (stormlake.com). He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 and is author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland.” Email times@stormlake.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2024

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