Death by convenience

Step by step, inch by inch, choice by choice ...

I was raised in the South and am no stranger to hordes of fleas and ticks and the havoc they wreck on pet and human health. So, it wasn't hard for my vet to talk me into buying two boxes of flea and tick topical solution for my teenage cats the other day—to the tune of $230.

"It's made from natural ingredients," he said convincingly.

Obligingly, I offered up my debit card.

Never mind my cats don't seem to have fleas. Or ticks. They don't scratch and itch. Their fur is soft and clean with no flea sign. Their eyes are bright and clear. Their ears pink and perky. But ancient habit kicked in whispering "Better safe than sorry. This way I'll never have to even think about those kinds of pesky critters showing up in the house."

Then I got home and looked at the ingredients: esafoxolaner, eprinomectine, praziquantel. Yep, that all sounds "natural" to me!

Horrified, I googled the brand and found plenty of testimonials talking about vomiting, weight loss, convulsions, loss of fur, kidney failure, hot spots, lesions and rashes on adult cats and kittens alike using this product.

At that point I determined to find something that was genuinely natural for the gentle fur babies entrusted to my care. And it took a while.

There are a lot of products out there at PetCo and on Amazon that say "natural" on the label because they're made from natural essential oils like citrus, cottonseed, eucalyptus, lavender, clove, peppermint and sandalwood oils. Which sounds great until you find out (after MUCH digging and researching) that all those oils contain something called "phenols" which are highly irritating to the skin and mucous membranes of cats and people alike.

Basically, these products can cause many of the same health problems for cats that the more toxic versions trigger.

So, why the hell would companies create natural products that, in some cases, are almost as bad as synthetic and pharmaceutical products? Because they don't really care about their customers or their customers' pets. They just know that labels that say "natural" sell well. So, they package it all up, sell it, and most customers never know why their darling cat or dog ends up with issues down the road.

Finally, after a considerable amount of (inconvenient) fact checking and emailing holistic vets on the mainland, I found something called Wondercide Flea & Tick spray for cats made out of steam-distilled cedarwood oil which does not contain phenols.

Yippee!

I also bought a $3 flea comb. Both my kitties love the new combing routine and, so far, in three months, I've found one flea and haven't had to crack out the Wondercide. But it's under the kitchen sink should we ever need it!

Running on auto pilot

It kind of freaked me out how easily I was sold on a product that would, most likely, destroy the health and wellbeing of my trusting feline companions.

It was just so damned convenient, you know?

Snap on a pair of plastic gloves so I, the human, don’t get the stuff on MY skin. (That should be a hint right there how good this stuff is for my pet!) Snip the tip on the plastic syringe, deposit the solution between the cat's/dog's shoulder blades once a month. And BOOM! Your beloved pet's body is now so toxic it kills the fleas that bite them.

But at least I can enjoy the ease of a flea-free home.

Of course, this got me thinking about all the other conveniences I buy into. Conveniences that, once you start actually thinking about it, are pretty much designed to either poison us, impoverish us, numb us, put us to sleep, or outright kill us.

Easy money

Let's take ATMs as an example.

I swear I've lined up behind people at an ATM who paid $4.95 to withdraw a $20 bill. Seriously. It's just so convenient. You don't have to drive to the bank. Just stick your debit card in the slot at the local (convenience) store and PRESTO! Money!

Do that once a week and you've blown almost $250 a year on nothing.

And all those goodies stacking the aisles of the 7/11 or Quik Stop or Ranger Rick's Ranchero Stop loaded with Red Die #40 and Yellow Die #7 (oops I mean Dye) and corn syrup and sugar, and canola oil and artificial ingredients. So quick! So yummy. Because, don't you know, trillions have been spent designing those flavor combos that your taste buds just won't be able to resist.

"Bet you can't eat just one!"

And the debit card I use! How easily every transaction is tracked and logged by God knows who. Amazon? The DOJ? The CIA? China?  All I know is I buy something like plant food for my begonias and, wonder of wonders! I suddenly see ads on FaceBook and Instagram and YouTube for just those same kinds of items that I just bought.

And self-checkout! Forget the longer line where you have to engage with another human being and maybe even smile or get a laugh in about something in the process of paying for your groceries. No no. Automated, coldly impersonal. That's for me!

So convenient.

Lost in translation

Gone are the days of finding your way to a new friend's house or the auto supply store, address written on a piece of paper that’s fallen underneath the seat, wandering around, exploring side streets and alleyways, getting totally lost but finding some really cool places—like the guy who makes chainsaw woodcarvings and backyard furniture. Or the lady who sells orchids off her front lawn. Or the hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant that makes the best ever Pakora.

SIRI is so convenient you don't even have to know how to read a map. Or know north from south, east from west. That kind of basic geographic knowledge simply isn't needed anymore. Right?

But what about the ability to think independently from a satellite-fed AI voice-in-a-box??

I heard a story on NPR the other day (Well, actually it was three years ago. I don't listen to the radio anymore.) But apparently this woman in north London was looking for a particular store in a particular shopping mall. And she kept following SIRI all the way out of London for almost 70 kilometers until she finally started wondering why she was seeing nothing but sheep and cows and no clothing stores.

Sigh.

And what about the phones we're so addicted to, with all those colorful emojis populating our texts and all the fun pings and buzzy noises it makes? So fun! So interactive and banal and so very uninformative!

But teens now spend up to 7 hours a day on their phones anyway. In five years' time they will have spent 1.5 years of their lives on their phone absorbing other peoples' selfies and enough propaganda to mold and stultify critical thinking for a lifetime.

But it's undeniably convenient having a phone/flashlight/camera/calculator/computer/brain in your pocket!!!

Debilitating

Microwaves revolutionized the world of home cooking. Forget actually making a meal, stinking up the house with all those delicious cooking smells while the kids mill about and everybody talks and gets in the way of the cook. Bye bye!

It takes time to do that!

Now we get to destroy what little nutrients remain in food by eating pre-processed meals in plastic bags, nuking the molecular structure of all the ingredients while blasting ourselves with microwaves that induce protein damage in neurons and change mitochondrial activity leading to brain dysfunction and cognitive decline.

And we get to have WiFi bombarding us with all those 5G signals and EM fields in order to have the convenience of mobility with our laptops and other electronic devices. (BTW - I recently shut off my Wifi and went back to the Stone Age by buying a 50' ethernet cable. My whole house is radically more peaceful feeling. And my internet connectivity speeds are HIGHER.)

And how about the convenience of disease acronyms and the designer pharmaceuticals to treat them? ADHD, IBS, HTN, PTSD, RA ... to list a few. About the only thing we don't have pills for is SADS. (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.)

One-size-fits all, standard of care pills and procedures. Convenient for the doctors, convenient for the health insurance adjusters and convenient for the patient, who, unfortunately never gets better. But then, of course, these medications are not designed to help us get better. They're designed to mitigate one set of symptoms while creating a whole subset of other conditions and symptoms that need other medications to treat.

Future models coming

I can't wait for the 15-minute cities where everything I need in the whole wide world will be contained within a 15-minute walk or drive. My whole world can be narrowed down to a few city blocks!

I'll have no need to get in my self-driving car and go anywhere at all! Will never have to motor out into the countryside and see a sunset from a different perspective ever again.

I mean, why should I bother? I have the whole world right here on my phone. Everything comes to me. And so fast with this new 6G wireless communications network overhead.

Now if only I could get rid of this constant headache and vague sense of claustrophobia ...

Oh well ... I’m sure there’s a pill for that too. Just let me google it …

Much love and aloha ~

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About Cate Montana

I’m a professional journalist specializing in alternative medicine and health, and the author of several books, including Unearthing Venus: My Search for the Woman Within [Watkins 2013], and The E Word, Ego Enlightenment & Other Essentials [Atria 2017], and a spiritual novel titled Apollo & Me. I have a master’s degree in psychology. A lot of TV, radio and podcast show hosts as well as listeners around the world have told me I’m an interesting and informative—even compelling—speaker. To which I say “Thank you.” Talking is something I enjoy doing even more than writing! (It’s more immediate and connected.)

I am extremely blessed to have been called to Maui and grateful every day to awaken here.

For more information you can reach me at www.catemontana.com and info@catemontana.com