When well-intentioned folks go off the rails

Meet Sally. She's actually a salmon dressed up with cat ears and whiskers, but for the good folks at PETA she's my "sea kitty." I just created her at their "Save the Sea Kittens" website.

PETA, you see, wants the Department of Fish and Wildlife to stop promoting recreational fishing. Yes, you read that right. F&W's mandate, PETA says, is to protect fish, not to encourage an activity that causes them pain -- which I do not doubt they suffer when their mouths are pierced by an angler's hook.

But no one would ever purposely harm a kitty-cat, PETA says, so (borrowing a page from Lakoff?), when Mom or Dad suggests we take our rods and reels and waders and head down to the river 'cause the trout are running, they want us not to think of a fish but to think of a kitten and run screaming from our sadistic parent -- who knows, maybe even turn said parent in to the authorities for animal abuse.

Look, I'm as much a booster of free-range chickens and meadow-raised cows as the next gal. But one of the things that's been drilled into our heads by New Age foodies is to eat line-caught salmon, say, rather than the farmed kind; and it's also been drilled into our heads that fish is good for us, and we should eat plenty of it.

What, oh what, is one to do? Nothing for it, I guess, but to pray to my pagan god of the waters for guidance. And to make sure the neighbor's cat doesn't dip into my goldfish bowl.