Don't give a fuck. Not my cat. I love my cat, I do not love cows, chickens, etc. Humans, as apex predators, have been eating meat for thousands of years, and I'm not gonna start feeling fuckin guilty about it just because our civilization has advanced to the point where we can get fat and analyze such shit on the internet. My cause is my class-- leave the animal liberation stuff to guilty rich white liberals* like Ingrid Newkirk.
Read: Might makes right.
Familiarity is an odd basis for an ethical(?) argument. Personally, I'd try to extend a sense of compassion to any animal, whether a pig trapped on a factory farm or a starving human in some hell-hole excuse for a country. Although the latter obviously takes precedence it doesn't negate my ability to simultaneously give a damn about the former. Yet, I know neither personally.
The way humans survived thousands of years ago is not something I'd want to use as a moral or ethical guideline for how I choose to live today, primarily because I don't know enough about their moral / ethical systems and secondly their circumstances were probably quite different. The bottom line is that I can survive today whilst inflicting the least possible harm or suffering on non-human animals, and that is what I attempt to do. If I see an unknown cat in my way I don't tread on it as it's only a minor inconvenience for me to avoid causing it suffering. My view with respect to consuming animal flesh is similar. If I were faced with a choice where I
needed to eat non-human (or possibly even human) animals to survive then I would consider doing so seriously. Until then... *munches away on his rabbit food*
Oh, and vegetarianism (and even veganism) predates internets.
* +thinkfree (he's just white as far as I know)
I thought we'd already established that I'm black?
*opens a can of petit-bourgeois liberalism and smears over MyButBuddy*