also i think you missed the point if you had a major problem with what john did to the cows at all btw. i can’t help but liken it to how vegans shit their pants over sustainable inuit seal hunting but have no problem with exploitative quinoa farming practices, or how people get upset and uncomfortable with the idea of having to slaughter or even pluck a chicken but will happily eat that chicken once it’s unrecognizable.
all of this is in the book. it’s not even coded. john says those cows were destined for the abattoir, and he killed them faster and more painlessly than they would have died there, and he knows it wasn’t the angelic thing to do, but it was them or him and his friends.
these forms of hypocrisy are part of a very colonial, european view of animals, and the way in-universe officials and oligarchs constantly shut down conversations about the fate of all of humanity by bringing up a couple hundred cows killed by an indigenous man– it felt almost too heavy-handed. there is a socialized gut feeling of revulsion at the thought of a cave of meat, and the whole point of the cows is that humans will allow that socialized reflex to override actual logic. and that seems to be exactly what it did for a lot of readers.